Windows and Doors - Legal Stealing at the Auction

She'll clean up nicely!

2 days ago my bride and I woke before the sun and prepared to do battle at the monthly auction.  We suited up in thermal boots, layers of socks, pants and jackets.  The thermometer said 29 but so did the wind gusts which made for a long, cold morning.  I had hoped to find a nice exterior door and 6 windows with screens.  We set our budget (well, she set our budget and I never really confirmed or denied that I heard her) and we set off.  Now, keep in mind that I love the auction more than just about anything else involving money.  Come to think of it, it's the only time I will really spend money freely simply because it is the most clear example of supply and demand economics I have ever found.  The market really does set the rates on those wind swept fields.  If the crowd thinks something is worth $100, it sell for $100.  If they think it's worthless, it is.

I never intended to purchase windows from a 'real' store but I had checked their prices and knew nothing was happening under $150 a piece for a window or $300 for a door.  That's not happening...not after a man learns the auction way, my friends.

The first item to enter my cross hairs was the door.  We picked up a solid wood exterior door with inlaid glass, partially frosted, for $20.  I've priced this same door since then at over $400.  Sold!

Next up were the windows.  There were
6 aluminum windows in 1 lot.  I needed 6 but these were not my first choice.  The auctioneer stepped over, announced that they were selling all 6 for 'one money' and started the bidding at $10.  No one moved.  I waited for a moment and offered $2.  No one moved.  He looked at the windows and tried to rally more bids but folks has already started moving on.  It was cold, the crowd was irritated and I just bought 6 windows for $2.

About 50 feet further down the line was another set of 8 windows of a slightly higher quality.  I stepped up as the auctioneer started the bidding at $10.  Bids came in at 2, 3, 4...I capped the bidding at $7.50 each and collected 6 of the 8.  At this point I have 12 windows under my belt $47.  There were 2 more lots of windows to go.  I picked up 6 more in the next 30 minutes never paying more than $10 for any single unit.  When the dust settled...well, let's be honest, the dust never really settled, it howled all day long.  But when the bidding was done I was loading up 18 windows and a lovely exterior door for $125.

Frosted Privacy Windows

Thanks to the help of a good buddy to help me load and another good buddy that loaned me a trailer we were able to get them all home safely...almost.  I turned out that someone took exception to my bidding success and opted to deposit some tobacco spit and a large rock in 2 of the windows.  Granted, they were kind enough to do so on the lot of 6 that cost me $2 but the gesture was classy regardless of the economic impact.  The only other loss was more attributed to our less than OSHA approved tie down methods.  We we so careful.  We drove so cautiously.  We stuck to roads with minimal pot holes.  We kept it under 60 the whole way.  We were home free.  I could see the turn off to my street.  Then, casually, my buddy announces 'yup, we lost
one'.  I looked up in time to see a frame exploding into the grass along the side of the highway.  What do you do in a situation like that?  Well, we stopped to adjust the tie downs and make sure there were no police in the area.  Then we boogied home without further incident.

Crescent Accent Windows

I'll have more auction tales to regale you with down the road but I just wanted to take a minute to remind those of you thinking about taking the plunge to build your own dream cabin.  First, paying retail is for suckers and folks spending tax payers' money.  If you work hard to get your green then learn how to roll at the auction.  Even at conservative estimates I have $2,000 worth of supplies in my shed now for $120.  But the number is probably closer to $3,500.  And secondly, tie that stuff down well.  Or at least make sure no one is behind you when it decides to launch itself into the air.  Windows do not respond well to highway surfaces at 50 mph.  Who knew?

Subfloor phase 1, complete.

This weekend marked a major milestone in the off-grid cabin build.  The foundation was dug last spring.  We poured the piers and set the rebar and blocks in the fall.  We framed the subfloor last month.  As of Saturday night at sundown we have a decked subfloor on phase 1 of the cabin.  Over the next month I hope to secure doors and windows from the local auction and get the wall framing started.  

At each step in the project my wife and kids have been right there beside me.  My children have helped with digging, cement, framing and decking.  They've hammered, cut, drilled and ran a liquid nail gun.  In all of it I've loved watching their level of confidence grow.  Sunday after church they couldn't wait to get back out there.  A concert of  'this is awesome' and 'here let me help' is a sure sign that this project is working.  Folks are asking about our timeline or to see the entire project plan so I will put something together in the weeks to come.

One other thing of note.  It's been fantastic to see the friends that volunteer to help out.  I've never had to ask, folks are literally contacting me.  Buddies from church have lent their time and expertise, something that is sorely lacking on my end.  I'm grateful and humbled by their efforts to help me chase this dream.  A huge shout out to my buddy Wayne.  We met 15 years ago as broke college students.  We shared an apartment back in the days before either of us had met our wives.  That man have driven out several times...nearly a 7 hours round trip mind you, just to bust his butt all day.  This weekend's work would simply not have happened without him being there.

This first phase will include 2 lofts for temporary bedrooms until phase two is complete.  Phase 2 will effectively double our floor space and bring us over the 1,000 sq ft mark.  Stay tuned for more updates as we go.

Here's to building homes, relationship and character in kids.
Peace, ya'll.

2 Weekends in January - The Build Continues

By the time I return to the homestead, 3 weeks will have passed since we laid our beams and began framing the subfloor.  Over the next 10 days I hope to finalize the foundation improvements (this weekend) and then finalize the subfloor (next weekend).  Those 3 weeks brought the first snowfall since we have owned the land.  It also saw me run to Texas for a short term work project.  The consensus is, after a scientific study that measured my satisfaction with life, level of stress and frequency of times when I felt the urge to drop everything and hightail it to the woods, that 3 weeks is approximately 20 days too long to be away.

But as fortune would have it I am required to continue trade my days for dollars in order to advance this project.  And, truth be told, everyone here enjoys eating way too much to simply drop everything and move to the woods.  We are beginning to make plans for this Spring's garden.  Much of what we plant at our full-time residence will be done with transportation in mind.  Berries and perennial plants will be planted this year in portable containers that will find there way on the homestead next season, already a full year into their maturity.

Homeschool for the kids is now delving into Hydroponic gardening and the beginning stages of electricity generation, not too shabby for K-5th.  I have taken advantage of this time away from the physical work of the build to hone the design plans, start a few new projects and begin to plan out some website improvements.  It appears that multiple lines on the graph will begin to converge over the next few months and I want to be ready.  While the progress at times appears to be painfully slow I am reminded that 24 months ago it was all still just a dream.  Now, 11.5 acres later and with a floor rising from the rocky soil I am encouraged to think that my faintly whispered goal of moving in by Thanksgiving 2017 could actually be a bit more of a reality.

I leave with a quote from my man, Henry David Thoreau.  It's been taunting me for years and now, as my 38th year winds down I see it coming into view clearly and becoming fully attainable.

“There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? 

Here's to fitness - intellectual, spiritual and physical - poetic faculty and not falling off ladders whilst framing roof trusses.  More to follow.  Stay tuned.

Getting In On the Ground Floor

Tonight my children and I will load out my truck for tomorrow's big event.

Tomorrow afternoon my son and I will head to the woods to camp and build.

After nearly a year and a half of prep work, dreaming and pining for this day we will actually begin construction.  Now I know we've laid cement and rebar but somehow that just doesn't feel the same as putting lumber into place and driving nails.  Lord willing, by Monday evening there will be a level sub-floor constructed in a place where two years ago only trees and deer dwelled.

In full disclosure, the floor will not be complete on Monday, as I am only buying every other floor joist this weekend.  I'll lay the beams and get them level.  Then I'll frame the perimeter and mark up all the joist placement.  But I'll only be laying every other joist this weekend.  This was a sort of accidentally on purpose genius, if I do say so myself.  It allows me to get things level and square and sets me up perfectly for the next step where I will deck it all with tongue and groove plywood.  By doing it in two phases I am able to knock out the hardest part (level and square) and break up my out of pocket cost so as not to need to touch savings.  This makes my lovely bride smile.

When we are done this weekend I'll tarp it all to prevent water access and then patiently (read: only talking about it 7 or 8 times a day) wait until the funds are available to install the remaining joists and deck it.  The markup will be done, so it should be a pretty straight forward weekend's worth of work there.

Once the floor is decked, it's wall framing time.  Again, my lovely bride will be happy when I pull all those 2x4 studs out from under the kids beds.  I bought them last year when Lowes had a deal.  Suffice it to say, without a garage my storage options were limited.  In a related note, the boys have been unable to jam junk under their beds.  Judging by the project that was cleaning out from under the girls beds last week, I should probably buy more 2x4 studs.

Again, I am indebted to Henry David Thoreau and Librivox.  My drives home from the office for the past 2 weeks have taken me back to Walden Pond where the simple wisdom of slowing down and living deeply have held me over while I had to wait for what seemed like an eternity.  Progress, it would appear, moves my leaps and bounds but at a snails pace simultaneously.  Such must be the nature of all things meant to last, I suppose.

15 Days and Counting

Lord willing, 15 days from now will find me doing some cold weather camping next to a freshly delivered load of timber beams and dimensional lumber.  The long range forecast appears to be calling for highs in the mid to upper 40's with lows in the low to mid 20's.  As long as we can keep the precipitation under control (read: not pouring rain) I have every intention of ringing in the 2017 by building the subfloor on the first phase of our off grid cabin.

It's ironic that having a definite date now seems to make it harder, rather than easier, to wait.  15 days is nothing when compared to the year and a half since we bought the land.  It's even less when compared to the years I've dreamed about it.  But now with us this close time threatens to grind to a complete and utter standstill.

It's been nearly a year since we dug the footers with the rented Bobcat.  It's been 2 months since we poured the cement.  We've spent the last 5 weeks or so clearing timber and burning out stumps.  Now those 2 weeks that stand between me and the next phase seem to be an eternity.  I now focus my intellectual energy on slowing down mentally to anticipate issues I may face.  The cement piers will need to be shimmed in order to provide a level surface for the beams.  Some blocks may require a little chisel work to remove excess cement that hardened over the tops.  That cement will need to be removed to allow for a flat surface on which the beams will ride.  I suspect that a professional would not have these problems...but my lack of professional status has been widely and exhaustively documented.  Were I to do it over again I probably would have spent the extra money to have sonotubes.  I balked at the cost on phase 1 but may find that the extra time required to get all the posts level is not worth the $100 I saved.  We shall see.

This one thing I know.  I will have a level subfloor in place and be ready to start framing walls in January, 2017.  I have every intention of being done with that by Monday, January 2nd before sunset.  I don't really plan to get into the walls until March or April but having the floor in (and covered with tarps to prevent water damage) feels like a huge milestone.  It will mean pulling up to our future homestead and seeing a house taking shape.

Chainsaw + Flannel Shirt = Better Than Any Day in the Office

It's been 2 weeks since we dropped that massive tree on the homestead.  Today we braved the fog and frost, loaded up the family and headed for the hills.  I figured I would buck the limbs and then commence my counter top project, free hand, with my trusty chain saw.  Several hours in I could hear my buddy's voice in my mind.  "Kevin, you always over estimate your ability and under estimate the time this will take."  Four hours on the saw and I have at least that many more in front of me before I am ready to safely process that trunk.  Turns out I am a little less Paul Bunyon than I had hoped.  I measured it at 4.5 feet around at it's most narrow point.  It's better than 7 feet at the base.  I've got about a 12 foot run before it tapers past 4.5 feet.

I could see the grain when I cut off a side branch.  It is beautiful.  I'm calling it an Oak...others that know better feel free to correct that.  I would/will make lovely counter tops

Poulon Pro 18 Inch, Wolf Non Pro 38 Years, Glock 19 Perfection

I'm just not sure that I am the man for that job.  I will look into the cost of a local sawmill and see what they would charge, plus what I would cost in chiropractic bills to get it loaded onto a trailer.  At
this point, I have not given up totally on the concept but I did notice how nicely it served as a bench.  And that would require no heavy lifting.  We will see.

Bobcat: When Digging By Hand is Out of the Question

After we had cut the drive way and cleared the timbers it was time to get serious about a foundation. Using all I could remember from 8th grade Geometry, we measured (13 or 14 times) to get the footprint and commenced the digging...by hand...for about 10 minutes.  At that point, staring my own limitations squarely in the face and having to decide if I was as strong and determined at I thought I was I did the only thing a man could do in that situation.

I told the family to load up in the truck.  We were going for ice cream.  We came back the next weekend with a Bobcat.  Listen folks, I'm serious about doing this project.  But I want to be able to walk when it's done.  The ground here literally sparks when you hit it with a pick ax.  I'm not kidding.  It laughs at you and spits sparks in your face.  Most of the holes were about 30 inches deep.  Some were shallower.  A few were deeper.  Basically, I went until the Bobcat locked up and then assumed if that massive machine couldn't dig any deeper we were into solid bedrock and had gone far enough.

If you are wondering about renting a Bobcat or digging by hand, let me just tell you.  Don't be ridiculous.  Rent the machine.  Trust me.  Do it.

The First Cut is the Deepest...and Most Dangerous

Long before we could nearly die using a rented Bobcat or pour our piers or camp on our land, it was ruled by a kingdom of benevolent trees, protected by an army of ticks and frolicked in by a menagerie of deer, turkey, bears and other similar ne'er-do-wells that will be wonderful with a cold beer one day in the future.  In order to make that happen, we needed a drive way.  Heck, the entire property is densely wooded with pine, oak and pecan.  It's so thick that if you stick your arms out at your sides (read: pretend you are an airplane, not playing 'I'm a little teapot') you can't walk more than 1 step without hitting a tree.

We love that about this place and we are passionate about preserving that natural beauty.  The plan is to replace every tree we cut with at least 2 other living green things including fruit trees and berries and grapes over the next 2 seasons.  But a man needs a place to park his Chevy trucks, dang it.  And a woman needs a place to raise her kids.  So a driveway needed to be cut and I was just the man to do it.

To be clear, I had never really done anything like this before.  Other than borrowing an electric chainsaw one weekend a few years earlier to trim a small tree, I was a rookie.  The video here proves that.  This was my first time operating a gas powered chainsaw.  I dropped 10 trees that day and a few more in month to come.  The homestead site has come a long way since these early days.

First workday on the Homestead

Nothing worth doing ever comes easily.  

That is especially true in July when 100 degrees happens by noon and the grass is past your waist, the road has downed trees across it that block your truck and your cell phone lost service 5 miles from the work site.  But somehow none of that matters when you are working for yourself, clearing out your future homestead site and spending time molding the hearts and minds of your children.  Yes, it was hot...like, extremely hot.  But the two of us hit it hard and then headed to the river for a little bit of the best part of living in the country.  

As excited as I am to see this dream taking shape, that pales in comparison to how proud I am to see the growth and development in my young ones as they toil, laugh, learn and push right along side of us on this adventure.  

How Firm a Foundation

A wise man builds his house upon the rock.  

A man that doesn't have rock rents a Bobcat, drills to bedrock and then pours his own rock.

Full disclosure, I had no idea if we were doing this right.  I read all about it and watched a lot of YouTube but, at the end of the day, we just had to go for it.  For those professionals out there that may see the pics or video and have all kinds of advice, don't bother. These videos are cut after the work is done so, quite literally, it's all set in stone now folks.  If my calculations were off somewhere you will eventually see a video where we talk about something collapsing...let's hope it doesn't come to that.

The cement work was completed over 3 weekends with one rusted out wheelbarrow (with trick front wheel), a shovel and 30 some odd bags of 80 lbs cement mix.  We trucked up water to mix with as the well hasn't been drilled yet.  All in all the work was not nearly as difficult as I had made it out to be before hand.  The whole family and a buddy from church chipped in and it really went quite smoothly.  I've put together a couple of videos over those 3 weekends and will post them below.  As of tonight, all that remains now is to bring out the beams, lay them across the blocks and shim with pressure treated 2x6's to bring everything into level.  If all goes well (read, no major vehicle expenses between now and then) I'd like to have that done before Christmas.  I was racing to get the cement work done before the temps dipped below freezing

and we made that with a few weeks to spare.

There were more stories and memorize made during this process than I can share here.  It was a great experience and sets the stage for the next chapter in this crazy family adventure.  Stay tuned.

First Night On Our Land

Tuesday, August 18th, 2015

The beginnings of a driveway

Last night I slept on our land for the first time.  My bride’s brother and his buddy came out to help with some of the manual labor.  We arrived later than I had hoped but made fantastic progress once we got to it.  In approximately 1 hour they were able to clear the mouth of the drive of several large, downed logs and the bulk of the quartered logs.  They are sleeping now (611 am) but I suspect they will be awake soon.  Something about the sound of a chain saw running right outside one’s tent has a stimulating effect.

A word about last night, after the sun went down is in order.  I remember fireflies as a boy growing up in northern Ohio.  But they are other worldly here.  The night sky was literally popping with green bursts of light everywhere.  Those insects were brilliant against the backdrop of untold thousands of stars.  The nights are fantastically dark here.  So the contrast of the fireflies and the stars are breath taking.

I was awoken at 230 by the sound of something alive and moving around my tent.  It took me several minutes to find my flashlight, which seemed like an eternity with that unknown beast marauding around outside.  In the end, it managed to escape unseen.  In a related story, I was awake and covered in sweat for the next 20 minutes.  One last observation, My back is not the same as it was 10 years ago.  I woke stiff and sore.  I know exercise is in order.  Let’s see how it feels after a day of hauling saws and dragging logs.