Construction for the new house has begun. This past week the construction crew has been out preparing the spot and getting it all set up for the basement. Our new house will have a full poured concrete basement. We are not finishing it right away, but once it is finished it will be home to Kenan's glass shop. He is planning to move from the space he is renting and set up shop back at home again. It will be really nice to have him home.
The basement will also have a cold storage/cellar type area for storing food and a family room/ rec room space. There will be french doors that walk out to the yard, very similar to our old house.
The pictures below show the progress from the last week.
Digging the basement.
Making sure it is all level.
Putting in the forms for the footers.
Pouring the concrete.
Concrete footers in place.
On Friday they added the gravel and leveled it out again.
Today they are back setting up the forms for the walls. The basement should be poured and curing later this week.
It has been fun watching it come together so quickly. i will be sure to update again soon, and share the entire house building process with you. We decided to go with a modular home, because it was more affordable and will go up very quickly. They are predicting that we will be in the house by Thanksgiving, if not sooner. Although i have always dreamed of building an alternative house, a geodome, cobb house or earthenship. However when it really came down to it, i just wanted my house back and this is the closest, most affordable and quick way to replace it. Our insuance company had us on a very tight timeline, and we had to make our decisions quickly or they would not contribute to the cost of the house. Many folks are under the impression that if you are insured, the insurance company will basically replace your house for free. Not really true. The insurance decides what the house was worth, and then decides what it would cost to replace it. We have to submit our house plans to them, and they review how similar the new house plans are to the old. Based on that, they decided house much they are willing to contribute.
The house plan we chose has large windows that are south facing and should provide some passive solar heat. It will also have a wood burning furnace in the basement and a place for a wood cookstove upstairs which will be supplemental and mostly decorative. We are also putting in a large cistern, that will replace our old rain barrels to collect rainwater from the roof to use as garden irrigation. We are also hoping to set up a whole house generator. The interior of the house will have a lot of natural materials, hardwood, granite and slate etc. It will have a loft similar to our old house, but will also have a craft room/space for me, which will be nice.
So yeah, everything is moving right along. i look forward to sharing more of our progress in the coming weeks.
0 comments:
Post a Comment