1 Year, 11 Months in the Making.........

What an exciting week, after years of dreaming and planning we finally got our first wall up on our house!  April of 2017 we bought our 45 acres in the Black Hills, that fall we had the septic and a cistern installed as well as the building site graded, the summer of 2018 we put in the underground plumbing and a few weeks later concreted. Now, we have our first wall up!

It is going to be a long slow build as we are doing everything ourselves and as we can pay for it. After our 3 week apprenticeship at Kevin’s we felt dangerously confident. Thankfully before Kevin left we squared out the building perimeter with chalk lines.

Squaring up the building

He even went as far as laying out each of the interior walls so we know exactly where to put each of the walls. We followed that up by marking each of the corners with permanent marker in case the rain washed away the chalk lines.

Laying out the walls

Idiot proof right? Well, lets hope so! One confidence builder was the fact that all the plumbing lines I installed last year hit exactly in the walls like they were supposed to!

All the plumbing pipes fell into the 2x6 wall, Whew!

Our confidence rapidly dwindled as soon as we started on the first wall. Luckily Kevin is just a phone call away and his house is just down the road so we can run over and answer many of our questions just by looking at what we did at his house.

First wall up! The girls are looking through the bedroom windows

After we got this first wall up we called it a day not wanting to push our luck or our temperament. Do you know what it is like building a house with your wife standing over your shoulder watching you pound every nail? I would not recommend home building as part of couples therapy. We have had a few incidents (okay more than a few) but overall we work pretty well as a team.  

That night and the next morning we just could not help looking out the back window of the rig at our one lonely wall. So far our bodies are holding up the only thing that is giving us trouble are our hands. Both my and Barb's hands are tingling pretty much constantly, probably from overuse, we will have to deal with it as that is not going to change anytime soon.

The next day was Two Wall Tuesday when we got the wall between the garage and house up as well as the wall between the bedroom and bathroom!

Wall between house and garage

Bedroom wall up

Wednesday we worked all day on the plumbing wall in the bathroom. It was a slow and tedious wall.

The bathroom looks like a long tunnel!

Thursday we worked on doors and closets putting in the door frames for the bathroom and bedroom as well as the closets in the bedroom.

Bathroom and Bedroom doors

Bedroom closets

By the end of the day we are pretty tuckered out.

 I collapsed right on the foundation while the dogs at least wait until we got back inside.

Over the next few months we will continue to chip away, wall by wall hoping to get it weather tight by winter. Here is a peek of the blueprint and although we are making some minor changes along the way this is pretty much what it will look like when it is all done in...….. God only knows!

The highlighted areas are what we got done this week

Loft overlooking the great room

On one of our ventures out we stopped by the neighbor who is a cattle rancher. He informed us he will be moving the cattle into the Jordan’s pasture which abuts our property. Knowing there was a wire down on the fence Barb and I set out to repair it before the cattle arrived. Finding the break I grabbed one end of the wire, pulled it and reached out with my other hand grabbing the other wire so I could pull them together and splice them. One thing I did not consider…… was that by grabbing a wire in each hand I completed the circuit of the electric fence that I forgot was on!  After screaming like a little girl I promptly drove the 4 wheeler over to the fencer, turned it off and completed the repair. On the bright side, Barb really likes by new afro!

All work and no play makes from a grumpy couple so made sure we got out and did something other than build. Barb chose fishing so off we went to our favorite fishing hole. Although we did not get skunked, the fish did not really cooperate so there was no trout for dinner that night!

Even though the trout weren't biting, the scenery was beautiful!

Friday was forecasted for rain  and snow so we ventured into Rapid City to Black Hills Builders Home Show where we walked each of the aisles getting some ideas...… For some reason she kept gravitating towards the hot tubs, we now have brochures from every hot tub vendor that was there.

But she did get a couple cool ideas and we saw a display of a log that showed how many boards they can get out of it that was pretty interesting.

She wants this in our laundry room but thinks she can make it

Pretty cool huh?

We are thrilled with our progress after 4 days, tomorrow the weather improves so we will be back out there and start building again!