Breaking Ground

We officially broke ground on the house project a few weeks ago and already had a minor setback that involved us changing the design of the driveway in order to meet the town regulations. Essentially the length and grade of our planned driveway was such that a fire truck could not access the property in the event of a fire. This meant that we had to change the location of our driveway, re-survey the site and re-apply for a driveway permit. It set us back about two weeks. The first setback of many, I imagine. In any case, we are back on track and things are moving so fast I'm finding it hard to keep up. It will be a challenge to keep the blog updated as things get into full swing, but I'll do my best. Ready or not, here we go!

Let's take a look at the "before" pictures of the site, taken last summer:

This will be the view from the back of our house. Rooms with this awesome view include kitchen, living room, master bedroom, porches and patios and lower living area.


Summit taking it all in, without a clue about how her life is about to change.

Here's a reminder of what the exterior of the house will look like. We've made minor changes since these plans were drawn, but they give you a general idea of what the house will look like from the outside. I'll share the interior floor plans with you in a bit but right now that seems so far off!

Front of the house facing the road. We've made minor changes to a few windows and added a pergola/porch that are not on these prints. Windows from left to right: master bathroom, study, front door, dining room, mudroom, garage. New driveway will curve in front of the house and exit the lot on the right. We'll have to come up with some interesting landscaping but it was the only way it was going to work.


Back of the house looking out to farm and valley. Garage on left. Main level from left to right includes kitchen with skylights and walk out deck (not drawn), living room with vaulted ceiling and lots of windows and master bedroom with covered porch. Lower level (finished walk-out basement) includes two bedrooms, a full bath and a family room.

Currently, we are finishing off the site work, installing the septic tank and preparing to pour the foundation. Below are recent images of the ground breaking, driveway making, site grading and dirt pushing activities of the past two weeks.

Looking up to the construction site. Our driveway will be off the road above construction. My brother and sister in law's house is on hill behind barn and garage. Farm entrance is off road I'm standing on while taking this picture. The property includes the barn and silo, three car garage (James' workshop), riding ring, pasture and pond.


A Family Affair: James' dad on the excavator and my dad on the bulldozer.


A closer look at the construction site, looking up from the barns to what will be the back of the house.


James' dad is doing the site work for the project with help from James and my dad. I swear they could spend all day pushing dirt around if we let them.


Nobody said building on a slope would be easy -boy were they right!


Andrew and Aubrey getting in on the digging too!


Summit's sitting in her future back yard....still trying to figure it all out.

And there you have it. I'm sure if I went over to the site right now it would look different already, that's how fast it's changing right now. I'll do my best to keep you posted on our progress!