The Building of a Mountain

I've come to the realization that blogging must be a stress-reliever for me. In 2011 when we were threatened with massive flooding on every level, I blogged about it. Now in 2014 I have a new self-inflicted source of stress: building a new home. In our back yard. If you'd like to follow along on our little adventure, this is the place to find updates.

We have known for about 10 years that we would eventually build. Although our current home looks nice on a surface level, it has some significant structural problems--foundation, mold in the crawl space, rotting wood everywhere, and I do mean everywhere...not to mention FREEZING COLD floors in the winter. Oh yes, and the skunks. But basically, the house is just worn out, from the inside out.

We have been meeting with an architect and builder to design a house that will fit our specific needs. Search as I might, I was unable to find an online house plan that remotely worked for us. For one, we live in the river bottom, and although our home has never flooded (we live 5 miles from the river bank with several levees between) we cannot guarantee how the Army Corp of  Engineers will manage (or mis-manage) the river. We had to prepare for the possibility. (That and the fact that there are rules about new construction in the river bottom...which is a different story all to itself...) Secondly, no house plan I've ever seen includes a master bedroom, an office, and a school room all on the main floor. And try as I might to tweak anything that was remotely close, it just wasn't happening.

After a couple of months of working on the plan, our architect is finishing the final version this week. While we have been working on the paper side of things, we've also been hauling in dirt. Around 600 loads of dirt, to be exact.

Doesn't look too daunting from this view. (To see what it originally looked like, view the previous post.)

This is the view from the garden. You can barely see the roof of our house on the other side.

And this is the view from the barn. Which looks kinda crazy. It IS kinda crazy, although this angle does make it look worse than it is.

Cement work should begin in a couple of weeks. One stark realization we made recently is that our sewer line from our existing house runs right under this mountain. Apparently it has not been crushed under the weight of 600 loads of dirt, but we are worried they might cut through it when they trench the frost footings.

Let's hope my next post is not a picture of an outhouse recently moved into my back yard...