The TIMBERKING

The quality of this little homemade video clip is not so good and what happened to the sound is a mystery - but that is okay - it is super loud and not sweet music anyway-you probably don't want to hear it - but you can see our TIMBERKING in action here - we have saved literally 1000's and 1000's of $$ by making this investment. Our boys have built muscles bigger than most boys can get in any gym and never had to pay for a membership! We have sons in the tree service business in fact 2 sons and a son-in-law - all in tree service - so we never were at a lack for logs to saw into lumber.  We haven't paid for a single log yet - if you don't count sweat, time, muscles and gas for transporting them as $$. Carpenter says it is the very best decision we have made yet - to buy our own - since this home would be "built from scratch"!

Walls Going Up!

This was one of our very most exciting days!  The first walls up. So much preparation had to go into making this day possible.  The foundation is a cement slab and Carpenter had poured and set the footers along with the slab in late in 2001 before we ever moved out here - soon after we made the purchase of the acres.  It sat for over 5 years before we were ready for the walls to sit on its sturdy base. We had to acquire the wood!

We're at the front door of HomeSweetHome

This has been CARPENTRY 101 for all our boys. Wow have they learned a lot and

become skillful carpenters beyond their years!

All winter before these walls went up in the Spring of 2007 Carpenter had been inside our big barn (he built that too - another post - another day) putting together window and door headers.  You can see them all over the area here - this made putting up the basic wall structure go lightening fast.

This was April 20, 2007

Just over a week later

By June 24, 2007 they had accomplished to this point - just my Carpenter and his boys!

Real Life as It Is

This is the bare truth of it -- we have been living on the front part of the wild acres since we purchased it. We knew we couldn't be far away if we were to work on this place and build a home.  The Lord provided us a mobile home (we purchased it at a bank repot auction) that was very liveable - not large - liveable with just a little fixing up and here we have been what Carpenter's Wife calls "camping" since we purchased the acres.  I am thankful for the little patches of weeds that have covered up SOME of the red mud - it was a hard pill to swallow to call this my front yard before the weeds came up - actually it was a very muddy mess that didn't always stay outside where it belonged.

I tend to laugh at myself now wondering how on earth I got it into my dreamin' head that we would sign the papers and buy this big piece of wild and wooly acres and then suddenly (what was I thinking!) about...hmm...a year later??..... move into the big dream house we had planned to build.  What  lessons that have needed to be learned in contentment, patience, and waiting, waiting, waiting...still learning.....daily! (Carpenter's Wife calls it God's Grade School - if I could ever graduate I might get a new lesson to work on!)

Whatcha Buildin' ?

Our house which has been in progress for nearly 7 years is being built totally from scratch and salvaged materials as a labor of love for his family by my very own Carpenter. The first house was "The House that Roger Built" as a wedding gift for his bride. This one is being built by the whole family with Carpenter as chief engineer-architecht-jackofalltrades-foreman and a.k.a. Poppee, Carpenter's Wife as cook-sawdust sweeper-decorator-finishing touch gal a.k.a as Marmee and our crew of helpful and sweet children as helpers. We are using a TIMBERKING Sawmill to mill the lumber for much of the house. NO paint, NO carpet - LOTS of wood! Carpenter loves this. I'm growing to love it too. This blog will be a look at the process, the progress, and how we did it - ehem...are doing it. We are in a never ending process it seams. But that is life - a journey - not a destination! No promises that anything will be in a steady timeline (We are years into this already!) but bit by bit the blog will fill with the process of building from scratch - where we've been and where we are today - Home is where the heart is!