The Project

OK Here goes. I know there has been a smattering of posts about this project, but so much of the pre-building prep work is slow and tedious. (There are some posts that show moving the driveway, installing the septic system, and some that show the PHENOMENAL view...
A lesson learned from the last cabin was, start with a level surface. This lot is fairly steep slope, so the parking spots required some engineering. For now they'll be crushed stone surface (4 yards of stone were left behind by the guy who thought he could install a septic, delivered the rock, and quit. I ended up going with a system that didn't require rock). So, what 'building' means right now is, filling buckets up with rock and hand carrying them up to the parking. Each bucket weighs 80 pounds, two buckets at a time. My best day so far was 20 trips.
Now for building forms for the stone wall on the uphill side of the parking. It'll match the downhill wall. This was all dug by hand; haven't decided yet if I'll hand dig the foundation or not. The extra dirt and rocks were used to build a retaining wall and flat area for a tree next to the house.
I truly believe that by the time you drive your first nail, you're in the home stretch of building. People offer to help, but when they think of building, they think 'framing', which is a tiny percentage of the project. Most of the work of any building project is digging. If you want to build, learn to enjoy using a shovel and moving dirt around. (If you go back in prior blogs, you'll see Byron helping with some very mundane, tedious, dirty work. Some of it involved laser beams, other involved scraping off his knuckles. No wonder I don't get more help)