Building our dream home in the NC mountains

It's almost mid August 2011 and the love of my life and I are getting ready to begin a year long adventure building our dream cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. We're actually in Oregon, as we speak (8/11/11) wrapping up a glorious 10 day vacation with my wife's sister and brother-in-law at their cabin in the mountains.

Why the title "The Maple Tree Adventure"? Our property is on Maple Tree Lane at an elevation of 4200'...sounds like an adventure to us.

We've talked about this for a long time and now that it's a reality, we are excited to start the process. The process should take about 10 months. The build should be completed by next fall 2012.

Our goal is to offer up a blog entry daily. Some posts might include a photo, others may not. The adventure takes my wife and me in different directions for awhile. She teaches school and will finish out her career in June 2012 in Raleigh. I, on the other hand, will head to the mountains to get the cabin rolling in the next week or so (8/16/11).

Keep us in your prayers, leave your comments and plan to visit us next spring 2013.

Kent & Darlene
210 Maple Tree Lane
West Jefferson, NC 28694

(828) 406-4823

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Moving in the right direction

I have been released from prison, or so it seems. I spent the last two and a half months at the New River State Park in our pop-up camper. The accommodations were tight at best. Now don't get me wrong, when I spend time camping with my sweetheart, there aren't too many places she can hid in a small space before I eventually find her. As a matter of fact, when our boys were growing up, we traveled all over the USA in a pop-up camper and loved every minute of it BUT we had each other. I was alone for 2.5 months in about 9 square feet and it felt very much like a prison cell (not that I know what a prison cell should feel like ;^) I'm just guessing). The closest I ever got to spending time in jail was...never mind!

I am now in a mansion!!! I have been blessed with friends that I owe a great deal to because of their generosity. These friends, who are also clients of mine, headed back to Florida but not before making sure that I spend the upcoming winter at their cabin. Did I mention that their cabin is 3 minutes from our project? I owe these kind folks a great deal.

There's been some good progress on our cabin. We had the gravel delivered for the garage and it will be installed tomorrow and then the garage slab poured. The inspector came by today and approved our plumbing and said "go ahead and install the gravel, everything looks good". For those of you who have never built a home or served as your own general contractor, there are required inspections all along the way which, in my opinion, serve to make sure that we build to proper requirements, etc. Our inspector, Jonathan, is great. He wants our project to move forward as much as we do. Don't get me wrong, he's not cutting us any slack, he's doing a good job BUT we are too in making sure that we are compliant and stay within all necessary code requirements.




The framing package for the workshop was delivered yesterday. I'm going to have to have a talk with my supplier to make sure that future deliveries are handled more to "my liking" because this package was dropped (it slides off of a flatbed truck) almost in the hole where the workshop is being built. Not to worry, we'll have a prayer meeting and make sure that this doesn't happen again. Nothing was damaged but it sure makes it difficult to handle the wood!

We're expecting (it's just started to rain) rain this evening and Maurice will be back tomorrow to get the gravel, wire mesh, etc. into the garage for the pour. The inspector will be back to check the wire, gravel, etc and then we pour. We won't see Jonathan until all of the framing is finished, HVAC, electrical and plumbing installed.

Next week (Friday) the SIPS are being delivered. We'll have the floor system in and be ready for the walls. Once the walls are in place, we'll take a high leap...it might start looking like a cabin after all!

More coming,
z
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