How is everyone?

[chrism96]

Doing very well also, enjoying my new R4041. Fall is going to awesome with some nice weather and plenty of seat time in my new tractor.

 

[Gary Fowler]

Well, except that I am old, fat and ugly - everything is Just Great!

Actually, things could hardly be better. I'm enjoying retirement and the change from computers to hobby farming. I have a beautiful wife, a 110 acres to play on, 5 dogs and a growing arsenal of toys. God has been so good to me even though I deserve nothing.

What I really need now is a set of house plans! We intend to build on the acreage next spring but I am absolutely clueless when I sit down to scratch out the basic design. You'd think this would be easy ...

So far this has been a fast moving year, months fly by like weeks and weeks like days.
I hear you on the house design. Wife and I looked at thousands of online and magazine house designs and never found one with everything that we liked. Finally I set down with large paper and pencil and some rudimentary drafting tools and started drawing in rooms from different designs, a bathroom here, bedroom there, kitchen, breakfast room, patio etc. Man I went thru a lot of paper getting a basic design that the wife liked. Then took all my drawings and ideas to an architect for here to detail in the doors, windows rooms etc in scale drawings. Took the prelim and marked up changes we wanted (size of rooms, location of garage, etc. Studied on that for a couple weeks and then took it back for a final scale drawing with roof line details. Finally set down with a builder and went over what we wanted with regard to materials, colors of trim, brick (got that from Acme brick) roof covering (decided on architectural shingles rather than steel roof) size of hot water heater with recirculation pump and insulated supply and return lines. Had about 4 hours with builder to go over what we wanted. He came back in a couple weeks with pricing for the build and his allowances in his price for items like kitchen appliances, ceiling fans, flooring, windows, doors, plumbing fixtures, lighting, etc.
He built the house off the floor plan and roof line view (front and back) that we paid the architect $200 for and that was all. Of course we had spent the 4 hours detailing the specs for materials and the R value for insulation etc. I really never sat down and figured the overall cost of the house, we got money back from the original price structure because we bought most of the interior stuff like kitchen appliances (went triple over the allowance on that), flooring(we got that cheaper than estimate) We did a few changes during construction but nothing that costs us money but some of them added a lot of value to the house. One of which was to move the location 12 feet to the north so our rear patio (now a wood deck) extends off the hillside and is raised about 8 feet above ground level and then added a lower concrete patio beneath it. Originally the plan was to have just the back patio with concrete slab so we gained a 12x44 foot lower patio/storage area at grade and a great view from the upper deck.
Sorry to have gotten too far off topic but couldn't resist the opportunity to relate my experience to the building and design of our house.

 

[Gary Fowler]

We added some sidewalks around the house, a large parking pad in front of the garage, steps to the lower patio and a 10x12 slab in front of the lower patio about a year after we moved in. We didn't think of that in the original plans so had to add to it later.

 

[Rainbody]

Got the barn cleaned out. Used the LS to scoop up 10-14 railroad ties and pill them up. Plan is to reuse them at either at the range or make a botche ball court. I'd have to blade out an area and compact it, but would be well worth it.
Also gathered up scrap metal around the place. 940 lbs later, the LS dropped the pallet into the Dodge for turn in. Have to say I'm love my LS and using the heck out of the FEL with forks. Hope your side of the fence is good.