-
Roper Timelapse
August 30th, 2009
Inserting reclaimed windows from Demxx Deconstruction.
Timelapse photography by Sean Fenzl photography
-
Bowater Backhoe services saves the day!
July 18th, 2009
We searched long and hard for a mobile home to put on our foundation. There are many out there if you know where to look. Private sales generally come from either trailer parks that are closing down or mobiles on personal property that have outlived their usefullness. We found ours through a house moving company, the Pridy Bros. The owners of the mobile just wanted it off their land.
Unfortunately I was very disappointed with the service we got from the house movers. Despite charging twice as much as a regular mobile home moving company, they didn’t include leveling the home.
Not to mention they got their truck stuck in the ditch within 5 minutes of being there!!
Since the Pridy Bros. had not brought the proper equipment, we had to get our excavator to come out in the evening to save these guys from being forever stuck in the ditch. Then they abandoned their truck and let a backhoe push the building into position, complaining the entire time.
I still sit up in the middle of the night suddenly angry all over again at the Pridy Bros.
George of Bowater Backhoe Services ended up pushing it singlehandedly up a dirt road, with the help of some neighbors. Thanks George!
photos were taken by Sean Fenzl photography.
-
Milling Lumber
June 11th, 2009
Since we had so many trees taken down we decided to have some lumber milled from some of the larger trees. We had a portable bandsaw mill come from the day. Lebco custom milling kindly did the job for us. They worked real hard and cut us 2 or 3 decks worth of cedar planks and a variety of fir boards.
In addition to all this great dimensional lumber. I have been able to pull quite a few beautiful pieces of wood out of the slag pile left behind by the milling. These would be great for furniture, tabletops, signs etc.
Besides a drift of sawdust there is a large pile of slag from the milling process, But I was able to pull out 2X3s, 1X2s and lots of other sizes of boards from the waste pile. There are still some gems in there.
who loves cedar?
-
Roper Road
May 25th, 2009
-
Clearing Land
May 19th, 2009
Our approach to starting this project was to first identify the place where we wanted to place our house site. We visited the site frequently, observed the lay of the land and came up with a basic idea of where we could place an old mobile home to start, where our additions and out buildings could be as we add to our starter building and where our main outdoor living space would be.
My two main considerations were access. ie. identifying the path of lest resistance from the street to the house-site. and Vista, meaning a spot where several main features of the property would be visible from the home.
Then we called in the machines. This was the fastest, safest and most affordable way to create a large clearing. Check out this video to see the preliminary clearing done on the property.
A team of two cleared our area in about a day and a half. One operated the backhoe while the other wielded a chainsaw, bucking limbs and separating trees from stumps. Logs were stacked to the side while branches and stumps were placed in the middle of the cleared area for burning.
The stumps and branches were set alight and we manned the fires for about 5 days until it finally burned out. During this time, a few Mudgirls came and hand-graded the access road that had been created. Although I wasn’t able to clear the land completely by Mudgirl, It was a great hybrid effort between woman and machine.
