Wood and Stone

A site to track our progress as we build our FirstDay Cottage Canadian house kit. Come on in, get a cup of coffee, set a spell and follow along on our journey or join in if you like. Check back for the weekly update (usually by Wednesday when things are going right) to see what we are currently up to!

Friday, November 24, 2006

A picture is worth a thousand words

OK, finally got these scanned in and cleaned up so they look like something decent. Click any of these images to make them big enough to really view. Here are the isometric views of the house.

Page one of the plans, showing what this house will look like

The main floor, with the living room, the kitchen/dining area, study/guest room and 3/4 bath.

The main floor with living room, kitchen, study (guest room) and bathroom

The lower level - the basement in most houses - with our bedrooms, a full bath and a family room with the masonry heater.

The lower floor (basement) with 3 bedrooms, full bath and family room

The loft. There is no plan for this currently, but it is a space we could expand into eventually. Attic storage for now.

The loft, open for future consideration

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

A time to give thanks

There has been little movement these past few weeks, though I wouldn't say nothing happened. The septic installers had the field all covered up and were waiting to get enough other sites prepped to rent the equipment to get them seeded and mulched. They called this past weekend to let us know that that is all done and they are sending the final bill. Our engineer and the Health Department should be out there sometime this week to have the final inspection. We will get a certificate of compliance from the Health Department once the water has been tested (I think they said it has to be tested in the house).

The well driller called back to let us know he got into the site and it started to rain and then got too muddy for him to keep his rig there. He will wait until the ground freezes to drill the well. I suppose that if he can drill through rock, a little frozen ground won't deter him. No big deal if it doesn't happen for a month or even two, though I would like it done by the end of January, just to get it out of the way. As David (the main man of FirstDay) told us, there is at least a week between every thing that needs to be done. I don't want to try to jam all those weeks together; I think it could get very intense. We have been trying to buffer that week by a bit for each thing.

Lastly, the news that precipitated the post, is that we received our plans from FirstDay yesterday! David called to check on some things last week and told us he was working on them. He also told us he changed something in the kitchen but that it was to be a surprise. We are very excited about the plans, and once I have access to a scanner (over the Thanksgiving holiday), I will post them up here.

P.S. David had to change the kitchen configuration a bit due to stair and door placement, and included an island with a built-in bench in the kitchen. We're not sure how we feel about a 4' x 7' island in a 12' x 16' kitchen, but I am going to try to render it in SketchUp and so we can see what it looks like before we make up our minds.

Thursday, November 2, 2006

As the leaves fall down

I have slacked off on the update these past 2 weeks, and now it is November. All sorts of things have been happening, and you didn't even know! The septic is now complete and we are waiting on the final inspection of that.

Our massive septic tank, where we will store our crap

They also removed a couple of large trees and the stone wall in the area where the house is to go. In the process they also removed the small trees, which is good. The stone walls on our land go deep. I remember when they started clearing for the septic field, they pushed the stone wall off to one side, but there was still a whole bunch of stone underneath it. We have the same thing here under the house. I don't know if that has to be excavated and replaced with gravel or something, but I do know that if we need to build something with stone, we will not be at a loss!

Wendy in the newly cleared area where the house will go

We managed to buy a Kitchenaid double wall oven for about $750 from an overstock store down near where my parent's live - an oven that would probably run $1400 or so. They also have a GE gas cooktop that retails for like $400 for $170, so we are looking at that as well.

Finally, the well driller called last night. They will be drilling our well today or tomorrow. It's funny how everything just comes together at the same time. The good news is that now all we will have to focus on is cleaning up (and boy do we need to clean up!). We asked that all the wood and stone be left on the edges of the clearings and we would take care of it. This translates to pretty large piles of trees that have to be cut and stacked, and large amounts of rock that needs to be moved and stacked. I have a feeling that we will also need to construct a pole shed to store our wheelbarrows, since we have a whole winter of moving stuff ahead of us!