RespiteFarm

We Eat Trees!

Alfred works the machinery while his son works the trench.

Some still shots of the finished project

Foundation trench

Foundation trench with 'steps' to compensate for land slope

The weather over the past month has not been conducive to building a house.

Ten or so inches of snow over the Christmas weekend followed by more rainy days then we see in Springtime has left our building site too spongy to work on. A forecast for another major storm for this weekend, Feb5-7, will put the groundbreaking even further behind.

Here is what’s transpired over the past thirty days:

The floor plan, building contract, specs and drawsheet have been completed and signed. Next stop: lay the foundation.

Roof and siding colors have been picked. The roof will be a metal standing-seam roof, and the siding will be HardiePlank. I guess you could call the color scheme “Earth toned”.

Here’s to dry weather and sunshine.

This is sort of a recap of what has been going on since the start of October.

The budget for the build has been presented to us by the last standing builder, and it turned out to be very reasonable. We’re happy to announce that David Ziletti of The Sycamore Building Company will be building the house. David has the added advantage of being able to tap into the vast expertise of Dick McDaniel a long-time area builder and redeveloper (who also happens to be David’s father-in-law).

The weather here has been lousy for starting a house build. That is to say, it has been raining big-time. The lot clearing had to be postponed; the date of this task remains under a rain delay.

Notwithstanding our latest plan changes, the plans are working their way through the various approval processes in the building permit office of Hanover County.

The building pad has been prepped to the point of where we know where the footprint of the house will lie. The drainfield has been identified, and the septic and well systems applications are also winding their way through the County’s approval process.

Working with Hanover County, as well as with the local power company, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative has been effortless.

We’ve been more stringent with one aspect of the plan design – the front entrance façade.

As originally drawn (PDF) it would have functioned well, but function is not all we were after.

We felt the design departed somewhat from the straight lines of the rest of the house. It took about a month of on-and-off discussion to reach the final agreement that we would not be happy if we were to proceed as planned. Knowing any changes at this point would have a minimal impact on the build, we decided to go with our hearts and commission the changes. Hopefully, the bottom-line won’t be stretched out of proportion to what it was originally.

A few of the fun items have been settled. Wood floors were purchased from The Floor Traders on Hull Street Road in Midlothian. They offered a great price for Brazilian Cherry.

The Sears Warehouse was the source of our washer and dryer (LG steam), our dishwasher (Kenmore Elite) and built-in microwave and convection oven (KitchenAid).

We also found tile for the bathrooms at Morris Tile.

We’re hoping mid-December will find some heavy equipment out at the lot, busily at work. Stay tuned.

We tinkered with the design of the front entrance. The original version did not look like it fit in with the modern design we wanted.

The overhangs on the main and mud-room entrances have also gone from being more integrated with the roof line to being simple, shed-like overhangs.

Mark Jones, a talented designer and engineer, developed this set of plans for the house.

The next step is to review the bids from the builders.

Note – we received one bid that was so inflated that no bank, even during the height of the housing bubble, would appraise it for that amount. Hopefully, that was an anomaly and not a sign of bids to come.