A(nother) Home in the (different) Woods

[dstig1]

Teg - thanks - and sorry about that. I do downsize all images, but the panorama ones just don't downsize well so they are the exception. The other ones should be small enough that even dialup isn't too bad and they shouldn't be too horrible on most screens. I suppose if you have a small screen then they might be a problem, but my mid sized 20" LCD doesn't show an issue with the regular ones (no scrolling needed for them), so I wasn't expecting much problems there.

[Obed]

I'll play with Obed's thread title for mine as it is pretty close to what we are doing too.

Dave,
I'm honored. I'm looking forward to following your thread.

We bought the land several years back. We had other property at the time but decided it was too far away from the cities so looked for a new lot closer in, so we sold that.

That's exactly what we did too.

It has always been my intention to build the house largely by myself, with help, of course, but not just contracting it but doing most of the design and building.

By doing it yourself you'll know it will be done to your satisfaction; that alone is worth a lot. I did a LOT of the digging and grading around our house. That alone kept me plenty busy. The rest of the time I focused my efforts checking on the work done by the subcontractors/workers. I'm amazed when I see people tackle a job this big by themselves. There's no way I could have done that with my work schedule. You'll have a great time if you like this sort of thing. Good luck to you!
Obed

[dstig1]

Thanks Obed! Yes, we have similar back stories, for sure. Also - I hear what you are saying. It takes a lot of time to do this stuff yourself, but then it takes a lot of time to watch the contractors to make sure they do it right too...

The best thing I am doing towards that end is working ahead as much as possible. I've been building cabinets part time for the past 2 years, for example. That of course requires the design to be pretty well set, but I also used my head in design so that things do not need to be precise or the ability to adjust needs to be built into the units.

[dstig1]

OK, so now we are into the "How the heck am I going to clean this up?" phase. Spring- Summer 2010.

First intention was going to be to haul blocks out in my pickup to my friend's house where we would split and stack. I have a 3/4 ton with an 8' bed, but to maximize capacity, I made sides for it to extend the bed up. Nothing fancy here (you can say that again) but it is removable by pulling a few pins and such and has held up well to the abuse. I used a turnbuckle on each corner to hold it down to the tie down points on the bed rails, and hitch pins to hold the cross bars together. The rear window cover slips over the cross bars as needed, and then slips right off to improve the rear view when not needed.





And a load, after I had started unloading it part way.


Loading a full rack of oak is waaay overloading the truck, so I need to keep the volume down a bit so the weight doesn't get out of control but it has hauled everything just fine. Everything you see in the bed is oak.

Oh yeah - and I picked up this little thing at the end of March/beginning of April 2010. There is no way I could have gotten done what I did without the tractor. Then when I got the grapple in the fall of 2010, I was kicking myself for not doing that sooner as that further improved my speed a ton.

[Kyle241]

Cool thread! I like following the progress, keep it coming.

[dstig1]

So now we are up to the late spring/summer of 2010 - the big cleanup. Now that I had a tractor and the bed extensions on the PU, I was ready to start clearing out the wood and piling the brush.

Let's talk tractor... Now the guy I bought the tractor off of was an interesting guy - turned out he is the regional Kubota rep who I had met a couple years previous at the state fair - and he only lives like a mile or two from my house. You gotta figure this guy isn't going to hose you on a tractor as it could really come back to haunt him..and indeed it has been just as advertised and well taken care of. Had 950ish hours when I got it. He is close to one of the local dealers (no surprise) and that guy had a trailer he was looking to sell.

The trailer was sort of a mistake as I was totally clueless here. It is 16' and 10k rated. It has enough weight capacity but it is short for the tractor. Plus it was partly not as advertised. The wiring was supposedly new and it had brakes on both axles. Well the wiring was a hash and the brakes weren't even connected. The first time I towed it my controller told me it wasn't connected (WHAT?!?!?!) and it was a bit "interesting" to stop. Plus I was paranoid as it was the biggest thing I had towed. So I tore into it and got the wiring fixed and the brakes connected. I figured out later (no experience to go from...) that the brakes were not working great but did have some braking ability which helped a lot. You can see the combo in my avatar. I saved some money (not enough) but would have been better off buying new and not spending a couple hundred on new brakes and a couple hundred on wiring and a couple hundred on new ramps ... and fixing some minor damage. Live and learn. Take this as a lesson, kids: Buy a new trailer, not used!

In talking with the dealer, he convinced me that forks were what I wanted to move brush around, so I got a set from him along with the trailer. I actually like the guy and got the feeling he just didn't know what condition the trailer was really in as he had only used once in 2-3 years and had got it from his BIL (Shoulda been a red flag there...).

So I used forks to haul brush around for the summer. I tried scooping brush with them, but that is a non-starter. You might get a couple sticks, but the bulk falls off both sides and you get nowhere fast. So what I did was pull up to a pile, drop the forks and get off and load them by hand. I could pile a ton on this way but it was tedious and tiring. ...But it sure worked better than dragging it around by hand!

So the summer came down to an alternating tango of getting the tractor out for one weekend to pile brush, then using the truck during the week to haul a few loads of blocks to my friend's house. Then I'd run out of blocks that were accessible, so it was back to the tractor again to move brush. Wash rinse repeat. All summer.

I was making progress at it. I had started a brush burn pile and it had grown like crazy (at the right edge of the first photo).

This is a look later in May after having done this dance for 6 weeks plus an intensive week of working at it (my vacations are truly memorable...)


You can sort of see the driveway running down the hill on the left side of this pic.


And what the pile of block looked like at my friend's house about this time. That's all oak (behind the older split stuff) and we're only getting started...


Skipping ahead a bit...By the 4th of July the pile had grown considerably... Again, all oak.


You can get around the clearing much better at this point, but the far side of the plateau is still an unholy mess, and there are still more trees to drop. You may notice that grove of poplars at the far edge of the clearing in the first pic. They all had to go as they would just fall on the house eventually. I've seen what poplars do when they get big - they snap off and come crashing down. Not good.

More to come...

[Obed]

So I used forks to haul brush around for the summer. I tried scooping brush with them, but that is a non-starter. You might get a couple sticks, but the bulk falls off both sides and you get nowhere fast. So what I did was pull up to a pile, drop the forks and get off and load them by hand. I could pile a ton on this way but it was tedious and tiring. ...But it sure worked better than dragging it around by hand!

What do your forks look like? I originally had a pair of forks that I strapped onto my FEL with chains. I could move logs, long limbs, and such, but smaller brush would fall off the forks. So I got a third fork. Now I can scoop up and move piles of smaller brush all day long.

Obed

[dstig1]

Regular Skid steer style. I have the SSQA on mine. They are lighter duty 48" forks so they weigh about 400 lbs. Adjustable fork positions. Here they are sitting on the trailer when I got the whole mess delivered. (But don't tell anyone - I solved the problem last fall with a grapple. Shhhh! It'll be our secret until I get that far in a couple more posts.... )

[scoutcub]

Regular Skid steer style. I have the SSQA on mine. They are lighter duty 48" forks so they weigh about 400 lbs. Adjustable fork positions. Here they are sitting on the trailer when I got the whole mess delivered. (But don't tell anyone - I solved the problem last fall with a grapple. Shhhh! It'll be our secret until I get that far in a couple more posts.... )

HaHa......I was wondering wth, he needs a grapple!!! Then I saw it listed in your sig line.....????oh yeah....ssshhhhhh......

[Kyle241]

Indeed, your siggy gave it way about the grapple! Need to see pics soon...