The foreman

One big hole!

Yep, that's the hole for our foundation!  Such a great surprise on Saturday - we had to meet our foundation man (FM) at 8 AM (although he didn't show up until 8:45) to discuss moving our house.  Due to the variance in the grade, the walls for the garage wouldn't be below grade.  Sooo, we ended up moving the house 30 feet to make it work out better.  We asked FM what the plans were and he indicated his guys were on their way with the excavator.  Much to our delight, we got to watch most of the hole being dug.  Kole was in H E A V E N!  He had so much fun!  The plan is to install the walls this week, plumbing this weekend, pouring concrete next week, and hopefully framing things up the week after Christmas!

We have water, too!  And Kole gave up his binky without a fight!  What a wonderful week it has been for us :-)

Where, oh where, could our water be?

Water - it's what has been on our mind all week.  The rain and drilling our well.  On Monday, things worked out better than planned, as the dozer was delivered for starting on the foundation.  The foundation contractor told our well guy to use it as he needed it.   They got the rig into place and the drilling commenced.  He hit water at 100 feet and 200 feet.   There was a problem, though.  Apparently there was some sort of horizontal crevice that the water was just leaking out of.  Ugh.  And unfortunately, we still had to pay for the drilling although there was no water to show for it.

Dan and the well guy got the truck moved out.  The well guy and his wife came back out to look for water.  They use an old method called dowsing, or divining.  , or water witching.  A y-shaped piece of wood (in their case, a piece of wild cherry) is held while the holder walks across where there is suspected water.  The rod, or stick, will "bend" towards the water.  They found a vein of water running across a lower meadow.  This is approximately 200 feet below where he drilled before, so we are hoping we avoid the crevice issue.  The dozer was utilized to build a road so that the drilling rig could easily get into position.  The well guy needed to fix a piece on his rig and plans to be out there tomorrow afternoon.  Keep your fingers crossed we find water!

Kole and I visited the Winter Farmer's Market today.  We got some meat for the month - we have committed to buying only local meat.  I even put in an order for a local ham for Christmas.  We think Kole just went through a growth spurt, on top of cutting his canines.  He all of a sudden seems taller and is much more pleasant to be around.  He was a bear this week (hence my lack of blogging!).  We are going to go to a local Christmas tree farm next weekend to get a real tree for our little apartment.  Kole's final Christmas present was ordered tonight and everyone else is done.  Christmas cards will go out tomorrow.  Cookies will be baked soon.  Oh, yea, and hopefully a house will be under roof!

What a week!

Whew.  What a week.  Each day threw us a new curveball, but made us realize that we are making the right decision in building our home.  Here's a quick recap of our week:

** Dan and his dad got all of the conduit in the trench and Dan got some back filled before MPE was scheduled to come back to pick up the excavator.  As a side note, MPE is HORRIBLE with delivering and picking things up on time.  We now know not to depend on their time schedules if we need to rent equipment again. 

** Our road is f i n i s h e d!  It is pretty nice and we are thrilled we can drive the CR-V to the top without getting whiplash.  We spend today spreading 29 bales of hay along the edge of the road across the meadow so that rains don't start to wash away all of the precious work that we waited so long for!

** A pretty nice buck hangs out with his girlfriends near the house.  We spotted him first on Thursday in the middle of the road and I saw him again this afternoon in the meadow.  We haven't been close enough for long enough to see if he is an 8 or a 10 point.

** We apparently have a nice sized helicopter landing pad on top of the hill.  While out there on Thursday, a WV stated owned copter touched down briefly to check transmission fluid.  Of course, Thursday is the day we didn't have our camera, so we don't have photographic evidence :-)

** Any work that needs done on the truck generally takes 2 1/2 times as long as expected.  Dan changed the control arms this weekend and it ended up taking almost 2 days due to some rusted bolts.  Kole enjoyed spending so much time at Gramps and Grammy's house!

** We ordered our front door, siding, and roofing from 84 Lumber.  It is looking as though we will be framing the house up the first full week of December!  It will be awesome to see it under roof!

** The well driller we called to see if he was willing to drill our well finally called Dan back.  He came out today to check things out.  As it turns out, he doesn't like drilling over a strip mined property.  That isn't our case, so he felt more comfortable.  He told Dan he found a spot where there was definitely water, but how deep or how fast of flow will be determined when the well is drilled.  When Dan asked him how he could tell there was water, he replied it was a "trade secret."  He's considered a master driller, so we'll see how skilled he is in a few weeks!

** Kole is growing more and more every day.  He tries to repeat everything we do now and is starting to say 2 syllable words, as well as small sentences.  His imagination is amazing - he found a stick this week and decided it was a saw.  He spent 20 minutes sawing on a log.  He also took a pair of pliers and "worked" on a tree.  It is hard to believe in a little over 2 months, he will be 2 years old!  He is quite proud to show you his one finger now when asked how old he is!

I will be posting pictures soon.  I'm working on my netbook right now and trying to load pictures makes it go all kinds of crazy!  We had the camera nearly every day, so we are going to have quite the collection of construction pictures!

Next up (hopefully this week): excavation and foundation work!