I had wanted to put pictures of each step within the posts. However, I have looked high and low for more pictures, but just can't find them. I believe they were on my old pc that crashed. So they are probably lost forever. :( So, this part of the story you will just have to imagine in your own mind. Sometimes it is funner that way anyway.
When I ended part 1, we had milled all the lumber we could from downed trees after Hurricane Katrina. We finished that step around the end of Spring or beginning of Summer 2006. That lumber had to dry for at least six months. Around the Summertime of 2006, we began the dirtwork for the foundation of the house. Stacy's brother had his own construction equipment; dump truck, backhoe, bulldozer, etc. So he and Stacy did all the work themselves. Since we have about 23 acres, they were able to dig the dirt on our property, so the dirt was free!
In the meantime, we had already begun talking about what we wanted our house to look like and playing around with some rough sketches on paper. Once we were pretty sure what we wanted, I began drawing up the plans on the computer with a computer program we bought at Walmart or somewhere. That part was absolutely the hardest for me, by far! It wasn't that it was hard work. It was certainly tedious work. But the hard part was making sure I had it JUST how we wanted it. I remember thinking at times that it would have been easier to just buy a house already built and make do with whatever layout it had. It was taxing on the old brain, that's for sure! But finally we got it to a layout that we were happy with, that fit OUR needs and not anyone else's. I simply saved it onto the computer and printed out lots of copies. And that was our house plans... we didn't pay anyone to do them. It was free, except for the cost of ink, paper & the computer progam I bought, which was around $10 I think. I'm certain a professional could have done a much better job than I did, but what I did worked and the layout of the house is still as we wanted it.
With the dirtwork done, the plans drawn up and the lumber drying, the next step was to prepare the dirt for the slab foundation. Now, keep in mind, my dear sweet husband had gone to great lengths to get ALL that dirt smoothed out nicely and then as level as possible in preparation for the slab. Well, something we didn't think of before hand, well, we knew we would have to do it, but what we didn't know was just how big of a mess it would make was the PLUMBING. Here is where I REALLY wish I had the pictures to show you! I
I wish I had video of us doing the plumbing. It was quite comical! We were true rookies at everything we did on this house, but, by the Grace of God and a WHOLE lot of sweat and tears, we did it! We put the boys right in there with us each and every step of the way. We called it homeschooling hands-on training. Bless my husband's heart, he is not a plumber, but he asked people and found out how to do it all, told us what to do and we all went to work. He had to know what pipe went where and attached to which one next. He also had to know the right slope for the sewage drain...too much slope and the water would go out faster than the... well. you know. Not enough slope and everything would back up. That was probably the hardest part of the whole plumbing process...getting that slope just right....with NO. PROFESSIONAL. HELP.
Oh, and did I mention that before we could start doing ANY of the plumbing work that I, YES I had to figure out EXACTLY where each toilet, tub, sink or ANY other thing that would need water or a drain would go? My daddy & Stacy started to lay out the plumbing on this one particular day....this is backing up in the story, sorry. Well, they inform me that on MY floorplan/blueprint, I didn't label it for plumbing. This is where I stare at them with a confused look of "what-are-you-talking-about-NESS on my face. I had never thought about this when designing the layout of the house. My job was just that, design the LAYOUT of the house. I knew where the toilets, tubs, etc would go and I pointed that out to them on my drawings. THEY, in turn, pointed out the fact that when you are doing plumbing, you can't just say "oh, it is going on THAT wall in THAT corner". You have to know exactly how far out from each wall the toilet, for example, will be so that the drain pipe is in the correct spot. The same is true for the tubs! Obviously you can't put the drain for the tub wherever you want it. It has to match up to the drain hole on the bottom of the tub.
Now, this may sound fairly obvious to some of you, and it did to me too once they pointed it out. But, before that, I had never thought twice about it. So, that is just a side note in case you plan to build your own home and draw up your own plans....KNOW where the drains go!
So with the plumbing FINALLY complete, at least that portion of it, it was time to cover it all back up and smooth out the dirt again. This time it had to be as close to perfectly level as possible.
At this time, we were into the beginning of Spring 2007. It was tax time and ever since we started this project, we have used our tax refund to pay for construction on the house. This particular refund check paid for all that plumbing material, the cement for the slab and tin metal roofing for the roof. We were no where near needing the metal roofing yet, but Stacy found a good deal on it and so we purchased it and stored it until we were ready for it. That's how we have done lots of things with this house. As we find deals, if we have the money, even if it is something we won't need until later, we will go ahead and purchase it and store it until we DO need it. We have saved A LOT of money that way! But, a word of caution, if you buy smaller things, like outlet covers for example, at a yard sale or on clearance, it's a good idea to write down those items in your records if you won't be using them right away. I can't tell you how many little things like that that we bought way in advance because they were cheap, but then would forget we had them. We would store them until we needed them, but then by the time we DID need them, we would forget that we had bought them. That doesn't save much money that way. Of course larger items, like the tin roofing, you aren't likely to forget about.
So now it was back to covering the underground plumbing and getting the dirt pad ready for the concrete slab to be poured. The dirt had to be sprayed for termites, then that had to be covered with a layer of plastic sheeting, and lastly we had to put down metal bars to reinforce the concrete. The day we did all these things was the day before the cement was scheduled to be delivered. It also happened to be a VERY windy March day. That wreaked havoc on one man, one woman and three children trying to lay down 2800 square feet of rolled plastic sheeting! That was quite comical as well! We had to get all these things done in ONE day and each time we would lay down one row of plastic, the wind would pick up and take the plastic with it. So one or two of us would hold down one end while the others would run to catch the other end. We would get the air out from under it, get it down to the ground and then someone would have to turn loose and start the next row. Usually before we got that next row down, the wind had caught it again and we had to start ALL OVER AGAIN. It was very aggravating, but we couldn't help but laugh because it was such a comical situation.
Finally after a few hours we got it all finished and were able to start on the metal bars. That wasn't too hard. Actually the bars only went into the footings around the outside edges of the house. It was metal wire that we had to roll on top of the plastic everywhere else. By then, a dear friend of ours who was always faithful to help us had stopped by on his way home from work to give us a hand. We worked right up until dark that day finishing up the foundation and getting it ready for the cement trucks to come rolling in bright and early the next morning.
Bright and early they started rolling in too! It was such an awesome sight to see all these trucks rolling in, one right after another, to pour the final touches to what would be the foundation of our new home! I
I will leave you all right here in the house story for now. That slab would sit there for a whole year while we saved up more funds to move to the next step...framing up the walls. It was hard to look at that slab for a whole year, especially because it was directly in front of the home we were living in at the time. When you walked out the front door, there it was, right in front of you. It was painful to see it there for a whole year with no progress, but yet, it also gave us hope. Hope that we WERE making progress and the Lord WAS blessing our efforts. We just had to be patient.
I would like to leave you with a verse of scripture, actually a few verses of scripture. The first one the Lord led me to in the very beginning of this journey. It has since also become a theme verse for our church. But long before that, God showed it to me and I have clung to it with all my might ever since. It is Jeremiah 33:3 and it has become my life verse. It goes like this: Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. Great. and. mighty. things. which. thou. knowest. not. He doesn't say, do this this and this and I will show you great and mighty things. NO! He says simply....call unto me. The God of the universe tells ME to simply call unto Him... and He will show me great and mighty things which I cannot even imagine. How awesome is that!! God surely has shown me great and mighty things in my lifetime that I could not have imagined! The building of this house... rather this HOME has been a spiritual journey for me. I know that must sound crazy, but I cannot explain to you how many times and in how many ways God has shown me His presence throughout this process. I cannot explain to you how many times HE has made a way when there seemed to be NO way. I cannot explain to you how many times I have sat in AWE, pure and simple AWE at just HOW He chose to work some things out. I cannot explain to you how many times I have fallen to my knees and said, "Lord, I'm not worthy, but Lord, I thank you!" I cannot tell you just how many times we have said to our children, "we don't know how it happened, but GOD worked it out!". And I cannot tell you how many times I walked through these "rooms" before they were even truly rooms and prayed asking God to bless ALL who enter in, asking God to keep His hand upon each child who would sleep in their designated rooms and keep them safe from harm and raise them up to follow HIM. So many times, this would be my quiet place, the place where I would sit for as long as I was able and just pray and be with God. So many blessings would pop into my mind to thank Him for, so many people who needed prayer would pop into my mind. And then always I would just be in awe again at all He had done and would just thank Him over and over. This TRULY has been a spiritual journey for me in a way that I NEVER could have imagined. So many blessings wrapped up into what seemed like it was supposed to be only one blessing... a new home... but it turned into SO much more for me! And I give God all the praise and all the honor & glory HE DESERVES for it!
I said I would share another verse with you, but I think I will wait and save that for my next post because the whole passage is great and I could go on and on and I am sure you all are tired of reading all of this now. So I will stop. I HAVE missed writing... can you tell? I pray the Lord will grant me time to do it more often.
Until next time...
~Amy
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