New cottage/retirement home near Lake Michigan

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Taking out the old well pump and tank getting ready to cap the old well.

 

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Every night we walk to the sunset to socialize with neighbors and catch Lake Michigan swallowing the sun.

 

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ON the property were Red Oak, White Oak, White Pine, Sugar Maple, Hemlock, and Balsam

We kept all the hardwood tops for firewood as we typically have a campfire every night in the summer. We needed someplace to stick all of that firewood to dry after being split. So I build this rack with some scrap wood I had laying around.




Each year in October my brothers and I help my dad harvest his wood for the next winter. I travel over 400 miles to the Upper Peninsula and get to hang with my family and talk shop.






I usually take my gator or tractor up with me to help haul wood from the woods.

 

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I brought back my dad's wood splitter to fill my new rack with firewood.



My wife is by my side during every step of this build.


Had to take a break and finish up one of the last projects of our home prior to putting on the market. The Deck. Decided to go with composite. Looks really nice but man is that expensive right down to the fasteners.

 

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Filled the old well with appropriate material, can remember the name about now... Bentonite comes to mind.


Excavator comes tomorrow take out the pad from the old house, take all of the stumps out and put in the septic. My equipment is not big enough for this job.







Digging and putting in septic system.









That will be all the digging for this fall (2015).

 

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Before the dead of winter we want to cut into lumber all of the wood from the lots. So we hired a sawer to come on site to saw all of our wood. This will come in handy someday since part of this build is a woodshop.

Created a platform to stack the wood for drying offer the next few year prior to going to the kiln.



The sawyer helped cut all of the trees into about 4500 Bd ft of lumber in about 3 days.


with the help of my wife and neighbors.

 

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The sawyer brought his loader to help move the big loads.

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Everybody together to help. What a feeling to see that wood from the lot turn into squared up lumber.
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All buttoned up and starting the drying process. Dec 9, 2015

 

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Back home in Hudsonville had to spend some time splitting the rest of the 65 dead ash trees and stacking it neatly to calculate the cords and prepare it to sell on craigslist. It was a mild winter Dec 2015 so still no snow at Christmas when these were taken.






Also had to prepare the equipment I would no longer need when we moved to the new house. No more 2 acres of lawn and 1 acre of woods.

 

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Feb 2016, need to order footings and walls so plans need to get submitted for permits.

 

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April 5, 2016
Breaking ground for footings and walls.