This blog is for me to share my perspective of our house building experience. I am thinking it may be a bit like therapy for me and am going to try and update it daily if possible. I'll share the good, bad and not so pretty. This all started as a dream and as reality is getting closer and closer, it's a bit scary and still hard to believe. I am not really the outdoorsy person, so this will be interesting to say the least. I have always lived a comfortable life, with comfortable things and really rather spoiled by my parents and husband. But my life of easy street is coming to an end and moving me to Lopsided Lane. So this is where the story really starts. My husband came across an ad for 5 acres in Palmer, Alaska. That is owner finance, because of past mistakes and a whole other story, but traditional lending isn't an option for us for awhile. Jeremy met with the man, walked the land and we were hooked. We could finally own our little piece of Alaska!! We didn't want to just own a piece, we want to live on that piece which we so lovingly call lopsided lane. So our dream and adventure begins. The land is just that raw land. So after lots of late nights and research we (Jeremy mostly) has come up with a plan. We will live in a trailer of sorts, while we save up to build and start getting utilities on the land. So next summer we can build our dream log cabin home. Sounds easy enough. Box truck bought, truck camper bought, land bought. Sell everything big, because the box truck will be where we keep all our boxes, pantry, closet and Jeremy's mobile office. Our plan is coming together. My fears are mounting!! I like electricity, running water and plumbing. That will all change here in a few short days.
After Jeremy started to clear out a few trees for our driveway, we realized it would take us weeks to do it. So we called in a big excavator to do the job. He came in and cleared the drive way and house area, then leveled most of it in 2 days. We still need more gravel and stumps cleared and dirt work done. But now that we have a place to put the box truck and camper, things are looking up. One less thing on our plate.
Now the focus is back to the rental place. Finish packing up the house and getting it loaded into the box truck. We are probably 80% there. I just need to get the closet set up in the truck and start moving clothes out there. Then we'll have a really good idea of exactly how much we have left in the house. Once everything is packed and in the box truck, we can take it down to the property and start setting up our new living quarters. We are going to have the camper and box truck parallel and have a huge tarp over the top of them so we have more living area. We were able to get a bunch of free pallets and will put them together with some plywood on top and make a deck area under the tarp. Jeremy will also have to build a outhouse for us. Zoe will be able to win at 2 truths and a lie, she will be potty trained in an outhouse or port-a-potty. I still need to call about a port-a-potty. Adding it to my list to do tomorrow!!
We are waiting to hear from the power company to see how many feet of power they will have to run to our property. At $20/foot hopefully not to far onto our property. Jeremy is going to have to build a remote meter and then run the rest of the electricity lines to our "house". We are also planning on building a 20'X20' log cabin for the winter. We were wanting to also get the well dug before winter, but that is around $40/foot and it will probably be 35 feet down. So around $1,400, it may happen before winter. I'm not quite sure though, I did notice that some leaves are starting to change and the fireweed has been blooming for a few weeks now. So fall is a few weeks away. I know a septic tank is out of the question before winter, as it's going to be about $7,000 to install one. Since we don't have that in cash, we won't be getting one until next year.
I keep tossing around the idea of getting a part time job. I'm not sure if it will ease some of the burden of money or cause more stress in all the other areas. With Jeremy starting his Masters in a few weeks and him working full-time and building a house. It may just be to much.
