A long overdue update on our home building project – Our Little House in the Woods.

I had good intentions of regularly posting updates to keep you aware of our progress on our home building project.

Well, the actual work got in the way of the Blog Posts – Sorry.
Now that we are closing in on the 2 year anniversary of breaking ground, I am posting one of my final photo updates. We still have a few things to complete, like the kitchen cabinet doors and some touch up painting, but we are moved in and quite settled, finally!

It’s not a big home or a fancy home, but we built it entirely on our own. We saved a lot of money by purchasing supplies and materials on sale, second hand, by barter, through Craigslist, and trade. It’s a great feeling to have accomplished all of this. Of course most of the credit goes to my hard-working, general contractor, husband who completes every project down to the very last detail – No procrastinating for him!

The cabinet doors, stairway and railings, and built in bookcases were primarily built from lumber harvested from the trees on our beautiful wooded lot. We are very grateful for the friends and family who gave up many weekends and the comfort of their air conditioned homes on some 90+ degree days, and miserably rainy days, to help us frame and roof our house and stay within our deadlines. We are truly blessed!

Aaaahhhh……….. SMILE!

As we continue to work on our new little home in the country, I find myself getting tired of this self-imposed Gypsy Lifestyle.

I always knew how important “Home” was, but am realizing that even though I am very grateful, I also took it for granted.

We are very lucky to have so many people in our lives who care about us and have opened their homes to us and provided us with ideas, support, and brute strength. ♥

Still I find myself yearning for a little privacy, a little “my space.” This past weekend we buttoned up the house ~~ well, we now have locks on all the doors and doors in all the door jambs. When I step back and look at my little house with its garage doors in place (yes, it’s still missing the outside lights – coming soon) I feel a sense of safety, security, privacy. Now people can knock on my door; I am home.

We still have a lot of work to do, but we have carved out a little spot in the basement to set up camp while we dote on the details, and We Have Doors!

I know this sounds silly, but it took me weeks to choose just the right color. Our old house was a shade of beige and I wanted something different, something natural, but a color. My favorite color is green and my husband expects every room in our new house will be a shade of green (it won’t be, but don’t tell him that). As I cautiously began to apply the chosen color of paint to our house, stepped back several times amazed that I love the color!! Throughout the day, as our many visitors stopped by, everyone commented on the great color I chose. Yeah Me!!

When I tell people that I am “on my way home” or “going home” and they ask me where that is. I had to stop and think about it. Then I answered — “These days Home is wherever I am sleeping tonight.”

We are in the middle of building our little house in the country, but it isn’t ready to live in yet. We sometimes camp, sometimes stay with family members, and soon will be able to stay in our new house. A wonderful gift was granted to us the week we were moving out of our apartment, the end of July. Our friend’s daughter offered to let us stay in her house in Cottage Grove while we are in the cities. She moved all of her things into her fiance’s house, and considers our residence in her house a barter for all of the work my husband has done on her house. A Win/Win!!

Downsize … Simplify…

Those are trendy trigger words these days. Along with so many baby boomers entering our golden years and becoming empty nesters, we are thinking about having less so we can do more. Well, I’m no different.

Over the years I went from having a very large family (by today’s standards) at home, to being an empty-nester. At the age of 52, I will see my youngest daughter graduate from college this year, my oldest grandson enter middle school, and my husband and I will build and move into our “dream” home.

Being an organizer, I’ve always been pretty good about moving things I no longer need out of my home (after careful consideration, I’ve decided my husband stays.) However, a transitional move in November, to a small, one bedroom apartment, pushed me a little further. Having our home on the market for nearly a year, we had plenty of time to shed items we no longer needed, pack boxes, and say good-bye to our former life.

We were ready to build a home in the country. A 6-acre, wooded lot, where we had been camping for years, was calling to us. We had it all figured out, we would rent a storage locker for a few months, and when our home was ready, we would move everything in. That was our plan…

As you can imagine, it’s not ideal to start building a home in November. Along with my husband, a general contractor, we are planning to do most of the work ourselves. We will enlist the help of friends we have bartered with, and of course all those kids we gave life to – that’s gotta be worth something, right?

Then there is the issue of money. In this economy, we sold our house for considerably less than we originally planned. So we went back to the drawing board. Our modest 1200 square foot floor plan has become a 780 square foot floor plan. We will have the use of our basement, and you can be sure, somehow, we’ll have two bathrooms in that humble abode!

Finally, Spring! We gathered up all of our drawings and bids and headed off to the building inspectors office. We ran into another stumbling block; Wisconsin laws are a little different than Minnesota laws, and we had some more legwork to do. No problem, just because we gave notice to vacate our apartment by the end of June, starting to build a month later than planned shouldn’t be too big of a problem, should it? Yikes!

I’m thinking that a little more “letting go of stuff” is in order. We also have to figure out our living arrangements during this adventure! Thank goodness we’ve been relatively nice to our family members and most of our kids like us, so we’ll have several options for crashing a night or two around town. We can both work out of our vehicles, and we’re looking for compact folding cots to carry with us. We’ll just see how little a person really needs to live on for a while. I know people do it, I was just thinking that I would read about them, not live like them.

More downsizing. More simplifying.

Stay tuned to find out how this adventure progresses.

Clear plastic folders are a great way to capture your papers related to specific projects.

These are great because they are sturdy and you can see through them. You can gather all of your papers, by project, into their own project folders and take them with you anywhere.