A New House

Big things are happening, folks! BIG THINGS! I (and The Rancher of course) am building a new house! It has always been a dream to build my own home and this summer we are making it a reality. I’ve wanted to share my news with you for so long but I wanted to make sure it was really happening. I mean, how rough would it be to make that kind of announcement and then be devastated by reality?! Heartbreaking, I’m sure.

Like any house building project it’s been simple. No big things to mull over. No learning curve to overcome.

Ya right! It’s been crazy prep work that we’ve done over the last year. But honestly, the toughest decision has been the “where” of it all. A place that gives us a nice view, our own space and definitely on the same side of the old highway as where dad works (because yes, my kids have scooted their little bodies across the road by themselves!). We found a treasure of a place when The Rancher had the idea to build where another old, old, OLD house stood. It had trees, the view, the yard and most importantly, it’s in the right side of the road.

When we finally realized this was the summer to build it meant we had to get to work making a place for a house. The old house (commonly called The Broken House by my kids because it really was old and broken) hadn’t been used for more than storage in 30 years. I would say nobody lived in it, but that’s not entirely accurate- there was a a few happy families of rats and mice and all sorts of other yucky creepy creatures.

It had been our plan to keep and remodel a lot of the existing house but unfortunately we could see it just wasn’t sound. With my luck I would have put in my pretty new cabinets and shiny new appliances and they would all go crashing down if we left the old structure. So we had our work cut out for us. The whole house had to come down to the bare basement. My vote was to just take a match to it. Or push it all in with a bulldozer. All very fast and certainly effective. But being the smart man that he is, The Rancher wanted take it apart more carefully to save every thing that was good. We were able to save all the good lumber in the floor and walls along with the outside walls. We actually just lifted the roof off (ok, more truthfully, we made the roof cave in) and cut the outside walls down to use later. Where, I don’t know but there are done walls ready to make some kind of shed…

The demoition part of our project began at the first of January. I’ve never been so delighted and so satisfied to punch a whole in the wall. I’ve also never been sore like i was after swinging a sledge hammer like that for so many days! It took months to take down walls, clean it up and move on to the next room to do it all over again. But all the sudden the house was gone and we were digging for the foundation!

Ironically we had to put things on hold for a couple of weeks at the beginning of Msy. I say it’s ironic because there was too much rain that it slowed us to a stop. I NEVER would have thought we would have rain like that for so many days. It was so hard to not cuss the rain because we have needed it so badly for so long! I didn’t dare tell the man upstairs that his answer to our prayers came at an inconvenient time…

Eventually the storm clouds parted and my floor was laid! And then I blinked and the walls were up! It’s been incredible to watch it unfold right in front of me. I am so happy, so excited and so (happily) stressed.

And unfortunately that is why my little blog has been somewhat neglected. I’m just pulled in so many ways and throwing a house in the middle of it all didn’t help! But maybe I can appease myself by sharing it with you here. You want to hear about how a rancher’s wife puts a house up, right? I’m sure there are life lessons being learned that are worth someone reading about!