More pictures of dirt

I met with Wes and Lee today at the site.  They have marked the three or four areas that need blasting and have one of the two estimates in.  If all goes well, the blasting should occur late this week or early next.  Either way, I'll be there to watch and perhaps push the button. 

We've decided to blast for a full basement, which is about 10 feet at the high point.  This will also give us material to use for retaining and stone walls.  While we're blasting, we'll also remove the 'hump' in the driveway we left last fall. 

I'm still not able to envision the house within the area cleared, but it looks like there will be some nice rock outcroppings near the house.  Below are some more pictures of the site.  The next post should include some pre and post blasting shots.

 

More Site Clearing Pictures

The weather finally cleared and the ground dried last week, so Lee and company were back to clearing the land and cleaning over the ledge.  Below are some shots that Wes took.  The next step is to get a couple of companies in to give estimates on the blasting.

Alternatively, I was going to look up an old friend with military contacts and see if we could call in a 'Platoon' like air strike.  If I can't get a hold of him, I'm thinking of renting a U-Haul and heading to North Carolina to stock up on some fireworks and do the job myself.

A short visit with Dakota

After we left the building site, we stopped by Suzi and Ed's place to meet Dakota and the other horses.  Suzi was riding Dakota down in her Horse Rink and came up to meet us.

Here Mia is giving another of the horses some carrots, and as we can see in the last picture, Dakota really, really want's his share of carrot as well, and is letting Mia know it with a gentle nose nudge.

Clearing the site has started

Grace and Mia visited us this weekend, so we took a ride up to Kent to meet Wes and see how the clearing was going.  Here's a group shot at the top of the hill.   This is after I made Grace, Mia and Kim climb through the mud to get to a 'better' vantage point.  Even though I didn't admit it to them at the time, it was the same view they could see from the other side of the muddy ravine I made them go through .... oh well ...

Lee, from Rock On was hampered a bit last week with the rain and mud, but is making steady progress.   Unfortunately, as we thought, Lee discovered a lot of ledge on the site, and now we must blast.  The good thing is it might mean a full basement under the entire house (versus a partial full basement and a crawl space) and it will mean that we'll have some rock to use for retaining walls.

The really bad part about this blasting is that I won't be around for the next two weeks and wanted to see it.  I guess I can't put the project on hold, but I'm hoping someone can video the event for the blog.

Below is a shot of the clearing on top of the hill, minus the group shot.

And here is a picture of the type of equipment Lee and Rock On are using to clear things.  What I didn't get a picture of is the mountain of wood chips that we now have from the cleared trees.

 When we were leaving the site, we looked back and took this picture of some rock outcroppings that will be up near the house.  We'll be incorporating these into the lower patio.

Breaking Ground

Well, I think we are finally on our way. We asked Lee, the owner of Rock On Excavation LLC to start clearing our land as of Monday. Kim and I visited the site Saturday with Wes our architect, and I took the picture below of Lee, Kim, and Wes in front of the chipper that will leave us about 200-300 yards of wood chips when all the clearing is done.

We used to use about 9 yards of mulch every year in our yard in our old house and that seemed like a lot. In Kent, we plan on building a nice winding trail to Suzi and Ed's place next door in addition to using the chips as mulch around the house.

After we left the site, we went over to Suzi and Ed's house and got together with a few of our new Kent neighbors for dinner. What a great group of people. The more we come up to Kent, the more we look forward to living there.

Looking to get started

Kim and I met with Wes on Saturday to discuss the interior finish and the status of the various bids out to contractors.  For the interior finish, we agreed the following:

• The ceilings in the Great Room, Kitchen and Front Entrance are going to be wood.
• The walls in the Great Room are also going to be wood, probably some type of stained Barn Siding.
• The window trim, where the walls are wood, will be minimal and flush.  Actually I don't know what I'm talking about here and we agreed we needed to see this as I couldn't wrap my mind around what it would look like.
• The other rooms of the house would have sheet rock walls and ceilings with normal window trim.
• The walls on the Screened porch will be the house siding.
• All the stairs will have the same tread as the floors, probably oak, with the main staircase will have oak risers.  For the balusters on the main staircase we would like wrought iron, but only if we can get a look similar to the picture below.  If that proves too expensive (which is a good possibility), then we will investigate a rustic wood style for the balusters or perhaps some simpler wrought iron ones.

After we completed discussing the inside finish, we went over the status of the various bids.  Our focus is to get the project going, so we agreed to accept bids for the site work and the septic as we're comfortable with them. Wes is going to do some comparative analysis with a few of the companies that bid on the excavation, foundation, framing, siding, exterior trim and roofing as we'd like closure on those within the next two weeks.

We also agreed with Wes that we should start the zoning and then building permit process.

Kim and I decided to ask Country Carpenters to build our barn.  The plan is to get in the ground during March and have foundations for the house and barn complete by early May.  Once that happens, the framing can start for the house and we can have the Barn constructed.  If that all works out the Barn would be finished by late June.

Kitchen cabinets and appliances

After making an appointment, Kim and I spent two hours Saturday with a Kitchen Cabinet designer at The Home Depot in Fairfield, CT.

Before we went to Home Depot, we decided to stop off at PC Richard & Sons to look at appliances. Good thing we did, turns out those high end 48" wide ranges and built in refrigerators that I've been dreaming of , actually cost a good bit of money. After I asked the salesman, 'you're kidding right?' about six times, I started rationalizing away the double oven and Kim starting hinting about getting a 'stand alone' refrigerator and embedding it a foot into the mud room so it at least 'looks' built in. Anyway, the house plans now have room for a 48" range, the kitchen has plans for a 36" range, and my head has plans for a Sterno stove.

Photos below from left to right: Dream, Possible reality, A distinct Possibility.

I was able to regroup before arriving at Home Depot, but was dreading what would probably be another mind blowing estimate when all the cabinets were added up. The Home Depot designer asked us two questions about what we were looking for including picking out a style and then went on auto-pilot for the next hour. She stopped once to ask us how high the ceiling was in the Kitchen, but when it was obvious we were stumped, she just moved on. I felt like a contestant in 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' and pleaded to use one of my life-lines to call Wes our architect, but the moment was gone.

Our choice, for now anyway is the Decora line of cabinets, which have solid wood fronts as well as solid plywood drawers. The term 'solid plywood' drawers is a little confusing to me. The cabinets seem like they are very high quality, but I wonder what the difference is in a cabinet that has 'solid wood' drawers. I guess it doesn't really matter, as these seem very well built and at the top of the line of what Home Depot sells.

For the design, we choose Cherry cabinets with their Harmony design and a Brandywine finish. We'll probably mix it up a little on the final design, and it may be a little darker, but below is close to the cabinet we are thinking about.

Our designer really knew what she was doing, and so far anyway, we both would recommend using Home Depot to design your kitchen. The price was less than I had budgeted, so there's a first, as long as we order before the current discount offer ends. We'll probably need to order a month or two before we normally would and store the cabinets in our yet to be built barn.

Below are some images she printed out to help us conceptualize what the kitchen would look like. These are just four of about ten pictures. Some are images like below and some are layout sketches.