The year has not quite gone as planned.  Who am I kidding?  Nothing has gone even remotely close to our general plan.  I could go on and on – I’ll spare yall the details and just give highlights.

• By September, we had managed to get the house “live-ably dry”.  Is that even a word?  Eh, it works.  And mostly around budget.  And all without contracting anything out.  Which technically was our original goal.   Not bad for some folks with no building experience!  Thank you Google and YouTube!
• No, we are not including siding in the “dry” stage.  Mostly because it has been a year, and we know we will add on, just haven’t figured out timing.  We figured we would be at that stage by now.  It would totally be a waste to do all the rock and siding just to add on a few months later.
•  Mr. has been out of work for most of the year.  When he did have work it was of the “just barely enough” variety.  Not very conducive to building a house with cash.
• Needless to say, the house has taken much much much longer than anticipated.
• We stayed with my parents for 6 weeks during the dog days of summer.
• Officially, unofficially, moved into the framed out, insulation and stair-less house.  Even brought the mattresses.  Oh was that *heaven* for an 8 month pregnant mama!
•  Had Baby Girl in October.  Too cute if I do say so myself.
•  Had Postpartum Preeclampsia and water around my heart.  Thankfully it resolved within a couple of months.  Strangely, my blood pressure is much more temperamental than it was before.
• Stayed with Mr.’s parents during the coldest couple of months of winter.
•  Bless all of our families’ hearts for dealing with our large, often chaotic, bunch.
• Besides those 4ish months we have been living at the house.  Slowly doing whatever projects we can as time and cash allow.
• In January, Mr. tweaked a muscle in his back pretty bad, severely limiting his ability to build.
• In March, Mr. started a “typical” job – our first in over 13 years.  A huge change from the self-employed life we are used to.  So far it has been such a huge blessing!  The Lord has truly “made all things work together for our good”!

 

*  Utilities

•  rain water is taking a larger role than we had originally thought, it will be used for toilet flushing, hooked to a batch solar hot water heater for washing laundry, possibly to an outdoor shower and of course garden watering.
• well water will need to be figured out.
• definitely doing solar power, debating how much to do via solar vs grid power (like the power hog well pump and filters – would it be more cost effective to go grid vs how to configure it to be offgrid).

*  Build the garden – while we will likely not plant much this spring/summer, I want to have it ready to go for spring 2014