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

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Almost ready for a glass of wine

Took at trip this morning to almost Tennessee to pick up the locust posts from Rodney. Rodney is my locust post guru. 4 months ago I contracted with him to find me 10 locust trees that were 10' long with about a 10" diameter base. He came through and had them within 2 weeks of the order. He has stored them since today. These posts will be used, with bark, to hold up the wrap around walkway and the main porch.

Basically everywhere you see a post in the photo to the left, there will be one of these locust posts directly on top of the lower post. There are 10 of them starting at the one you see to the extreme right all the way around to the extreme left and beyond.

I gotta tell you, but promise you won't tell Darlene, these posts weigh a ton each and helping Rodney did a number on my already fragile lower back. I guess no more children!

View into dining room

To the right are more shots of the windows and doors.  Tim and James finished installing them today. The door next to the garage door will be installed tomorrow because I had to pick it up from Lowes today.

The other door that's not installed and won't be until I make it is our entrance door. It's extra wide and will be built as an ascent piece. That will happen after we finish all of the 'have to do stuff'. In the meantime, a piece of plywood will be screwed to the jamb to ward off weather and whoever...


View from dining room into living room
View of dining room & living room exterior










This last photo, on the right, is another piece of locust that Rodney found for us to use as a light post and a house number post. Obviously I added the cross member, hanging light and numbers (not yet installed). The numbers are made from 1/4" steel that a friend laser cut for us. The numbers are rusting as we blog. We wanted rusted numbers and it takes a bit of time...but we're getting close.

I mentioned in the title "Almost ready for a glass of wine". It is wine time in my part of the world. Darlene and I wind down with a glass of wine every day before we start supper. Being apart hasn't been fun...so I now have my glass in hand..."cheers baby doll!"

More coming,
z









Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)