Well it's all going on! We are now in full swing and fully planning to move to Port Orford end of the summer this year. We have just had a very quick trip down to the property this last weekend. 800 miles round trip, got there lunchtime on Friday and arrived home 6pm Sunday! we managed to squeeze in rather a lot whilst we were down there.
We have FINALLY made a decision about where we will live whilst the house is being built. We have been back and forth on living in a trailer (caravan for the English folks - but a large'un) and living in the garage/workshop. Well Thanks to a slightly complicated planning law it has forced us to make a decision and we will be living in the shop!
So we went and signed the contract and paid the deposit with a local Oregon company who do pole barns. It is a timber framed building clad in metal and I think we will be going with red walls and a green roof with white windows, doors and edging, a bit like this.
It will be a 3 bay garage with a carport on one end, but only 2 bays will have garage doors, the last bay will have a humanoid door, and we will insulate and build to code and live in 2 bays. It will have windows, and Mr M is going to add some sun pipes to the roof to let in extra light. The bonus of this is that we can use all our furniture, and no storage costs etc.
It's the little things, but I am happy that this decision was finally made! now to get it built, we are 3 months out, but once they start it goes up in 2 weeks!!!
Mr M has sold his car, which I was VERY Happy about! YAY - so he is now shopping for a truck! and we are also going to be selling our campervan and upgrading/downgrading/upsizing to an old airstream! basically we have outgrown the camper and we need something to live in for a few months whilst Mr M is getting the garage ready for us!
LOTS of decisions made!
The property looks really good, it survived the winter really well, we lost a few trees at the back of the property but we will get them taken out, plus another bigger one that is just plain ugly! I was SO excited that my daffodils and crocuses I planted in October came up, I am sure they were a picture whilst they were out, but alas all I got to see was dead flowers! Everything down there occurs about a month or so ahead of up here, so everyone has their gardens in fullish bloom.
The gates were looking a treat, they are really lightening up the way that cedar is meant to, and I think Mr M was surprised that they were still completely level - as I said at the time "completely over engineered"
We were also excited to see our well! we have water! well we will once we have a pump! but this is it, this is the end of water bills as we know it!!!
And we have a septic tank, I KNOW as I have said before, septic is sh*t blog talk but all good house builds must brooch this subject at least a few times, BUT this stuff was SO expensive it is nice to see what we paid for :) I won't be allowing anyone to use it!!
AND we met with Wayne, who has done all the hard work so far. He will finish clearing out the area for the workshop, and put down the hard core ready for it to be built on, it comes complete with a polished concrete floor so no need to put a concrete pad down.
This is where it is going, conveniently right in front of the gap to next door, so they won't see us, and we won't see them! Hermit? Me? no!
That is the back of their shed, and they will sit back to back, nice and friendly. We also have a complete driveway, one of the first things we will do in the fall (Autumn) is to grass the areas around the sides of the driveway, once the build is all completed we will have gravel added over the hardcore - but that is rather a long long long way off into the future!
FINALLY we are getting our house ready to put on the market, not too many projects to do, but a bit of tidying up and the wood shed needs re-roofing, and our swamp in the back needs some new turf! We are aiming to list around June/July, but need to be sure the barn is up or on its way, incase the unthinkable happens and we sell quickly and are homeless! But we have a Realtor, (Estate Agent UK peeps) and she has given us a value and advised us on what/when/how etc. it is overwhelming but we are ready for this to happen!
And so that is it for this update, I am starting to
