Home sweet homestead

I woke up a few times in the night, restless and a bit irritable, and then I looked out my windows at the moonlight filtering through the trees that stretch till the eye can't distinguish seperate trunks anymore even on the brightest nights. "It's okay, I'm home now", I thought to myself, and settled back into bed with a smile on my face and contentment in my heart.

Rob and I spent a long weekend in Texas this past weekend, and other than a few shining wonderful moments spent with family and friends, it was an incredibly jarring, uncomfortable and often depressing trip. It's weird to be in a place that was home for so long and feel no connection to it at all. It really reinforced to both of us, though, that the move was the right choice. 

Now we're back and hard at work! We've got all four structures floor framed, joists hung, cross bracing in, and sheathing down. It turns out that I am, much to everyone's surprise, quite handy with a chop saw and framing nailer. I did very nearly shoot Rob in the stomach today with said nailer, though. 

Rob heads back to Texas on Friday for his brothers wedding and to pick up the boy from Grandma and Grandpas, so we're holding off on wall framing till Monday. It's really happening, though, and for all my aching muscles I couldn't be happier. We're literally building the lives we've always dreamed of, from the ground up, with the people we love the most. Who could ever want more than that? 

Broken concrete mixers and new friends

I have somehow slipped into being completely slovenly. Every dish is dirty (and in the yard, mind you), but I don't feel like washing them so I'm going to post instead. 

The saga of the access continues. It's now settled as to who owns the road (it's BNSF), now I'm just trying to get them to let me use the damn thing. I have the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that I'll be fighting this fight for a while yet. 

In the meantime, without access we can't permit and without permits we can't build. There are three adults, two dogs, and a boy, all living in a small travel trailer. That is not going to last long before someone snaps. So, after some careful reading of codes and zoning laws and some serious thinking outside the box, we've started construction on four tiny structures. 

Photos by Brooke Biette, who is the best. 

Two tiny houses with lofts, a bath house, and a hand tool shop. 

Rob, who is thankfully a badass with heavy machinery, scraped the sites and dug the piers with a rented bobcat tractor. We foolishly assumed that form tubes would be easy to get, which led to a day's scrambling to every hardware store in town buying a hodge podge of sizes just to have enough! The first concrete mixer... well, let's just say it met with an accident and lost some gear teeth. The second one just sort of stopped working. The third FINALLY worked, and after two days the three of us successfully poured 26 piers without killing each other. 

Meanwhile, I've been having my heart charmed right out of my chest by this tiny amazing person named Brooke who I met on Instagram, of all ridiculous places.  I'm so glad for her sake that we're not insane serial murderers, because this fearless little woman drove several hours to come camp three nights here after only a few weeks of knowing me and never having met me in person. The poor guys, it was just incessant chatter the entire time, and now I am deeply in friend love and she's stuck with me for life. (For LIFE, Brooke!) Some people just... Fit. 

This afternoon, on to floor framing!