One year.

Jan. 22, 2013

"Sorrow prepares you for Joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart far better things will take their place." ~ Rumi

Moving in, and moving on.

So i'm a bit behind with these posts. It's been a very busy month,

Home.  We are home.

The first week of Dec, the contractor got an occupancy permit that allowed us to move in before the house was  completely finished. We didn't actually move anything into the house. We just bought mattresses to sleep on and only spent the nights in the house. During the day we stayed in the camper until the construction crew was done working, usually around 6 pm.  We spent about a week living like this back and forth between the house and camper. It was a bit of a difficult transition, as it rained the entire week and the yard was a complete mud pit. It was always dark when the construction crew left and we had to try and remember to gather up school clothes, food and everything we needed so we didn't have to go back and forth in the dark.  We didn't have furniture or blinds on any of the windows, so we all hung out in the back bedroom. So for that first week we had kind of been living in our new home.

It's a strange feeling being here. Ever since the fire, my only goal has just been to get back home. Moving into the RV on our property helped a ton. Especially during the summer when i could be outside all day.  Once the cold weather hit, and i found myself stuck inside all the time, i began to feel lost again. The space was too small to pull out the crafts that typically keep me sane during the winter months. i was watching the house being built, literally right outside the door and i was ready to come home.  i didn't really know what that meant, i just knew the feeling.

So here we are, in this new house. It is becoming more familiar, but is still very new and very empty. At times it feels like we are back in the rental house, because of the room sizes and all the drywall. It's a strange deja vu feeling.  We only moved across the yard, but emotionally it still takes a huge amount of adjustment. That camper has been our home for the last 6-7 months.  But here we are, again trying to find home.  Our old house had very little drywall, it was almost entirely wood.  i wanted the wood paneling in the front room for this reason. It is the only wall in the house that isn't drywall, but it brings a little familiarity of my old house to this strange place.

This weekend, Kenan and his shopmate moved all the furniture and boxes from the glass shop. Right now we have a mismatch of furniture that was given to us, and boxes and boxes of clothing that were donated those first days and put into storage. It will be a long process of going through them all and sorting them out. i did this those first days after the fire, pulling out only what was immediately needed and putting the rest back into boxes, and sent back to Kenan's shop.  i am not looking forward to doing it again, almost one year later.  The kids have grown so much that most clothing items can just be donated back to the goodwill.

The kids are happy to be here. They are very much enjoying their new rooms and creating their space. This is the first time Sage has had her very own room.  She still sneaks into our bed each morning. :) 

i'm adding the little details that help make this place feel like home to me.  We started by decorating the windows with rainbow stars and snowflakes. We made lots of snowflakes, and hung them in the windows and from the wood trim across the kitchen ceiling. i brought in baskets of pine cones, and the stain glass dragonfly and butterfly (that were in the camper) to hang in my kitchen window.  

We are still moving things over, and slowly unpacking. Creating our spaces, and creating new memories.  We are getting there, each day a little closer. A little closer to home...closer to that feeling of home. 

                                    

When you finally go back to your old home, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood. 

Sam Ewing

Rebuild 4 Reid fundraiser- Another local house fire.

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So unbelievably sad!!!! Can't believe that this has happened to friends / neighbors in our little community again. We've known these folks for a good number of years and have been given produce and other help from Joe over the years.  The Reids' tragically lost their daughter, Lisa, in February in a car crash and dropped their home owners insurance to pay for her funeral, and then their home just burned to the ground on Thanksgiving Eve. They lost everything including their vehicles, which were parked near the home.

You can view the story below on our local news channel.
http://www.wsls.com/story/24116277/local-family-dealt-another-blow-community-rallying-to-support-them?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=9591054

 Kenan will be unleashing his marble skills again over the next few weeks to raise as much $ as possible for them. i will share links to the auctions once they are posted. 

Here's the donation fund link, please donate if you can. These folks have lost so much.  http://www.youcaring.com/help-a-neighbor/rebuild-4-reid-fundraiser/111992

This was taken from the Rebuild 4 Reid Fundraiser page. i do not know who took the photo. 

The dawn before Thanksgiving the house where Joe, Ella and their son Joel were that night suddenly caught fire. The house filled with smoke & moments later the whole back of the house was up in flames. This year has brought many hardships for the Reid family. Lisa , the eldest daughter died in a car wreck back in February. They have 3 grandchildren 11 year old grandson who lives in Floyd & 8 year old twin grandchildren from Roanoke. All made many memories in this home making it hard for them all. The Reid's walked out in nothing but their bed clothes and bare feet. The fire took both their vehicles & all personal items including all the late daughter's personal belongings that were to be passed down to her son at a later time. Their son Joel, was a 2003 graduate of Floyd Co. High. Please reach out to this family anything we can do for them will make a world of difference and give them a boost to rebuild a home for them. 
- See more at:  http://www.youcaring.com/help-a-neighbor/rebuild-4-reid-fundraiser/111992

When we lost our home in Jan, the love and support we received was so incredibly important in keeping our spirits up. We were so incredibly lucky that we were all okay, that we had an amazing community rallying behind us and that we were insured! My heart truly breaks for this family.  i can't even imagine what they are going though. Please share the link and help spread their story!

House Construction- week ?

i've lost track of what week we are on with the construction. The crew has been here but working on the inside, so there has been very little to document with photos. They've been getting the electrical and plumbing set up, and building the floor to the loft upstairs.

Two weeks ago, the stone mason arrived and began putting the stone on the chimney.  The reason they began at the top, instead of at the bottom is because they didn't have enough of the stone. i'm not sure why, but they've had to order more.  They knew the roofers were coming this last week to work on the roof and the stonework needed to be on the chimney, before they could do the roofing. 

 So the mason got about half of the stonework done, and are waiting for more stone. Looks pretty good so far, although the stone doesn't have as much color variation as we were expecting. i'm kind of hoping it's all just really dusty and after a good rain, we'll see just a little more color.

Before the construction could begin the roofing, they had to extend the roof over the front door area.  We'll have a deck that begins here, and wraps around to the back.  It will only be covered on the front.

Then this past week, they came and began the roofing. We have the same green metal roof that we had on our old house. The window frames are the same green metal. i wanted a green front door as well, but it was a bit too pricing. i'll probably end up painting it green, or replacing it sometime down the road. 

i thought i had a picture of the roof complete, but noticed in this one that the dormer is not done. They did get it almost complete at the end of last week. It still has to have the gutters, trim and snow guards put on.  The snow guards will help prevent a dangerous avalanche of snow sliding of the roof in the winter time. :) 

So we are getting closer,but there is still a lot that needs to be done. It's been raining this week, preventing the crew from finishing the stonework and roof. i believe next week they'll start the deck and siding.  The inside of the house is still unfinished.  The flooring all still needs to be installed and they are working on building the bathroom upstairs. So yeah, we are getting there.

Living in the RV has been an interesting and fun experience. i really don't mind it much at all. i really thought i'd be blogging more about our small space living, but there just doesn't seem to be too much to say about it. You deal with it, you adjust, and it becomes home.

House Construction- Week 4-5

A few updates on our construction.  i've been feeling especially scatterbrained these days, and i am not sure sure what week we are actually on. Fourth, fifth...maybe 6th?

Anyhow, since getting the main structure set up the construction crew has been here on and off the last couple weeks to finish up and work on different this.   The estimated move in time is still early November.

The first week after setting it up, they finished the dormer. It originally just had plastic over the top, so they built the roof on it and did other roof work.  The basement was partially filled in and they worked on building the floor for the loft area upstairs which came completely unfinished.

The driveway was graded down so that we'll be able to drive right up to the basement.  We will probably have to put a retaining wall on the bank to the right. 

The concrete company came back and they poured the floor for the basement. We have talked about copper staining the concrete, like we had in our old house, but i am not sure if we will again.  It looked neat,but it was really a lot of work. We'd like to finish the basement, so it will probably end up with carpet in at least part of it. 

This week the guys are here working on building the chimney.  i'm not sure what comes next, but i believe they will be working on the siding, roof and deck before they finish the inside. It has been really neat to be here to watch the progress, although it is also very distracting. i kind of feel like my life is on hold until we are in the house. The temperature has really begun to cool off, so my urge to hibernate is strong these days. 

House Construction- Sept 10

BIG things happening here!  The House modules were supposed to arrive at 10 am  yesterday morning.

The construction crew was out early, getting it all set up. Then the waiting began.

The crane arrived around 9am.  Then lots of other trucks and machinery began to arrive. We pulled the kids out of school so they could watch.  10 am came and went, contractor was on the phone, but still no house.  Apparently, there was a mix up with scheduling at the Nationwide office, and the house was not scheduled to be delivered until next week. Ack! Eventually they got things straightened out and found a driver and the new delivery time was moved to 4-5pm. So the kids went back to school. and the entire construction crew sat around and waited, and waited, and waited.

Kids returned home from school, and not long after we heard the crane start up. So we looked outside and saw a huge truck in the road that was carrying half of our house! 

They hooked it to the crane and lifted it way up in the air over the electric lines.  It was so crazy!

 Then lined it up with the foundation and set it down. What a crazy thing to see.

Kenan even took time off of work to watch. 

Once the first half was in place, another big truck arrived with the second half.

They lined them up.  See those triangles hanging down on the walls? They are sections of the roof. They are hinged to the main structure and literally fold up. i had no idea. 

Once the main sections were lined up and set, they began unfolding the roof. The entire thing was sitting on top of the modules. It is all hinged and just unfolds. It was so neat to watch.

There are ropes attached to these pieces and they just pull them up and then nail them into place. 

Then they brought in the window sections.

Once the window sections were secured in the both ends of the house, they pulled up the rest of the roof

The front view. i didn't take a lot of pictures of the front, because i was standing on the other end with the kids. There were a bunch of people and bunch of equipment in the yard, so we were staying far out of the way.  There will be a wrap around deck that will be built around the house.

Unfolding the rest of the roof! 

This as far as they got yesterday. The entire process, once the house actually arrived took around 3 hours!  Incredible!   Before they left they put plastic over the window and dormer holes.

There is a still a lot that has to be done before we move in. It will still be many weeks before it's completed, but watching this come together so quickly was just amazing.  

As we watch the rebuilding process we can not help but become filled again with intense gratitude to all those that have helped us along the way, and helped us to get to this point. Friends, family, neighbors, customers and even many folks we have never even met. The amount of love and support we have felt through out this has been so overwhelming and life changing. i love being able to share this rebuilding (and healing) process with all of you. Thank you again for your continued support.  

New House Construction- Week Two

Week Two of construction and we have a basement! 

The construction crew was back this week, and they really worked quickly to get things done!  They spent the first part of the week setting up the wall forms.

There were 3-4 guys working and it took them several days to get it all sent up.

Once they got the wall forms secured, they added vertical and horizontal re-bar to reinforce the back fill.  Then they placed support beams to hold the forms in place. 

On thursday they brought in the cement trucks, and began pouring! It took a lot longer than i expected, and they brought in many trucks to get it all done.

Once the concrete had been poured the crew began smoothing it and adding anchors.

On Friday the crew came back and began removing the forms.  It took them several hours to get it all removed and cleaned up.  It was pretty neat to see a basement now standing where a last week there was only a hole.  There are 2 windows, a large french door and main entrance doors that have been framed in.  We were unable to see them until the forms came down.

A square hole was cut in the front wall  where the downstairs chimney thimble will be placed.  They will be leveling off the driveway so that we will have a walk in basement.   The basement is very similar to what we had before, but it will be a full basement rather than a half basement.  We will have a space for cellar type/cold storage,  a family room, a utility room and enough space for Kenan to move his glass shop back home. 

The french doors will walk out towards the woods, and as you come out the doors our chicken coop is to the right. Above this will be the wrap around deck, providing a nice shady hang out with a view of the woods and chicken yard.  i think it going to be a really nice space. It is very much what we had envisioned for our old house.

The concrete needs to cure for a week or two, and the house is scheduled to be delivered on Sept. 10th. Once the house is set on the basement there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before we can move in. We were originally told we would be in by Thanksgiving, but the house was constructed earlier than originally anticipated, so i'm not sure what that means for our estimated move in date. This entire year has been such a whirlwind of crazy. It's hard to even comprehend the amount of change we have experienced this year, and i honestly do not know how we are still sane.

We are really looking forward for all of this to be over, so we can just go back to normal life again. 

New House Construction- Week One

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.

And so it Begins.

Yesterday we took the kids to Lake Ridge Resort to enjoy the last day of summer vacation.  We returned home to find that the construction has started!  It's a week ahead of schedule, quite a surprise! Exciting but a little bittersweet as well. 

There and Back again. We are finally home.

 We are home.  What a long strange trip it has been. Almost 5 months after our house burned, 3 temporary residents and we have finally found our way back home.

It isn't much, but it is ours.

Having lost everything, and then spending several months in a furnished house where nothing belonged to us, there is something to be said about having something to call your own.  We are slowly filling it with lovely things we have been gifted or collected. My new fruit bowl was hand carved  locally in Floyd.   A french press i found at the goodwill. An antique coffee grinder we purchase from a garage sale, and kitchen towels a gift from my grandmother.  The blue mug that now holds my kitchen utensils was a favorite of mine recovered from the fire. It is cracked and chipped, and missing it's handle but i am still happy to have it back.

i used to have a stained glass dragonfly in my kitchen window. i used to love to look out at the garden while washing dishes.  i am now on the opposite side of the yard. i have a beautiful moon wind chime hanging in the kitchen window (thank you Cathy!) and i can still look out at my garden while washing dishes. 

Of our three cats, Talulleh was the only one found.  She has spent the last 4 months living in Kenan's glass shop.  She too seemed very happy to be home.  

We officially moved in on June 1st. So we have been scrambling to make up for missed time.  4 months away from home, and the gardens and flower beds are completely out of control.  i'm still struggling to finish planting my garden, and even though many things are getting planted too late...i'm still happy just to be here planting them.

Now that we are here we have begun the stages of trying to rebuild. i spend an extra ordinary amount of time online searching house plans, and realty and alternative housing options. We still do not know what we are going to do.  We have a very limited amount of time to lock something in with the insurance company or we basically forfeit the money they would be contributing to the rebuild.  So although we are home, we can not even begin to relax yet.  Still so much to do and think about. 

The first week that we were in RV the kids told me 'this feels just like our old house. Like we have always lived here'.  i almost cried when they said it. i admit i was worried that pulling them away from the comfortable home that we were renting might be a mistake. The 'moving again' was so hard on all of us that i really questioned whether i was just being selfish in wanting to come back here. 

So many people have said 'Home is where the heart is. It is not a physical place it is something you carry with you.' Although i agree there is some truth to that, as long as our animals were not with us, our hearts could never totally feel at home.  We had a huge emptiness caused by the separation.  Returning home has given us a sense of peace that has been missing for months now.  We are back on our land, back in our garden, and back with our remaining animals. 

We are home. 

Progress, i think?

In 4 days we are packing up and moving again.  After 4 crazy months, we are headed 'home'.  We are finally moving back onto our land, into an RV until we can rebuild the house. i am both excited and a little scared. :/  We always enjoy our time at the property, but there comes a time each day when the kids are ready to go back to the house. In a couple more days that won't be an option anymore.

Kenan has been out of the town for the weekend at a glass expo in Toronto. Leaving all the packing, organizing , cleaning etc up to me.  It is also Memorial day weekend, so i'm frantically trying to get my garden in all while keeping both kids entertained. The contractor finally came back out to hook up the electricity/water, which was supposed to be set up May 15th.  We could have called a plumber and a electrician to come out and do it, but we thought it would save us some stress to hire a contractor to just take care of it all.  Yeah, we were wrong.

There always seems to be a lot of destruction that goes hand in hand with progress.  This was of course necessary to run the electricity to the camper and the well pump. i don't love what they did to my yard, but it's progress.  right? Because i'm starting to wonder.  

We had a spiget installed so we can access water easily, and they hooked the electric up to the pump and...NOTHING. The pump is dead. We don't know whether the pump burned out during the fire because of electrical wire melting together and shorting out, or if one of the water pipes broke and drained the well before the pump/electricity was shut off.   All we know if that we still have no water, and now we have to call the well guy out to pull the pump.  Seriously kicking ourselves for not doing this in the beginning. We could have saved ourselves a lot of money by avoiding the middleman. Also, if we had just contacted the pump guy to start, he would have figured out the problem immediately when he hooked it all up (back on the 15th!), and could have pulled the well then and had it fixed...and we would have water right now. But no, nothing is ever that easy.  

i had a water barrel set up behind the RV to collect the rain water that was running of. It filled up super quickly, and i had a full barrel to water my garden plants.  Unfortunately it was in the way of hooking up the septic, and had to be moved. :( The contractor installed this fancy septic pipe that goes from the RV and connects to the pre-existing septic system.  So we should have a working toilet right now...IF we had water. i plan to create a little platform over the tube so i can set my rain barrel back up.

i have already started researching how to make a composting toilet. Even if we are able to get it all set up by the time we move in (i'm not very optimistic) it  makes sense to have a back up system, and the humanure approach seems much better/safer than just digging an outhouse.

We wanted the electricity to be totally hooked up on the 15th.  The electric company brought out a temporary electric pole and set it up on the 21st, but it was not connected to anything. On the 25th, the contractor came out and installed an outside outlet that we could plug the RV into.  So we technically have power!
However, after the RV had been plugged in for a few hours, i noticed that the inside of the RV was getting really hot...as if an oven was left on. i checked to make sure the heat was turned off then tried to find the source of the heat. It was coming from the breaker box/converter panel. It was actually hot to the touch.  i don't know what that means, but it did not seem right and so i unplugged it. It was mentioned to the contractor, and he said the electrical system of the RV is not his problem. So when Kenan gets back he'll take a look at it, and we will probably have to call out an actual electrician to check everything out, make sure it's set up correctly and make sure the RV's electrical system is okay.  Last thing i want is a fire hazard.  When we purchased the RV, it was plugged in and we walked through it and checked to make sure everything was working.  We also purchased it from the fire chief of the town next to us, and i really do not believe he would sell us an RV with a faulty electrical system knowing that we just lost our house to a  fire a few months ago. So i really don't think there is anything wrong with the campers electrical system, but i am unfamiliar with how it all works and do not feel comfortable leaving it plugged in if it is going to generate that kind of heat until i know for sure everything is fine.  So all that means is that although we have power, we still don't have power.
 It also means we will probably have to call out an electrician ourselves even though we hired the contractor so that we didn't have to deal with all this. Honestly, if it is this difficult (and expensive!!) just to get an camper set up, i am really dreading the house building process.

So yeah, that's where we are.