The house is here!

Finally! Although it seems like it's been a long time, the house material has arrived - a little earlier than we first anticipated. We had called Bob this morning to get a time when we should come up to see the truck unloaded and help with counting the pieces to ensure we received everything we were supposed to. He surprised us by saying that it would be at his yard within the hour! We are having the house materials delivered to Bob's yard so he can keep them locked up and just move the stuff he needs up to the house each day. Easy for him and safer for us.

We hustled and got the shop ready to open and shortly after Loni arrived, we took off for the Granberg Log Homes yard in Barnhartvale. By the time we arrived, the truck had beaten us by a few minutes and already removed the straps securing the tarps protecting the windows, wood and other materials. The truck was hauling two good-sized trailers of goodies for us. It was an odd feeling, knowing that the stuff he was delivering would soon be converted into our new house. On closer inspection, we noticed that every package and pallet had our names clearly marked on it. 

Bob had fired up his enormous crane (he has ALL the toys you could think of!) in preparation for off-loading the trailers. He also had a very nice Bobcat with four-wheel steering and a variety of attachments including, of course, a pair of lifting forks. 

As it turned out, all the pallets but one were able to be unloaded using the Bobcat. The final pallet was unloaded with the crane. The whole process start-to-finish took less than two and a half hours. Pretty amazing!

The last load had to be unloaded with the crane

The Excavator's Coming

Our building permit placard by the gate.

We headed up to Barnhartvale on Saturday afternoon after first stopping in at the Kamloops Home and Leisure Show. I have to say, after attending the fall version of this show last year, I was VERY impressed by the number and quality of the exhibitors at this show. They filled both hockey rinks and the curling rink at the MacArthur Island Park venue. Parking was a challenge but we eventually found a spot big enough to let the big red truck rest up for a while. We filled in a zillion entries for the various door prizes and made some great contacts for products we would be needing as we move closer to completion on our place. At the Telus booth, we both updated our phones and calling plans to more closely match our usage habits. We are going to save about $70 per month over the "old" plans without giving up any of the services. Good news!
Of course, we had woken to snow in the morning but by the time we got to the property, most of it had melted away leaving the road/driveway a bit damp, but not slippery. As per the TNRD instruction, we posted the building permit placard on the fence by the entrance to our property. It felt good to be getting the ball rolling, construction-wise.

Joey, Alex & Carol exploring the field below the house.

The fields up top are really beginning to come to life. The grass is greening up in some areas and birdsong could be heard everywhere. A woodpecker was tap-tap-tapping nearby and although we couldn't positively identify it, we could see that it was black and white with a red patch on his head - probably a Downy Woodpecker. Joey found a disarticulated foot of a large ungulate, a big deer perhaps, or maybe an elk. Times like that make me rethink the whole "give me a kiss, Joey" thing!


We gathered up some of the wood just laying around and built up a small bonfire ready for our next visit, hiked up to the well location, and followed paths through some of the clearings. Sadly, it started to snow with a vengeance. We had not brought our really warm clothes, so we beat a hasty retreat back to the truck and headed for home. This should be our last visit up before the basement is excavated.

Random pic of me since I don't seem to be here much!

* Excavation Update *

Bob Granberg dropped in this morning to pick up all the "Issued for Construction" plans, specifications and the materials list. He will be moving his equipment up to our site over the next few days and will be starting on the basement excavation early next week! He figured that we would have all the foundation and footings in by the end of the week...
I have to say, this makes the whole project feel VERY real now!

Fore!

Notice the new driveway cutting across the field behind Carol

Saturday was Alex's birthday and being a young, single man, he likes to sleep in on the weekend. We were going to take him golfing and then out for dinner later in the day, so we took a trip up to the property early in the morning so we would be back to meet him at noon. The weather has been quite good, if a bit cool for this time of the year, but we were hoping that the road had dried up even better than last week. All our good thoughts were rewarded as we easily drove all the way up to the house site. It was impressive to see the ground again, with virtually all of the snow melted off our construction site. Joey was having fun exploring all around without getting all muddy - yay! We decided to move the house a few feet further down the hill and away from the road - only about 30 feet from where we had originally planned to build it. We don't want the back of the house pushed right up against the trees behind the house and wanted to leave our options open for the position of the driveway and future outbuildings (e.g. garage, barn, etc.). Before leaving, we drove the truck up and down the driveway a couple of times, trying to flatten any ruts that were developing and compact the surface a bit. I can see that we need to do a lot more of that before we can get the concrete trucks up here.

The mounds of dirt left over from the septic test holes

The day was overcast but quite pleasant. The forecast was for 16*C and sunny in the afternoon. It would be nice for an early season round of golf. We picked up Alex and went out to Pineridge Golf Course, in Barnhartvale. Pineridge is an "executive length" course meaning that there are no par 5's and limited par 4's (3, in fact). Being that I hadn't swung a club in anger in over 7 years, I thought it would be a good course to get started on again.

Joey about to pounce on some unsuspecting (imaginary?) creature

It turned out to be perfect and we played most of the round in our t-shirts - beautiful, warm and sunny. The views from the upper portions of the course was fantastic. To the north was the South Thompson River with the Hoo Doos rising up behind. To the south, we looked straight up the bluffs - too steep to walk in most spots, and east and west was the beautiful river valley, lush and starting to green up nicely.
We had a wonderful game - what a great way to get some exercise and enjoy the early season warm day. We loaded up the clubs and retired to Lynx's Grill in Sahali for a great meal. Later in the evening, sadly, my beloved Calgary Flames lost to the league-leading Vancouver Canucks...again. It was the final game of the regular season and my Flames had been eliminated from the playoffs earlier in the week so no big deal. They'll soon be joining us on the fairways!
Just wait 'til next year!

Waiting for the Warm

Spring in Kamloops. It was +18*C in the sunshine on Wednesday, but 2" of snow & -2*C on Friday night. It rained most of Friday evening but we woke to find everything covered in a fresh blanket of fluffy white stuff. We planned to go up to our place in Barnhartvale and were discouraged by the poor weather we'd been having the last couple of days. We were hoping to go up and find the driveway snow free and dry. This morning's weather was telling us it would be much different!
We took all our recycling in to town and dropped it off before picking up Alex. Now, in town, it was windy, but there wasn't even a hint of any snow. In fact, everything looked pretty dry and springlike there. Lots of motorcycles and bicycles on the road. It wasn't what I would call "warm", but it seemed to be getting better by the minute.

Alex and his Mom

We took the highway out to the Barnhartvale turnoff and started to climb out of the valley. We were almost surprised by the condition of the roads. They were clear of any snow and for the most part, dry. We drove all the way up to Campbell Range Road, in fact, before there was even a hint of snow on the road surface. We put the truck into 4-wheel Low and carried on up the driveway. It was wet. However, Jayson's guys have done a good job and the rock and gravel kept the first section easily passable. I was hesitant to go any further than the entrance in the truck but the ground didn't seem too bad when I got out to open the gates so we thought we'd give it a try. There were a couple of softer sections but we had no trouble trundling all the way up to the house site.

Alex and Carol check out the culvert that will be our well.

Everything is greening up once the snow is gone.

The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day! It felt quite warm with the sun reflecting off the fresh snow and with the wind retreating for the moment. We were very happy to see that most of the snow had melted off. Even the stakes marking where the house will sit, had fallen over due to the lack of support. I was able to easily push them down, reseating them into the unfrozen ground. Another week of warm weather and virtually all the snow will be gone. Then we need the ground to dry up so the concrete trucks can get up. It won't be long before it all starts happening!