We have a hole in the ground

The title for this post is self-explanatory - finally, excavation has started and we now have a basement-sized hole in the ground where a house will be!

Last Thursday, I motorcycled to Edmonton to visit my Mum, son Justin, daughter-in-law Nadine, and Harlee, my 7 month old granddaughter. The weather forecast was promising and Carol needed the car back in Kamloops, so it made sense to take the bike. I had a super ride out, seeing several bears, mountain sheep and a variety of deer to add to the spectacular scenery of the Rocky Mountains. It was cool and drizzling all the way until the final 90 kms. The wind then became very strong and switched around to come from the south, bringing a 12*C jump in temperature and clear blue skies for the last hour of my trip. It was great to spend a few days with my family and get to know Harlee better. I hadn't seen her since she was less than a week old, last October.
Carol had stayed in Kamloops as she was attending a "timing clinic" as part of her preparation to be a volunteer at the Canada Western Summer Games, being held here early in August. She will be an official at the pool events, an area in which she is very qualified to work. The clinic ran first thing on Saturday morning after which she was picking up Alex and going up to Barnhartvale to see if Bob had managed to get started on the basement. He had! It is not really a giant hole as the house will have a daylight, walk-out basement. It sits on a gentle slope so the front will be at "finish grade" and the back of the house will be dug into the hill.

I realize that the pictures are not very exciting - Carol standing in a hole next to a pile of dirt - but it's what it represents that makes it exciting. The actual work on the house has started! Yay!

Finally, the weather is cooperating, and we received a beautiful, warm, sunny weekend to enjoy. And enjoy we did! Lunchtime on Sunday, we packed up a bunch of hot dogs and all the fixings, picked up Alex and headed up to Gull Lake Ranch.

Joey looking for a handout - Carol and Alex enjoy a hot dog

No work had happened since our last visit  :(  but that was kind of expected, as Bob was on vacation until the 6th of May. Hopefully, it will get going with a vengeance after that. But back to our wienie roast...
Although we started out in sweaters and jackets, it soon became apparent that t-shirts would be the order of the day. I (Mike) was in shorts trying to get some rays on my very white (embarrassingly so!) legs. It was glorious! We started a fire with all the wood Carol had prepared last week and quickly got down to roasting. Why is it that food tastes so much better when it is cooked outdoors? Anyway, a few "dogs" later, Alex and Carol set off for the old well site, taking Joey along to try and burn off some of the energy she seems to be filled with whenever we're up here. It was on the return trip that Alex, who had set off on his own at a running pace, came across a big brown bear. Well, actually it was a Black Bear, Ursus Americanus, but it was big and brown....but I digress!

Alex enjoying the warm, sunny day

The bear, who was down by the lower fence line, looked up to assess what creature had dared to come and disrupt his solitude. Apparently, Alex didn't come off as much of a threat, as the big guy quickly returned to browsing for lunch before disappearing into the woods. At least that Alex's story - as Carol and I never saw the bear at all!
We both think it's kind of cool to have those animals on and around our property. The stories go that if you have dogs, the bears will leave you alone and you might never see them. So, with Joey and a future pack-mate, we hope we never have to resort to defending ourselves with our firearms - but, we will keep them handy, just in case!
About then, a couple showed up on their side-by-side ATV, having also seen the bear. (so I guess we have to believe Alex  :)  Lesley had been in to KPA Printers, where we printed her daughter's wedding invitations, so she was no stranger and she quickly introduced us to her husband, Colin. They came well-equipped and offered us a beer. We declined as we were planning on leaving shortly and I won't drink if I'm driving  :)

Carol and Joey by the fire before lunch

They spent quite a while chatting and story-telling about their own house-building adventures. They commented on the beautiful view we will have from our place. They suggested we go and check out Lance and Jackie's (our realtor, Jackie Brommeland) new place. They had just come from there and it had been their first visit since Christmas, before Jackie and Lance had moved into the new house. Lesley was really impressed with it, commenting on the concrete floors - the entire house (all 4,500 square feet of it) is heated with in-floor, hydronic radiant heat. They have the floors finished in a variety of ways and they look and feel amazing. I doubt that budget will allow us to do the same with our house, but it sounds very nice.
After the fire died down, we smothered it with sand from 2 of the sandbags in the back of the truck and headed for home. It had been the best day at the new property (except, perhaps, for the day Carol and Lea rode the place on horseback). Hopefully, next time we're up, it will look much different.

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!