Land Hole!

A couple of weeks ago, Lyle asked us to go and stake off where we wanted our house to go. Ryan and I drove to the land with a sledgehammer, some rebar and a tape measure, and we got to work. We knew basically where we wanted the house to be, and the direction that we wanted it to face. Now we had to mark where exactly we wanted it. It's hard to determine something like that when you're just looking at snow, which shows no depth or height. We hammered our stakes in, and stood back and took a look. We thought that it looked really small, and couldn't believe that it was actually 40 x 32. We also knew that we wouldn't be making it any bigger, so we would have to live with it. When we got home afterwards, we measured the family room into the dining room, and realized that the land just looked small because it was a blank space, and figured that once there was a hole there or a house there, it would look a lot different.

Then, last Monday (March 5th) Lyle called us and told us to go to the land and mark out where our approach is, and mark out where we want the driveway. He wanted this done because on Tuesday, they wanted to start clearing the snow off of the property so that they could get the machines onto the land to start digging the basement. So after work on Monday we went out to the land in our work clothes, threw on our snow boots, and started trudging through the snow, marking where the approach was, and where we wanted the driveway. I told Ryan that I wanted to go and get the camera to take some pictures after we had done this, but we both figured that by the time we got home, changed and got the camera, we wouldn't have that much light left over by which to see what we were doing. So we have no pictures of the land with the driveway marked out.

Tuesday night after work, Ryan and I went to an auction sale at Regent Auctions (that's a story for another post), and afterwards decided that we'd take a drive by the land to see what they'd done that day. Again, with no camera, we headed out to the land and were excited to see (in the dark) that they had cleared the snow away and had put up additional pieces of rebar to mark where the house would be. I'm pretty sure that if the camera was there, all you would see would be a dark background and maybe some flecks of snow, but it would be unrecognizable. Needless to say I was pretty excited when I saw that the snow had been moved. To me, finally it seemed real that we were actually building a house.

Wednesday night was busy for Ryan because of his trade show at work, and Thursday night brought on another auction sale (this one at Kaye's Auctions), so we never got a chance to get out to the land to see if they had done anything more. To be honest, I don't think either one of us even thought about going out there; we were both so beat by the time we got into the car.

Friday after work we had to go and meet Ryan's mom so that she could pick up her new vehicle (2004 Ford Escape) so that someone could drive her vehicle home. I dropped Ryan off and went in for a bit before I went to visit my dad at work. It was a beautiful evening, so I rushed home after visiting with Dad for a bit and decided that I would go and grab my camera and some cds and take a drive to the land to see what had happened to it over the past couple of days, if anything. I took the long way to the land (going down Hwy #206) and looked towards our property and saw piles of dirt...I knew that could only mean one thing. Excited, I sped up a bit, wanting to get there to see if they had started digging. When I got there, I parked on the approach and started to walk onto the land...only to find that it was really really muddy. All I could do was stand on the snowy part of the property and take pictures from where I stood. They had indeed dug out some of the basement but at this point I had no idea how deep it was, but it sure looked like a lot of dirt to me. They had also trucked in three pile of crushed rock for the weeping tile (or so Ryan says). I took some more pictures and headed home.

Saturday came and Ryan and his mom had appointments to get their hair cut in Lorette that morning, so we all piled into the new vehicle, rubber boots and camera in hand, and headed out. After the hair appointments, we drove to the land, donned our rubber boots, and walked to the "dugout". They had dug down only about three feet. It looked like there was way more dirt than that, but I guess if you think about it, it's a rectangle, 40' x 32', dug 3 feet down, so I guess that would produce a lot of dirt. I took more pictures at this point, since we were able to get right into the "dugout".

I realized again that this was actually happening...that it was all real...and that at some point this year, we will have a place to call our own.

Everything House: The Permits

The next thing on the list was permits. Because we have a builder building the house, he is in charge of getting the building permit (ha! makes sense!). So Lyle went to the RM of Tache in Lorette to get the building permit. When he was there, they told him that he couldn't get a building permit without having the septic field permit first.

We had thought that we were going to go with Keating Mechanical for our septic field and septic tank, and before he could give us an accurate quote on it, we had to get a soil sample and take it in to Norwest Labs and have it analyzed. So on a very cold morning, Ryan and I left for work a bit earlier and headed to our land to try to chip away at the frozen ground in order to get enough dirt for a sample. I sat in the car because Ryan said that he didn't need help...and let me tell you, it was the funniest thing I've ever seen I think. Because it was still a little dark out, all I could see was a black outline of him in the middle of the land, holding the shovel in place and then jumping onto it. I think it lasted for about 30 minutes, and I finally went out there to help him. And of course, on a day that I didn't wear long-johns, I'm standing in the field trying to shovel dirt and I'm freezing. We finally got enough soil in the bag and we headed in to drop of the sample. They said it would take about a week to get the results of the analysis back.

Once we got the results back, we gave them to Keating for an accurate quote, and Ryan contacted Taras Gravel to get a quote from them on a septic field & tank as well, since they do those too. We found that out from Derek and Amber, who also got a quote from them. His quote came back a bit lower than Keating's did and we decided to go with them. Taras had to go and get the permit for the septic field, which took just over a week to get back.

I was worried about the septic field because I had talked to someone on the phone who was looking to subdivide her property (also in the Municipality of Tache) and they told her that they couldn't, and had also mentioned something to her that even if they could subdivide, they wouldn't be able to get a septic field permit. So that scared me, and I was really nervous that we wouldn't get the septic field permit and we wouldn't be able to build and we'd NEVER have our own place...but a couple of days later we found out that the permit was granted, and I was happy. The same day we got word that the permit was granted, Ryan called Lyle and he went down to the RM and put in for the building permit, which was also granted. So everyone has now got their permits and are ready to roll.

Everything House: The Plans

I'm going back a couple of weeks to start posting about what has happened with our house plans since putting the approach in back in August.

For the past I don't know how many years, twice a year (Spring & Fall), we go and take a look at houses on the Parade of Homes. Not really knowing what we wanted to live in for the rest of our lives, we figured that taking a look at some homes would help us decide what we liked and what we didn't like. After going through quite a few houses, we ended up finding a house that we both fell in love with as soon as we walked in. If you ask me now just where it was, I would have no idea. Ryan likes to think that he knows, but I don't think he really does. Anyway, the house was 2600 sq. ft. which we knew was WAY too big for us. We grabbed the plan from the showhome (http://www.ashomes.ca/uploaded/pdf/Sunbury.pdf), and took it home with us and started fiddling around with it. We went back with Ryan's mom and my parents just to show them and to find out what they thought. We also tried to talk to the guy that was showing the home, and he was pretty useless. Ryan was asking him all these questions and it was like he didn't think that we were seriously looking at the house, and didn't want to waste his time with us. We knew that we wouldn't go with the company that built that particular house, but we had called to talk to them about it anyways. We had called the builder but they wouldn't meet with us because they said that we had to go through the real estate guy to get any information. Ryan told them that we didn't want to buy that house, but that we wanted to talk to them about the plans of that particular house. They still told us that we had to go to the realtor. Forget it.

So we kept the plans that we had picked up from the house and tweeked them a bit and knocked off a little over 600 sq. ft. and got it down to just under 2000 sq. ft. Now all we had to do was find a builder. Ryan had talked about wanting to do the build ourselves and be the general contractors, but we decided that neither of us had the time to run around and get all the contractors for the various jobs. With both of us working full-time and Ryan working lots of extra time after work, it wouldn't have worked out for us.

We had decided to take the plans to three different builders. One was a Project Management company, and the other three were builders. We had heard nothing but great things about Lyle Foster and the homes that he builds. Ryan's cousin and his wife had their house built by him, as well as the parents of a guy that we went to highschool with. They had no complaints at all. We decided that we would go with Lyle after getting his quote. The other places that we took the plans to either didn't call back, or were ridiculously expensive. Lyle took our plans and drew them properly (apparently we didn't have ours in any type of scale that made sense). After a few back and forths making changes to the plans, we now have our plans complete, mortgage approved, and we're just waiting for things to start!

October Scenery

Here are some pictures that we took on our vacation at the cabin last October. I LOVE the fall! I'm thinking of blowing up the last one and putting it in our house when it's done...Or putting it into a photo contest. TOOT TOOT!! (That's me, tooting my own horn).

A Few Photos

I was looking through some of pictures that I have on my computer at work, and found some that I wanted to share.

I am pretty sure that this is the best picture that was taken on our wedding day. In case you can't tell, this is Simone (i'll LeavE heR last naMe out for her sake), one of my bridesmaids, at the end of the night. Fortunately for her, she had a good time. Unfortunately for us, we picked up the tab...

This was the day that we had the groomsmen try on tuxes. Now don't ask me what Glen is doing here...is he pointing to his white socks? Perhaps it was the first day that he learned to tie his own shoes and is proud...

More of Glen being Glen...

And, so not to make it seem like I'm picking on everybody else, here's a little picture that I like to call "Spilling the Beans...". And there IS a story to go with it...

The story starts like this. Amanda, Evelyn, Jeanette and I decided that we were going to go to the States for a weekend. We went to Minneapolis on the Friday night and stayed at a hotel until Saturday, went shopping to the mall and Ikea and the oulet mall in Albertville, and then headed back to Grand Forks. On the Sunday, we went to Target, and I wanted to get some Jelly Belly Jelly Beans. So I grabbed a bag, and loaded it full...and I mean full! I closed the bag, and proceeded to put the bag in my palm on it's "back". At that point, the bag, which I thought was securely closed, opened up and spilled about 1/2 of the beans on the Target Floor. I was so embarrassed. I'm so thankful that Evelyn was there to take that picture! (Thanks Ev!). I think the funniest part was watching THREE Target Employees cleaning up the mess that I made. I simply filled up the bag again and slowly backed away...

Land Ho!

About 2 years ago, Ryan and I bought a 3-acre piece of property just outside of Lorette. We bought this land with the idea that we would be building in the Spring of 2007. My brother (Geoff) and his girlfriend (Laura) bought the 3-acre piece of property right beside ours.

In August of 2006, we decided to put in our approach (the beginning part of a driveway with the culvert underneath...you seriously wouldn't believe how many people don't know what I'm talking about when I say that). Derek and Amber Fisher were also putting an approach on their land, and we all figured that maybe we would get a good deal if the three of us went and bought the culverts at the same time.

We booked Taras Gravel Supplies to come and put in our culvert for us on August 29th. We had booked the day off of work and arranged with Don Taras that they would come after lunch to put the dirt on the culvert, and all we had to do was put the culvert where we wanted it and secure it. Derek was the one that told us that we should secure it good, because I guess when he put theirs in, he didn't secure it, and when they dumped the load of sand onto the culvert, it shot out of the ditch it was sitting so nicely in, and he had to shovel the freshly dumped sand out and re-lay the culvert back in place. We were careful and made sure that it was secure. Since we were already there, offered to put Geoff's culvert in the ditch for him as well, so that he didn't have to get time off work to come out.

(Here we are, proud owners of a shiny 40-foot culvert,
that we were soon going to bury in sand, pitrun, and gravel.)

After staking both culverts, we played the waiting game. Taras said that they would be at our land just after lunch, which meant that they were supposed to be there around 1:00. Keep in mind that Ryan and I got there at 12:00 to lay the culverts where we wanted them. 1:00 comes and goes, and there's no dirt. 1:30 comes and still no dirt. Ryan calls Taras and he says that they're on their way. 2:00 comes around, and, you guessed it, no dirt...AND, Ryan fell asleep in the truck. The only thing that I could do was take pictures...which I did...many of them. Pictures of absolutely nothing...which I so often do. At about 2:30, the trucks finally started arriving. I woke Ryan up with a "They're here! They're here!!" delivered with a punch, and we got to work.

It was kinda fun watching them dump the sand out of the trucks and then push it around with their little machine (no idea what it's called...so little machine will have to do). As soon as the guy started playing around with the machine, Ryan wanted one instantly. There was a point in time where they left the machine with us and took off to get more dirt, making us wait longer. Ryan was hoping that they had left the keys in the machine, but no dice. If he started playing with it, there might have been an incident like Barry with the snowmobile...

It took them quite a while to get the new loads of sand, pit run, and gravel, since they were coming from the Garven Road gravel pits, and I think that they were just putting the gravel on our approach when my mom and dad got there.

If you're wondering if that pole was crooked before the guys came for the gravel...it was. Seems that Hydro likes to unhook power poles and reattach wires to new poles, and leave the old poles for the landowner to worry about. So no, a truck did not hit that pole. But that's how we'll know it's our land...the one with the crooked hydro pole on it. Unfortunately, we're going to have to take it down in the next couple of weeks. I wonder what they're going to charge us for that!

My dad decided to be funny and drive on our new approach, saying that he wanted to be the first one. I think that he forgot that it was fresh gravel, because I'm pretty sure he spun the tires and kicked up some of our gravel. Check out the marks he made with his truck tires...

The day, although very long and sometimes boring when we had to sit and wait for the dirt to arrive, was pretty good. We got our approach in, and that was exciting because that was the first thing we had done to our land after a year of owning it! Here's the finished product!

We went back a few weeks later, just to see what it was like, and ours was still in great condition, but we're pretty sure that a bus was turning around on Geoff's approach, because it was all torn up. I joked and said that it was because he wasn't there when the approach was put in. I never did tell him about the "buses turn around here" sign that I posted...

Bandwagon Hop-ons

After getting an email from Evelyn and reading her blog, http://thedepieros.blogspot.com/, I decided that it was a fantastic way to share what's going on in our lives as well. Although we don't have kids to show off, we are at the beginning stages of having a house built, and since I was going to start keeping a diary of "everything house", I decided that this would be much easier!

Here we go!