I just looked up my last posting, and it was mid-August!

Now, you might think I’ve not made any updates because we’ve moved in and are just enjoying life in The County…..oh, how I wish! Nope, we aren’t anywhere near. Yes, there’s been some progress, but there has been so many delays, and let’s be honest, some pretty poor work and even worse work ethics, that it’s just been too hard for me to write. I don’t like being negative or pessimistic, it’s just not who I am, so it was easier to say nothing.

But we have made some progress, so I’m about to give you some updates. Get ready to see the good, the bad, and sometimes, the ugly!

Well not actually heaven, unless heaven is about 5 foot nine! But we do have stairs to our loft, and they are beautiful! If they look a little rough it’s because we are going to be painting them and adding a sisal runner to keep the safe….oh, and there will be a railing, I promise!

Thanks to James King of Sensational Interiors for his awesome turn around (made in under 2 weeks) and even better craftsmanship.  If you need stairs – James is your guy!

Thanks be to God – the Main House roof is finally on. If you are counting, it was 27 days from delivery to water not getting into the house. It has been a very stressful 27 days as we’ve had lots of rain and storms. And yup, you are right, we do have some water damage….sigh.

But we’re pretty happy to see the progress on the roof. Here’s what it looks like:

The drywall in the guest house is almost done. And James King from Sensational Interiors will have the stairs to the loft installed in about a week. So we’re pretty excited about the progress….at the guest house at least!

No work being started in the main house until the roof is on. But Dave Lacroix of David Lacroix Electrical Inc. has started working on the electricity from the pole to the houses. Getting electricity will truly be a milestone!

We are at the roofing stage. The guest house is almost done, and it looks really great! We are really happy we went for the red steel roof.

But the main house is taking way too long! The reason for concern is that the only thing between our interior and the great outdoors is shrink-wrap! It can hold up pretty good, but the first week after the house was delivered The County had some pretty torrential rain, and alas, we have water INSIDE the house.

But this week the roof over the main house got started. Fingers crossed it’s done by next week and we can breath easy.

It was pretty exciting when the guest house roof was set. It was the end of the delivery, but just the beginning of getting the houses finished!

We thought you’d like to see how they set a house on the foundation. Getting the house off the trailer was really difficult. You could cut the tension with a knife as the weight shifted each time Tom from Bay Crane lifted the unit.

But once we got momentum, the unit actually moved onto the foundation pretty smoothly!

Tuesday was a busy day! It was a combination of lots of activity and a lot of standing around and waiting. The sun was beating down on us, which is so much better than rain, but still, made for some nasty sunburns. But let’s not get ahead!

It started at around 7 a.m. at Green Terra Home’s factory, where Action Towing had loaded two of the units on Monday. The main house came as 3 units, the guest house as 2 units, then an additional load for the main house roof trusses.

The drivers from Action Towing are definitely professionals. And they are also really nice guys. The primary goal is their safety and the safety of those around their trucks and loads, as well as the safe delivery of our units. I can’t thank Dave and Kirby, our drivers, and Carl and Greg, their escorts, enough.

The drive from Trenton to our land is about 66 kilometers. It took the first truck about 2 hours as it was pretty heavy. And when Kirby got there he wasn’t happy with the width of the driveway. Mike Goheen from Goheen construction to the rescue and the drive got widened!

Tom Finkel is the owner/operator of Bay Crane, and he was on for moving the units from the truck to the foundation. Ed and Joe from GTH were on site to make sure the units were strapped properly, and along with Mike Goheen, Sean and Mike helped put each unit in place. Now I am making this sound way easier than it was. The first unit wasn’t placed until 2:30 p.m., and the second around 4 p.m.

We had to call it a day, but had a plan in place for day two, where the final unit for the main house and the 2 units for the guest house would be delivered on Wednesday.

I know I’ve been given quite a few “target dates” for the house to be delivered, but I think we have a winner. First it was February, then April…oh, then there was the drop-dead of May 28. We blasted past the next window of June 28 – July 5 , but now it looks like Tuesday July 11 is it!

I’m feeling pretty comfortable about this as we did a walk-through this past Thursday, and Action Towing has been booked to bring the 5 units and 1 load of trusses and Bay Crane will be there to move the units onto the foundation.

We are building a 3 bedroom house with an additional small guest house and garage on 6 acres in the south-east of the County.  It will take about 6 weeks to all come together, but we should be able to move in sometime in September.

The down side of building on limestone is you can go down only so far then you have to build up.

The up side is what you do dig up is some really great rock! Mike Goheen did a great job at saving and stacking the slabs he dug up, so we can use them around the property for landscaping as well as our front steps. We’ll be needing his front end loader to move them around, but we think it’s going to quite beautiful.