2 years and 46 weeks!

[spiralsands]

It's been that long since I took the class and became a member. There were times during that 2 years and 46 weeks that I thought I would never live my dream. Never build my house. I was stuck in Florida with the New York blues again...

Well,I'm finally on my way. I have a job transfer set up for upstate NY that will put me within commuting distance to my Winterwood property on the edge of the Adirondacks. I'll be going in the dead of winter to Syracuse and will begin construction of my camp at Winterwood in the spring...

To know that I'll be there to finally get the building permit....ecstasy!
To know that I'll be there to get power installed within 100 feet of the road...ecstasy....
To know that I'll be there on my weekends and days off shift to clear dead wood and to see the stars at night...ecstasy...

I feel alive again....

Frances

[loghousenut]

You are about 17 years ahead of us. No hurry... No worries.

[hemlock77]

Congratulations. It has been over 6 years since taking the class for me. still very much a work in progress. Getting started is a good feeling indeed.
Stu
<a href="http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u64/hemlock77/">http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u64/hemlock77/</a>

[panderson03]

the weight of the burden seems somehow lighter when there is a concrete plan to get to where you're aching to be. CONGRATULATIONS!!! big step.

[Basil]

I took the class almost 7 years ago, been living in my log home for over 2 years now. Pretty glad i did it all now. Boy, was it a lot of work tho.

[edkemper]

Considering what you're living in now, hopefully mortgage free, would you do it again?

[clairenj]

happy for you! looking forward to seeing yo in your new space! keep in touch

[Basil]

Considering what you're living in now, hopefully mortgage free, would you do it again?


I would do some things different, but I'd do it again. I do have a mortgage on the house now, actually...I mortgaged the house to get the farm paid for, b/c the mortgage rate on a farm is several % points higher than it is on residential owner occupied housing. So, if the bank took it from me, i could move over a few hundred feet and build again on land they cant touch! I have about 55 acres that isn't mortgaged now.

I wouldn't build as big if i had to do it again. I'd have done the garage first, as i planned, instead of doing the garage last.I'd do the roof like the class instructs, rather than the way i did it. But even after all the hard work and loss of time with my family, it's worth it.

[edkemper]

Thanks for the heads-up. The most interesting part of your post is saying you'd build smaller. A place I'm starting at. I also agree with the garage first. I need a place to store supplies and equipment as I'm 6 hours from my property.

[spiralsands]

That sounds sort of like what I'm planning. I have to live in Syracuse to work so I'm going to buy a teeny tiny old house. They have lots of cheap ones there and it will be cheaper to buy than to rent.
I'll be about an hour from the property and will start building a garage first with an apartment on top of it. I thought about building a camp type building but a garage would be more useful.
My Florida house officially went on the market this week. I'm starting to see a few drive-bys but no one came to take a look yet.

Frances

[Mosseyme]

What is the size of your house an why would you build smaller?

[spiralsands]

I'm not sure if you're directing that question to me or the other guy but I would build smaller for at least a few reasons. To list them in no particular order: initial cost, building time, lower heating and cooling costs over time, more honest use of space (by that I mean how big of a bedroom does one really need when most living is done in other parts of the house.), and finally, ease of maintenance.
I'm getting ready to sell the house I have now and can't believe how much junk was accumulated in it. I even had too much furniture. We're living in a bare bones household and everything stays cleaner and stuff doesn't get lost. I love it.

Frances

[Basil]

i would build smaller because it just about killed me to build this house alone. It's just under 3000 square feet, and it isn't just a square. It's a square with a bump out on the back, the master suite, which is two floors and about 800 square feet by itself. That was for my wife, who insisted we have the master suite downstairs and that it not take any room from the main structure. So i basically built two houses to get one. Because of this, and the wrap-around porch, my roof is about 7000 square feet total. The scale that this house was built on was more than one person should take on. Certainly more than one person should do when they are working a 9-5, raising a teenager and an infant, keeping a 70 acre farm, etc.

[Kalurah]

Frances,
My family owns property in St. Lawrence County, NY. I am signed up for the course in Jan Can't wait! I have a trailer on the site right now but plan to build a garage this summer with trees from the property cut this winter.
Where is Wildwood, if I might ask? I am from Syracuse area. I currently live in Mass but still own a home in Kirkville. So I guess I will be available when you start building! Drop me a line! emcsret97 at yahoo.com

Pete

[edkemper]

If you've signed up for the class, you might want to wait to build until after you go to the class. Just something to think about.
Welcome to our family.

[Kalurah]

Roger that Ed!
I am enrolled and have my travel and hotel reserved for the January Vegas class! I am very excited! Regardless of that, we own the land and the trees, all I have to do is determine either Red Pine or White Pine and cut em and stack em for my garage. I can wait till the end of January to do that!
Thanks for the welcome!
Pete

[ARMYUSDE]

I'd have done the garage first, as i planned, instead of doing the garage last.

Why would you do the garage first next time?

[Dan Spencer]

Great practice time when building a garage , make all mistakes there before building a home . Plus having a safe place for all your tools. Also , if you build a loft in the garage it could be a good place to stay while building the house .
Just a thought !

[spiralsands]

Update! I'm still getting used to this new forum and don't know all the ways to keep track of certain threads. Officially been in Syracuse for 7 months now but the FAA had me spend at least half that time traveling to Oklahoma City for various training. I feel a little like a fish out of water but slowly I'm feeling more at home.

My first project after getting back here in May was to find someone to bushhog my land. Sitting untended for 4 years it was looking pretty wild. Not knowing anyone, I ran an ad on the most local Craigslist under "labor" to hire someone to do it. Found a local guy out of Fort Plain to do it for 30 bucks an hour. Not too bad. He did the front pasture for 240 bucks. Then he did most of the back pasture for another 120. I still have to brush cut around the stream and pond but my brushcutter carb is all screwed up with the ethanol gas issue and I still didn't get it working yet. I even brought it to a shop and they just gave it back to me saying, "Sorry." One surprising result of having the lot bushhogged is that I found a beautiful hilltop under all that grass. I never saw the field totally cut and this hilltop was almost pointy in the front of the property. The view from there was even better than the original one I had imagined down near the pond. So now I have a new home site! In fact, relocating the cabin to the hilltop will also make the driveway shorter and save me money on electrical installation. Win Win!!

It's a hoot only driving one hour to get there. Driving up into those hills takes about a half a tank of gas but driving home only takes about a quarter tank. My old Dodge truck really growls LOUD climbing up there. It's a little embarrassing because the road up there is loaded with silent Amish farms and the Blue Beast doesn't care who it wakes up.

Since the whole of the first half of my time here was consumed by work travel, I'm probably only going to be able to do a few prep projects before the first snows. The first is to put a culvert in at the road so trucks could get in without sinking in the ditch. The second is to brush cut the pond and stream. I'm getting the feeling it's gonna be very challenging taking care of the stream and pond. The last thing I gotta do is to evaluate another culvert that was left in the downstream part of the pond. It's really large but uncovered. If still intact, I may be able to use it to access my back woods. More than half my acreage is wooded and so far I can't get the truck back there.

Sometimes I get a little scared at the scope of this project because it takes me so long to figure out how to resolve problems. Then sometimes, the light just comes on and there is a solution.

I think it was practically a miracle that I made this move. My house in Florida sold in an unbelieveable 4 weeks and I found a house in Syracuse in one 5 day house hunting trip. People who didn't even know me, the real estate agent and the mortgage broker, bent over backwards to get me here by making their agency lawyer work on the weekend and by actually picking me up on Christmas Eve to get me the keys to the house. It was like being on a high speed rickety roller coaster ride in that I was afraid that any minute, I would be bankrupt and homeless if everything did not work out. I literally rolled coins, cashed bonds and borrowed from retirement to get here. My daughter and I moved 3 cars, 3 dogs, 4 cats, 6 birds and 3 fish all by ourselves in one 1400 mile trip. I still can't believe we did it.

I'm so glad to be back on this forum that I could just KISS everyone of you!!!

Frances

[loghousenut]

How cool is THAT! Good to finally have you back and you're gonna love the way the new forum works. It's a good bunch of characters right now and that makes it easy to log on every day or two. Welcome home.