miramadar
Gold Member
We started building our house back in November. I figured I'd document the our process here for your enjoyment (with pics, of course).
It actually all start back in July of '08. We were on the cusp of starting our new house. But we were having "issues" with our bank with delayed the process. My father-in-law and I got to talking about the house we were going to build. We had planned on building something as small and as cheap as we could. My father-in-law, who lives about 20 minutes away from us, had just purchased a Hudson band saw mill back in the spring and I think he was itching to really try it out. He knew of some property bordering his that a coal company had leased to strip mine. They were sub-leasing the timber rights to a logging company who was pretty much clear cutting the whole piece...but they weren't taking any of the hemlock pines. He knew of a number of huge hemlock trees back there as he hunted that land since he was a boy. He suggested that I purchase some of the hemlocks as the timber company was selling them for $40 per 1000 board feet. I agreed and we set off on July 4.
It was quite an ordeal as I had never done any logging before. My father-in-law owns a small dozer that we used to pull the felled trees out of the woods, which was about a mile away from the saw mill. I learned a lot that summer and although it was VERY HARD work, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
Well, we got the wood cut and the lumber sawed by September. By that time, the recession was starting to really set in...gas was nearly $5 a gallon, the price of everything was outrageous. So, my wife and I decided to hold off until the following spring to start building to see what the stock market and the American economy was going to do. We broke ground on Feb. 7, 2009, but our bank was really dragging their feet getting our loan processed. It was very frustrating as we were ready to get going. But everything happens for a reason. We ended up going with a different lending company at a much better rate and ended up finding a builder we really liked. But he couldn't start until September. But during that time, we got the loan approved and worked on getting the plumbing roughed in and the basement poured. Our primary builder doesn't do masonry, so we had to find someone else to lay all the block.
So, you're up to speed on the process. I'll post some pics in a minute.
It actually all start back in July of '08. We were on the cusp of starting our new house. But we were having "issues" with our bank with delayed the process. My father-in-law and I got to talking about the house we were going to build. We had planned on building something as small and as cheap as we could. My father-in-law, who lives about 20 minutes away from us, had just purchased a Hudson band saw mill back in the spring and I think he was itching to really try it out. He knew of some property bordering his that a coal company had leased to strip mine. They were sub-leasing the timber rights to a logging company who was pretty much clear cutting the whole piece...but they weren't taking any of the hemlock pines. He knew of a number of huge hemlock trees back there as he hunted that land since he was a boy. He suggested that I purchase some of the hemlocks as the timber company was selling them for $40 per 1000 board feet. I agreed and we set off on July 4.
It was quite an ordeal as I had never done any logging before. My father-in-law owns a small dozer that we used to pull the felled trees out of the woods, which was about a mile away from the saw mill. I learned a lot that summer and although it was VERY HARD work, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
Well, we got the wood cut and the lumber sawed by September. By that time, the recession was starting to really set in...gas was nearly $5 a gallon, the price of everything was outrageous. So, my wife and I decided to hold off until the following spring to start building to see what the stock market and the American economy was going to do. We broke ground on Feb. 7, 2009, but our bank was really dragging their feet getting our loan processed. It was very frustrating as we were ready to get going. But everything happens for a reason. We ended up going with a different lending company at a much better rate and ended up finding a builder we really liked. But he couldn't start until September. But during that time, we got the loan approved and worked on getting the plumbing roughed in and the basement poured. Our primary builder doesn't do masonry, so we had to find someone else to lay all the block.
So, you're up to speed on the process. I'll post some pics in a minute.
