We know our new address!

Exciting news yesterday - our building permit has been approved and the township assigned us an address for the new house. It's a private road, however, so we can't give the address to people who might want to map directions to our house on the internet, because (at least on Google maps), private roads are not recognized. We'll have to use an address on the main road when we give people directions.

DH left a message with the builder that our permit has been approved, so hopefully we'll hear back from him and can get moving on this house! Our builder is a commercial builder who does a few private residences for people he knows. DH worked with him on our church sanctuary project a couple of years ago and asked if he would be willing to build our house.

House Plans

I thought I'd post our house plans today. We had an architect draw up these plans for us.

We're anxious to break ground. DH filed for a building permit and we're still waiting on some building estimates to come in. We're hoping to break ground in September and get the house under cover before winter so that the builders can work through the winter. Our plan is to be done in early Spring and to put our current house on the market just before the new house is ready to move into. The best laid plans of mice and men...we shall see...

I stopped by Home Depot yesterday to look at refrigerators - I wanted to make sure that the spot we are planning to put it will actually be the right size. The refrigerators that I'm looking at are ones with the freezer on the bottom and French doors on the top so that I can fit large trays of food in the refrigerator, as we entertain a lot. When the builder built this house, he decided on the size of the refrigerator opening by measuring his own refrigerator, which he later admitted was rather old and small. The frig we brought with us when we moved here from NC was practically new and we had to sell it because it wouldn't fit in the space here. I could have lived with the smaller frig if I could only open the freezer door all the way - the builder put the frig so close to the corner that the door hits the cabinets on the wall next to the refrig wall. I long to be able to put a 9x13 pan into my freezer. That's why I'm bound and determined to make sure the refrigerator in the new house is done right!

Here we go!

Well, we are on our way - the land has been purchased, the design is decided upon, the issuing of the building permit is underway (hopefully, we'll have it soon). Meanwhile, I thought I'd post some of the photos of the property we bought.

These photos are from January when the leaves were off the trees.

You can see a glimpse of the river in the next photo (right in the center of the photo, behind the base of the trees).



There are 2 ponds on the property, shown above. At the moment the ponds are green and scuzzy - anyone have any ideas how to get rid of the scum? We saw 1000s of tadpoles in one of the ponds in May. Supposedly, there are koi in at least one of the ponds, but we have yet to see any.


More later!