All the Battlefields

Okay, I have two days of blogs to catch you up with.  Again, the wi-fi is very weak here tonight at a different campground, and I'm even right next to the campground office where the signal is stronger, but still pretty slow.  I'm also sitting on the front porch in the pitch black during a light rain.  The things I do for you guys.  :-)  Alright, let's get started.

Yesterday, we had a THRILLING day full of battlefields.  Those that know me or have followed the blog long enough know that battlefields and forts are my least favorite National Park sites.  The reason I don't like them is because I can never keep track of who the good guys/bad guys are when they talk about the specific people leading different things.  Plus, we end up staring at a field where I'm supposed to visualize the events that unfolded there.  No...it's a field...that's all I see.  But I digress...

We started at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park (sorry T.R., there was no postcard there). Guilford Courthouse has a driving tour which takes you through different parts of the 1780 (give or take a year) battle.  The driving tour ends with an impressive statue of General Greene.

General Greene Statue

The next battlefield was King's Mountain National Military Park.  Most battlefields have a driving tour, but this one had a 1.5 mile loop trail through different parts of the battle.  It's a pretty hilly hike because you are going up and down parts of the mountain.  Now, I still had the same feelings I have towards battlefields with this one, however, it was a really pretty hike through the woods.

Memorial at King's Mountain

The last battlefield of the day was Cowpens National Battlefield.  This one had a 1 mile loop trail which was a pretty hike through a field.  If you want to know more about any of these battles, ask Steve.  He knows what's going on in them a lot more than I do.

See...it's a field.  I promise this is at Cowpens, but how would you really know??  ;-)

We were hoping to get to Carl Sandburg National Historic Site in time to get a tour, but we missed the last tour of the day by a few minutes.  However, we had an hour to explore the grounds and go see the goat barn, and the baby goats!  We spent the entire hour there - they had to kick us out.

Carl Sandburg's home - it really is a shame he had such a terrible view.

All of us in front of the lake at the house.

These two were playing.  Darla is the mom of the two babies that were born on April 10 (Dancer & Dreamer).

:-p

These two were born in March - I didn't catch their names but they were so playful!

One of the babies born April 10 - he was sooooo sleepy and rested in Jamie's hand.  ALL THE HEART EYES!!!

After Carl Sandburg, we ditched the RV at the campground and headed into Asheville for beers in small glasses.  We hit up Asheville Brewing Company and Hi-Wire Brewing.  Hi-Wire's dishwasher was broken, so we only had a beer each.  What we all had we liked.  Ashville's beers were okay, but they had a decent-sized beer list.  Hi-Wire was fun because they had a couple pinball machines - one of which was the one my parents still have that I grew up playing (Captain Fantastic)!

Asheville Brewing Company

Hi-Wire Brewing Company

This brings me to day two.  We started the day by going back to Carl Sandburg NHS to get the house tour.  This was an interesting tour because I didn't really know much about Mr. Sandburg before going to the park.  He wrote a 6-volume book about Abraham Lincoln and won a Pulitzer Prize for the last 4 volumes.  Before the tour, we visited the baby goats again and Jamie and I tried to figure out how we could go home with one.

Every room except for the kitchen and bathrooms had bookcases in it.  They had 17,000 books in their house!

Mrs. Sandburg ran the dairy farm - her filing system made me laugh.

Mrs. Sandburg's room was the prettiest.

We were able to get to Smoky Bear Campground early which was nice.  We ditched the RV and then headed over to Manhattan Project National Historic Park.  This is where all the work was done to build the atomic bombs we dropped in WWII.  I had no idea that the entire town of Oak Ridge was forced to pick up and move so the government could create its own community of people who worked on this project and live in secret without any of the information leaking to anyone.  It was pretty fascinating.

Trying out the Van de Graff machine

Jamie trying out the Van de Graff machine

Flat top house - once they kicked everyone out of Oak Ridge, they rebuilt the community with these houses for the Manhattan Project workers.

When we stepped inside the house it felt like we walked into a post-apocalyptic shelter.  It was really weird!

Bedroom in the house

We ended the day at the RV cooking dinner (thanks Steve!) and then we figured out what's on tomorrow's agenda since we are in the Smokies now!  Here's hoping the rain that's projected for the next two days doesn't actually happen!

Edited to add:  the campground owner just gave me a better wi-fi password and things are running great!  I can add pictures to this blog now - I wasn't planning on it at first!!  Thank you so much Smoky Bear Campground!!

RV There Yet?

Boy does it feel good to be on vacation!

As I mentioned in the last blog, we are pausing on posts about the house while we enjoy a fun trip in the Carolinas and Tennessee.  For most of the trip, we'll be in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but we'll be hitting a few smaller sites along the way.  We're doing this trip a little different than usual - we rented an RV with our friends Craig & Jamie.  Ever since Steve and I drove across the country in 2012, we've thought owning an RV would be pretty fun.  Since then, we've tortured ourselves by going to RV shows at least once a year and dreaming about how fun it would be.  We decided that renting one first would be smart to give it a try and see if RV life is really something we'd like to do one day.

So that brings us to this trip.  We wanted to RV close enough to home so that it's not a super expensive trip, but we also wanted to RV far enough away to get a feel for driving it, parking it, camping, etc.  So we settled on the Smokies.  Craig & Jamie were on board in joining us too, so we have great travel buddies!

We picked up the RV at 9:30 this morning and had an hour long orientation so we could learn how to operate everything.  We got on the road around 11:00.  Jamie and I enjoyed the back of the RV by watching movies and drinking beer.  That definitely made the time fly by!

We didn't get into Greensboro until after 5:00, which meant we were too late to go to our first park of the trip.  No worries though, we're going to see it tomorrow and be all caught up on our plans.  Instead we used the evening to do a WalMart run for food and supplies and then Steve went to Pig Pounder Brewing and picked up a growler of their Boar's Brown for us to enjoy at the RV site.  Pretty low key day, but we had a lot of fun just hanging out in the RV!

That there's an RV!

Off we go! 

#dranks

Getting set up

Shitter's full!

Dinner

This Blog is a Pane to Write

I have good news, bad news, and more good news.  The good news is that we have shingles on our roof and our windows were installed today (now the title of the blog should make sense)!  The bad news is this is the last blog about Home Base until the end of April.  The other good news is the reason it's the last blog until the end of the month is because this blog will be returning to its regularly scheduled programming (parks) since we'll be in the Smokies next week!  If we get updates about the house, I will definitely share them.  Otherwise, feel free to follow our trip in the Smokies with our friends Jamie, Craig, and beers in small glasses.  ;-)

That's pretty much it for the updates!  What's kind of nice about going on vacation next week is hopefully all the boring stuff will happen to the house while we are gone.  By boring I mean HVAC and electric.  Anyway, enjoy the pictures from this afternoon below!

Front of house (excuse the streak of gray - they spray painted our address on our house)

Side of house

Back of house

Other side of house

Happy (Mini) Housewarming!

I need to start this blog on a small downside.  Windows were not delivered on Friday, which means they were not installed over the weekend.  We haven't seen Victor since Wednesday, so we don't know when the windows are coming yet.  The framers did finish up on Friday by framing out the rest of the garage.  That's pretty much it as far as updates for the house.

We had a few friends and family who wanted to see the house all framed out so we were able to all get together this morning at the house.  We had a nice crowd:  my parents, Steve's parents, our friend T.R., my best friend Amy and her husband, and Amy's parents.  We turned it into a mini housewarming by having beer and snacks!  We even set up the table from our Honda Element about where our kitchen island will be so it was like we actually were hosting a party.  We could have used those windows because it was a little chilly, but Steve and I had a great time giving tours of the house.  If you're in the area, let us know if you'd like to come by for a tour too!  :-)

In the kitchen, standing around the food (which is what happens at all parties!)  :-)

In front of the fireplace

Nailed It!

There has been a lot of progress on the house this week!  One milestone is that the second story is all framed out and we have steps that are secured properly!  Our superintendent, Victor, didn't want us using the steps the other day, so we just waited until he left to sneak up there (don't tell my mom).  ;-)  I couldn't wait any longer to see how it all turned out!  I was especially excited to see the master bathroom since we completely redesigned it on paper.  I think it looks great so far!

The other milestone is that the roof is up!  We found out from Victor today that our shingles are on back order, but they should be in on Tuesday.  HVAC was ready to be delivered, but Victor pushed it back to wait for the shingles because it's not good to let all that get wet and we have some rain coming Sunday and Monday.  The downside is, I was so excited to get a video of the second story today that I completely forgot to get outside pictures of the house.  I'll take more pictures over the weekend since windows may be installed tomorrow or Saturday.

We did discuss the bump-out issue from the last blog with Victor and Dennis (the framing foreman).  They explained that when they see the bump-outs in the plans, they end up not building them because the fridge doors will end up hitting the wall.  We would have appreciated being told this up front, but we worked through it.  They could tell that when we heard their reasoning we were a little frustrated, so they said that we should go home and figure out the dimensions of the fridge we want.  If we still want or need the bump-out, then it was an easy fix to do.  That evening Steve and I compared the two fridges we were considering.  They were basically the same model, only one is bigger than the other.  We decided to go with the counter-depth model which means we don't need the bump-out.  What Victor and Dennis don't know about me is I have a solid memory.  Hopefully there aren't any more bumps in the road later, but if so, I will certainly be bringing up the fact that we let this one go.  :-)

In the meantime, enjoy the video of the second floor!  There might be a blog on Sunday if the windows are put in over the weekend.

That's a Real Nice Surprise!

I'm doing a bonus blog today because I'm just too excited to wait for the week's progress before sharing today's pictures!  When we stopped by on Friday, we asked the framers if they thought they'd be able to work on Saturday because the 5-8" of snow that was forecast was turning into less snow each time we checked the weather.  Rain was in the forecast instead, but they were even backing off on that a bit too.  The framers didn't think they'd get to work, so we didn't get our hopes up that they would.

Some friends of ours, Matt & Michelle, are interested in building a house, so today they went to a couple model homes, including the one of our beloved Somerset.  We joined them for the house tours and then after they saw the Somerset, we showed them Home Base.  We were greeted with a "real nice surprise" (Christmas Vacation, anyone?) because when we drove into the driveway, we saw that the framers DID work yesterday!  We now have second story walls!  We don't have stairs yet, but Steve was brave enough to go up the ladder and get some pictures for me.  As soon as they get the bedrooms framed in, I'll do another video of that floor too.  In the meantime, enjoy the pictures below.

On a small downside, we did figure out that the small bump-out for the fridge (so that we can get a fridge bigger than counter-depth) wasn't framed out.  We were hopeful that they just gave us a bonus and extended the whole wall 6 inches, but when we were at the model and measured today, we confirmed we didn't get that bonus or the bump-out.  Steve emailed our team at Bob Ward to see if maybe it's added later or if it is something that needs to be fixed.  Hopefully this is an easy fix!

Front of house

Side of house

Back of house

Other side of house

He is braver than I am!

The next pictures will make more sense once everything is framed in, but this is inside our bedroom, looking into our bathroom.  The rectangular window is a transom window in our shower.

Looking towards the front of the house - two bedrooms in the front

Looking towards the front of the house - the single window is the hall bathroom, the double window is another bedroom.

Looking at the back corner of our room

Looking out the side window of our room - this will eventually be our garden.

Wide shot of the whole floor

Wide shot from the other corner.

No More Lumbering Around!

I'm so excited to be sharing this blog!  After over two weeks of nothing happening to the house, framing officially started this week!  We found out on Monday that they hadn't started anything due to last week's weather.  We did have more days with rain than we did without it last week, but there were some days where they could have worked.  Their email on Monday blamed the rain which made us a little nervous since it was in the forecast for most of this week and a lot of next week.  This would have meant an entire month would go by before they started framing.  I was getting antsy (to put it mildly).  Thankfully, things started moving this week.

We ended up having rain on Tuesday, but they did start laying the sub-floor for the main floor that day!

Sub-floor on the main level

Sub-floor on top

Framed in basement - the steps will be in front of the wall that's framed there

Basement...not much to frame in this part.  The lumber was soaked from all the rain, so it was pretty wet in the basement!

Wednesday didn't have a whole lot of rain, but it was really windy.  Not as windy as the storm from a few weeks ago, but windy enough that they were a little nervous to put walls up that day.  They did end up putting up the back wall of the dining room and the wall from one side of the house.

Looking from the front corner - dining room in back; family room and office/bar on the side

Looking from the side - dining room wall to the left, family room and office straight ahead

On Thursday, it finally started to look like a house!!  I got there while they were still working, so I didn't want to go inside and be in their way, but I took some pictures of the outside.

Front of the house - we got a 3-car garage which is why it sticks out so much in the front 

Side of house

Back of house

Garage/other side of house

Today, the framers completed the sub-floor for the second story and we got to walk through the main floor of the house.  That's when it really hit me that we are building a house!  I got SO excited that we were walking through OUR house!  We've been through the model countless times, but this time it was ours.  It was such a surreal feeling!  I took lots of pictures, but I figured a video tour might be better (see below).

Where I found Steve after the video tour