Restaked.

The above picture shows a beautiful building site punctuated by a multitude of small orange stakes marking the boundaries of the house and garage. There is a chance that the footers will get dug tomorrow, but I’m not getting my hopes up. But it sure would be great if it happened!

I spent a bit of time at the farm today, continuing to clean up the property and crush things with the tractor. The weather was perfect and it is nice the the ground is finally dry. The forecast for the next couple of weeks looks decent. The cold would pretty much seem to be gone.

Graded.

Progress is slow and inconsistent, but still present. On Monday the surveyors came and staked out the building envelope. Yesterday our friend Grant  used his brand new track loader to grade the site. He moved around a lot of dirt with an efficiency that Annie could never match. Hopefully the surveyors will return tomorrow to lay out the exact locations of the footings. Then digging, pouring, laying block, framing, roofing…

Quick trip up the mountain.

We actually didn’t end up going to Monteagle until yesterday (Saturday) morning. Things got a little hectic on Friday night and so it was better to briefly postpone. The drive was uneventful – I took my typical route of the interstate to Manchester then Highway 41 up to Monteagle. It was a pretty drive, as usual, but not yet as green as I was hoping for. We didn’t have much of an agenda other than relaxing and of course visiting the goats on campus. We drove to see them and it was really cool because they actually left their big, round bale of hay and came to check us out. That thrilled Liz and she took lots of pictures and videos. I also snapped a few photos with my phone.

We had lunch at the Mountain Goat Market and really enjoyed sitting out on the porch. The afternoon was spent reading and napping. We went to Lake O’Donnell for sunset. I used my new camera for the first time and really enjoyed it. I haven’t put the pictures on my computer yet, but will try to this evening.

We returned to the Mountain Goat Market for dinner and again enjoyed the serenity of their patio. Being there is always so nice and relaxing. We went back to the cottage and read and talked some more until bed time. This morning I woke up at the crack, but it was super overcast, so I didn’t go out to photograph. We took it pretty easy through the morning before coming back to Nashville. I have no idea when we will be able to return to the mountain, but I hope it won’t be too far from now. Of course it will be a little more complicated with the coming third member of our party.

 

Papery party.

Today has been a thoroughly unexciting parade of paperwork (and alliteration, apparently). More in the figurative since though, as it was mostly online/computer type stuff. I updated my expense spreadsheets for the house and nascent business, paid a couple of bills, and really organized a lot of files and folders on my computer. I also did a lot of cleaning and organizing on the condo. Mostly boxing things up. On the fun side, I was able to start setting up the two external computer monitors that Liz got me (for free!) from her office. And yes, they know that she took them. They are 23″ Asus full HD screens. Not top of the line by any stretch, but still quite nice. And free. I’m not sure if my laptop will support running both at the same time. One is connected via an HDMI cable, while I ordered an HDMI to DVI cable for the other one from Amazon. We’ll see if that works. I promise that I am done with acronyms for this post.

This evening we are headed up to Monteagle. There is a chance of thunderstorms this evening and tomorrow morning, but other than that the weather should be glorious. I hope to hike some, relax, read, take a lot of pictures, and eat at the Mountain Goat Market. There should be lots of pretty blooms both on campus and in the parks.

“To the man with a hammer…

…everything looks like a nail” – Mark Twain, possibly

That is a nice saying, but I have an updated version. “To the man with  tractor and front-end loader, everything looks like a target for destruction”. After today I can verify the truthfulness of that statement.

Getting the fire started this morning took more diesel fuel than I would have liked, but eventually the big pile got to burning pretty good. All of the house debris burned along with most of the tulip poplar that was on top. I also threw on some old cedar logs. I debated saving them, but they were in fairly rough shape.

Annie and I also uprooted a number of trees. Below is one of the bigger ones. The still soft ground makes pushing over certain types of trees pretty easy.

As the pictures show it was a glorious day. Hopefully spring is here, although I wouldn’t mind one more good snow storm. I’m worried that a relatively mild winter will mean lots of bugs this year.

More Sketchin’ Up.

I have kept messing with the SketchUp plans for the farm house. Below are new (and blue!) updates to the design. The final house will be white, but I decided to make a colored version because it makes it easier to see details.

Today wasn’t as productive as I would have liked. I broke the quick attach handle on my loader. I guess it will need to be welded back on. I bought a crescent wrench and a pipe wrench at Lowe’s, but neither of them worked really. I eventually got the bucket off by beating the pins from the bottom. The pallet forks went on easily. I dug up a few stumps and moved around some cedar logs. Tomorrow will be another beautiful day and I will try to burn the last of the house debris as well as a lot of the recently downed trees. I’m not sure if I will attempt to burn the stumps or just throw them into the dumpster. There is a bit of space remaining, but weight could become an issue. We are restricted to 8000 pounds.

I was hoping that the engineer would come today to lay out the footings, but he didn’t. Maybe tomorrow. The sooner the better so we can take advantage of this nicer weather and get to work.

Sketch it Up.

I am by no means a Sketchup expert, but I have enjoyed using the program for a number of years now, and feel like over the past few weeks I have really learned and improved my skills quite a bit. I used it to map out the floor plan and have also used it to create 3d renderings of the house. Combine that with large-format printing available at the FedEx store, and I have some pretty professional looking blueprints. Below are some elevations. Unfortunately I don’t know how to show the terrain lines along the side of the house. I also don’t have a good way to render the shingles. But aside from those two issues I’m pretty pleased.

 

Snow, stumps, and a mystery marsupial.

We got a dusting of snow overnight, which lasted about fifteen minutes once the sun rose. Traffic to Columbia was pretty light this morning, so I guess many people stayed hunkered down indoors. I know that Metro schools opened a couple of hours late. The little bit of snow was still quite pretty, and made me long for a real amount. That probably won’t be happening until December though.

There wasn’t any snow on the ground at the farm. There was however an unidentified animal, maybe a groundhog. I managed to get a crappy picture of him with my phone, shown below. It was zoomed in to the maximum and then drastically cropped, so it makes the “Nessie” photograph look museum worthy. I took the picture from the front seat of my car while I was waiting for a phone call. Frustratingly, my SLR with telephoto lens was in the back of the car. I have seen him before – he lives under the one remaining shed, but previous spottings have merely entailed him running back to the safety of his home. I got a nice long glimpse of him as he meandered around. He eventually went back underground, at which point I retrieved my camera and prepared it to photograph him. Unfortunately he never returned.

After running a number of errands in downtown Columbia I returned to the farm for a little tractor time. I tried to take advantage of the still rather wet ground and uproot some stumps. These were primarily from smaller trees that I had cut down to a couple of feet. Unfortunately that limited amount of trunk made it difficult to get much leverage, but it went okay. Still a bit of work yet to go though. This week I need to get a fire going to burn the stumps, brush, and the last of the house debris. The weather should be great for working outside over the next few days. I just need to get stuff done before the snakes come out to play!

Updates (or ramblings, to be more precise).

Haven’t been doing a good job of blogging, and I haven’t journaled in ages either. I need to be doing at least one daily for the sake of my emotional stability. I sort of try to use my smartphone’s camera to take notes and record things. It geotags and dates pictures, so at least I have kind of a photo journal. I sure wish I had a phone like that back when I was doing cool things. But at least I do have photographs. Tens of thousands of them to be (in)exact. I was looking at some of them this morning, and trying to upload to Amazon Prime Photos, since unlimited photo storage is included with our Prime account. Unfortunately it seems like you have to upload one folder at a time, not an attractive proposition when you have early 800 folders. I will search for a workaround.

The house is slowly progressing. I have completely cleared and scraped the site, and did a little leveling. There is still a bit of slope, but it is manageable. The surveyor is supposedly coming in the next day or two in order to map out the foundation, then the footings will get dug and poured. It would be amazing if that plus the block work is finished by the end of the week. Then the house gets framed, which should go pretty quickly. The framing package is a pretty good price, so I need to go ahead and get that ordered. It will be such a relief to see the framing done and the roof and sheathing on. Then it will be time for me to take over and really get to work!

I have really enjoyed using SketchUp to work on the house plans. I am getting better at it and understanding more and more of its features. the FedEx store does a great job of printing large copies of the plans. I also bought a Dell laser printer that has been wonderful for printing letter sized documents. I am really looking forward to setting up an office space of my own in the new house. My 8×8 room isn’t huge, but it will be private and efficient.

We sure have had a mild February and March. The forecast shows a low of 27 in a couple of nights, but that is the only time it is supposed to get below freezing for the next couple of weeks. We did actually get a light dusting of snow the other night, but it melted in a flash.

Realistically we are probably about six months away from moving. That is factoring in a few surprises on hiccups on construction, but nothing major. I am definitely excited about moving, but realize there is a lot of work to be done before that happens.

I am also very excited about living in Columbia. It is a cool town that is starting to have a lot going on. About ten minutes from the farm, in town, is a little recreation center. I have driven by but have not been inside, which I will try to rectify this week. The big attraction is that a yearly membership is only $75. So it could be a great place to exercise. There are also some neat looking restaurants that we haven’t yet tried. Mule Day is next month and I want to go to it.

It would really be nice to go on a camping trip this spring, but I doubt that it will be possible. Maybe this fall after we are all moved into the new house. Lots of blooms around here sure are pretty. Maybe we could at least go to Monteagle next weekend. I’ll run that by Liz.

I’ve been reading a bit in the evenings. Not anything serious just spy and adventure type of books. Also still watching The Blacklist and Hawaii Five-O. They have both been pretty good recently. Liz and I have been watching a little HGTV too.

30 hours of Annie.

Well, the Kioti finally has a name – Annie. She is named after two redheads (which of course everybody knows means orange hair) – Raggedy Ann and Anne of Green Gables. We have now spent about 30 hours working together, so I figured I would share a few thoughts.

As hoped for, this machine is quite the beast. The loader is very strong and it can pull like crazy as well. I actually need to build a ballast box to attach to the rear so it isn’t quite so tippy. Even with the rear tires filled I have lifted the rear end regularly. The loader is nice and tall too. I am thankful that the bucket clears the sides of the 30 yard dumpster that I have been loading.

Unfortunately it has been a wet few weeks since I got Annie. I have made a real mess with the heavy tractor, but such is the price of progress. I will level everything out eventually. Fortunately this coming week is supposed to be pretty dry.

The pallet forks that I bought have been incredible. They have stayed on about 95% of the time and have really made moving things a breeze. The A/C unit, lumber, blocks, stone, shingles, and more, have all been easily handled. Having the skid steer style quick attach on the loader has been great. I would like a couple more attachments – mainly a stump bucket and in my dreams, a grapple.

I need to repair the three point hitch so that I can run i implements off the rear. I would like a box blade and the aforementioned ballast box. Eventually a finish mower would be nice as well.

I bought a grease gun and lubed up all of the zerks. I need to look into oil and filter changes, probably sooner rather than later.

So far I haven’t had any issues. I have worked this machine really hard and it has kept up. Hopefully it will keep going strong for many years!