Archive for the ‘She Builds’ Category
YIKES – IT’S FALL! or ROCKY MOUNTAIN WOMAN BUILDS HER DREAM HOME PART VII
Written by Rocky Mountain Woman on July 8, 2010 – 5:41 am -So while I was busy working, taking care of my animals, and enjoying showers at the gym, the summer started to slip away.
I’d call Dick every couple days and he’d have some sort of lame excuse as to why he wasn’t working on the house.
One afternoon, I decided to call him one more time and see if he was ready to finally start on the foundation before I got a lawyer involved. I got his voicemail and as I was dialilng the number of an attorney that a friend had recommended, he called back.
Me: “It’s going to snow in a few more months and you haven’t even really started the house. You promised me it would be done by Thanksgiving!”
Dick: “I know, I know, but my wife has been in a car accident and I am left to take care of the kids. I can’t bring them with me, it’s too dangerous and I can’t leave them with anybody because they are already upset about their mom, besides I have to spend as much time as I can at the hospital. It’s been touch and go with my wife.”
Me: “Oh dear, I’m so sorry. Is there anything that I can do to help?”
Dick: “No, just please be patient another week or so, I will work double hours to get your place done as soon as I get this taken care of.”
Me: “OK”
I actually felt guilty for even bothering him at such a terrible time. My husband had died about 10 years before this, and I guess I was especially sensitive to what he was going through. I found out later that it was his ex-wife who was in the accident and that her family had begged him to stay away from the hospital because she couldn’t stand the sight of him. At the time, however, he had accomplished what he wanted and I left him alone for a while.
But then, one morning I noticed that the leaves were turning
Now, I don’t want ya’ll to think I’m a namby pamby, but when this happened
my horses started whining, “Mom, it’s snowing! Where’s our barn, we’re cold!”
Well, you get the picture. So I winterized the little trailer, moved the horses to a boarding facility and found a hotel that would give me a weekly rate.
Sheesh!
to be continued…..
for the beginning of this story see the “She Builds” category……
ROCKY MOUNTAIN WOMAN BUILDS HER DREAM HOME PART VI
Written by Rocky Mountain Woman on June 10, 2010 – 5:46 am -After a few days the HOA figured out what was wrong with the water and got it back on! Whew! My horses and I and my little dog settled into a routine of me going to work and the animals hanging around the travel trailer all day being lazy, waiting for me to come home to walk, feed, brush, whatever…
My little trailer was cramped cozy, there was a convenience store in town that made sandwiches and a restaurant that did breakfast. Cooking or even eating anything in the trailer usually meant that the mice invaded it immediately afterward, so I tried to avoid doing that or even taking a shower there since it had a very small waste water holding tank that was a pain to empty. I got a membership to a local gym and went there every night after work to take a shower. I think the people who ran it were convinced I was a homeless person, and, I guess in a way, I was!
When I moved into the trailer, I gave away all of my old furniture and most of everything else I owned. I rented a small storage unit and when it was filled, I decided that everything else had to go. It was an amazing feeling of freedom to get rid of all that junk! It was also a little disorienting after years of kids and homework and cleaning the house, to just have me to worry about.
I made an appointment with the architect to go over the plans one more time. The house was just too big! I wanted to downsize, not upsize. I was enjoying the fact that I could clean the whole trailer in 10 minutes. We had a long discussion where he explained to me that the cheap part of the house was the part that was underneath it, i.e. the foundation and basement and that the expensive part was the part above ground. It just didn’t make sense to build the house smaller, especially since most of the houses in the area were larger. So my architect talked me into keeping the house the way I had designed it and he had drawn it.
In the meantime, I had a few meetings with Dick the contractor to go over the last few details of his bid. We applied together for the permit from the county and I closed on the construction loan. Dick told me in one of our meetings that the county usually takes about six weeks to grant the building permit and no one ever really waits for the permit to start work. It sounded a little fishy to me, but I had never done this before and he had so I decided to trust his advice. I was so impatient to get started that six weeks might as well been six years! Anyway a few days later when I got home there was a backhoe on the property and the beginning of the hole that would be my basement.
I called Dick and asked him if he would mind putting in a real driveway so I could get my horse trailer in and out easier and also so it would be easier to pull the travel trailer out so I could empty the waste storage tanks. So a few nights later I came home to this
Wow! Life instantly became easier, hay deliveries became a possibility (up until now I’d been buying hay a few bales at a time and bringing it in in my pickup).
Dick assured me that he had a few weeks work on another project and he’d start pouring the foundation in two weeks.
So I spent the next few weeks working during the day and taking photos in the evenings and on weekends. I found a laundrymat with a restaurant across the street from it in Park City and that became my new Saturday morning destination for breakfast and clean clothes.
ahhhh, summer in the mountains with my horses..
to be continued…………..
for the rest of this story click on the “She Builds” category above…
Posted in She Builds | 35 Comments »TRAVEL TRAILER TRAVAILS or ROCKY MOUNTAIN WOMAN BUILDS HER DREAM HOME PART V
Written by Rocky Mountain Woman on June 3, 2010 – 5:42 am -Spring came and my neighbor kicked me (and my horses) out of my house.
I bought a little travel trailer and pulled it up on my land and hired the guy I had met at the Log Home Show to build some temporary corrals so my horses & I would have a place to live. Some of the horses went to live at a show barn for the summer because they were on the show circuit and needed to be where they would stay clean.
The contractor who was building the corrals assured me that they would be ready by Memorial Day which was when I had to vacate my old house and barn.
So imagine my surprise when I pulled up with three horses in my trailer and the corrals only had two sides. I guess the contractor assumed that either I had really good horses who would stay where I told them to, or he assumed that I would just tie them up until he could finish the corral as promised. I called him and said, “My corral isn’t finished!”
Contractor: ”Well, it’s close to being finished.”
Me: ”Where would you suggest I put my horses until it’s finished?”
Contractor: ”I didn’t know you were bringing your horses up today.”
Me: ”We discussed this last week, I told you I had to move today, you said the corral would be finished.”
Contractor: ”It’ll be done in two weeks.”
By the way, any contractor worth his salt will always tell you that your barn, house, bathroom, landscaping, carpet, whatever, will be done in two weeks. It’s the first thing you learn in contractor school.
So I got the horses out of the trailer and tied them up to the side of the trailer, disconnected it from my truck and drove to the local feed store (about 30 miles away) and bought enough livestock panels to close off the sides of the corral that were open. I came home and tied the panels with baling twine to the existing corral and put the horses in. This is what it looked like
This was where we would live until the new house and barn were built
ah caramba!
By this time, it was getting late and I was getting hungry.
I fed the horses and opened the faucet to fill their water tank before I left to get some dinner.
No water, not a drop, nada…
Panic..
Horses need water.
Drove to my neighbors house and knocked on the door.
Me: “Do you have water?”
Neighbor: “No.”
Me: “What the heck?”
Neighbor: “Oh, we run out of water sometimes up here.”
Me: “What the heck?”
Back to the feed store to buy a water tank that will fit in the back of my truck. I called the local church and asked them if I could pull up to their outside faucet and fill the water tank. They very kindly agreed (and even sent someone over to help me), bless their souls. I filled the tank in the back of my truck with enough water to last a day or two (horses drink a lot of water). Then I went through a drive through window at a fast food joint to pick up some dinner and went back home to enjoy my first meal in my new home.
Thanks for listening. This is seriously better than therapy.
to be continued…..
for the rest of this story, click on the “She Builds” category….
Posted in She Builds | 24 Comments »