Kennedy’s Little House in the Big Woods

January has seen some nice movement on our home construction. Forms were put up and then Girardo and his crew filled them in. Once the walls were put up, we both had to take our over-sized rollers and roll tar onto the outside portions of the walls to waterproof them from moisture. Laura's dad, Lee, was a huge help by knocking off 'tabs' that were left over from the concrete forms and by painting tar into the crevice between the walls and the footer. All the waterproofing had to be completed for our next approval by the county before we could move on. Lee knocking tabs off the walls A view of the start of waterproofing As you can see, snow has been piling up on the property. The unusual amount of snows so far this year has caused progress to slow a bit. As if that was possible. The 10' walls with the waterproofing on them. In the foreground are giant French drains to help channel water around the foundation. The giant mounds of dirt that have been snoozing since last sp...

In early November, they finally started laying the foundation starting with the footer. Fortunately, we got some nice days in a row which gave them the opportunity to pour. We're going for 10' walls in the basement. Here's Austin at 6' 5" standing next to one not long after the forms went up. We've been so blessed by the many weekends Austin's met us up at the property to help with various parts of the project. The week before Christmas they began pouring the walls to the foundation. Finally, we got our finished foundation walls completed! This is the main part of the house. And this perspective is from the side of the garage looking out to our view.

 In preparation for the cold, we had to construct skirting for the RV. First was the framing... Then the insulation all the way around.

  We had a giant, 25' x 15' granite rock that stood in the way of getting our foundation in so we had to blast with dynamite. We thought it was going to be a giant, spectacular blast. As you can see, it wasn't quite what we expected. Here are some of the rocks they pulled out after it was blasted. Some look like could easily come loose and roll into our RV! Here's the same area smoothed out by the excavator.

Jordan flew up from Ft. Worth over Labor Day weekend to join Austin, Lee, Laura and Bob at the property clearing trees and branches! We made a lot of progress but still have a ways to go before they're all cut up and ready for firewood.

In early fall we got two critical pieces on our property. The first was electricity so we could have power to our RV and for later when the house is complete.  We also got the septic installed which has been beneficial for other reasons... Here's our completed septic system hooked up to the RV. Hillbilly? Yes!