I'm still here

Lots of fun stuff to write about regarding our barn build... when time allows.

Choosing a barn builder

Once I knew what kind of barn I wanted, I needed to find someone to build it for me.  While I'm quite handy, and technically capable of building a barn myself, I knew that doing so would cause me far more frustration and exhaustion than I wanted.  I'd much rather pay an expert to build it in a couple weeks.  Fortunately, in an agricultural state like Nebraska, there's no shortage of companies that build pole barns.

Planning for a new pole barn

One of our goals when we moved from town to our 10-acre lot in the country was to have room for a big workshop / horse barn.  Our daughter has always wanted horses (I had one growing up), and I've always wanted a larger workshop than our 2-stall garage could provide.  A year after we moved into our new acreage, the dust had settled enough for me to start the barn building process.  The first step was to figure out what exactly we needed from the building, and then what sort of building would meet those needs.

Solar powered lights in a non-electrified shed

When we moved to our acreage, we inherited a 12x24' pole shed located out by the edge of the property, well away from the house.  Of course, there was no electricity run to this building, which meant I had to bring a flashlight any time I needed to put something away after sunset.  It didn't take very long before I got tired of that and installed a solar powered, motion-sensing, LED security light inside the shed to light my way after dark.

Let's go exploring

So today's the day.  In a few hours, the movers will arrive to take all of our large furniture (including our beds) from our old house to our new acreage.  It's a day that most of our family has looking forward to for several years now.  The gravity of it didn't really set in until the last couple days.

Easing the transition to our new place

After what felt like the longest four weeks in recent memory, we finally closed on our new acreage on Friday.  We spent our first day at our new place on Saturday, mostly just nailing down our to-do list for the coming weeks before we move in.  The whole selling process has been very easy, thanks in no small part to the great relationship we've developed with the previous owners.

Green acres is the place for me

The new 10-acre plot that we just purchased has about a quarter of an acre (100x100') that the previous owners used for gardening.  That's obviously too big a garden to manage without either a large team of people or some mechanized assistance.  The family from whom we bought our acreage also had a 1952 Ford 8N tractor that they were willing to sell us, so that sent me on a three-day crash course of not only figuring out which tractor to buy, but also what implements would be necessary and how to use them.  Here's what I learned.

Our search is over!

Two months ago, we finally put aside any hope of building our dream home and focused our efforts on finding an existing acreage home that would suit our needs.  We looked at a lot of options online, visited a few of them, and even made an offer on one great place that got rejected.  Finally, just two days before Christmas and nearly four years after we bought our empty lot near town, our offer was accepted on a nice, 10-acre home out in the country.

House shopping around Lincoln

Back in October, we finally put aside any hope of building our dream home, and focused our efforts on finding an existing acreage home that would suit our needs.  We looked at a lot of options online, visited a few of them, and even made an offer on one great place that got rejected.  Along the way, I got pretty good at searching for properties, so I wanted to share some tips I learned.

Working with one last builder

After working with three different custom home builders this spring and coming up empty, we decided to give it one last shot with Brester Construction.  They were great to work with, but really not much cheaper than the other builders that had already fallen through for us.

Which concrete reinforcement method is best?

When we were talking with our home builder about concrete, we found that he used several different methods to reinforce the concrete, depending on the application.  I had my own ideas about what I wanted to use, but after talking more with our builder, he's won me over.  Here's what I've learned.

Back to square one

This isn't where we expected to be this month.  In early July, we thought we had three great builders and a great floor plan.  It's now mid-August, and we've got just one builder with a price tag so high that we can't possibly build the plan as it's drawn up.  So now we're back to where we were this Spring, trying to simplify our plan and find a builder that fits both our budget and our desire for quality.

The bids are in

As we progress toward building a new house on our acreage, we found three custom home builders that suited our desire for quality craftsmanship.  We interviewed their references, which yielded no distinction among them (all were excellent), so we decided to let our bank account choose the winner.  We gave each of them a copy of our drafted house plans and sent them off to get apples-to-apples bids on what it would cost for them to build our house.  The bids are finally in, and they're not what we'd hoped.

Septics, lagoons, and alternatives

One of the first steps we needed to perform was to have a percolation test done on our acreage to see whether we could install an underground septic system or had to use an above-ground lagoon.  Mike Rezac took the initiative to contact Lloyd Jakoubek at Raymond Contracting to get that test done.  It takes a couple weeks, so it's good to have that out of the way.  The results just came in, and we failed the test, meaning we have to go with either an engineered type system or a lagoon.

Checking home builder references

In the three weeks since I last wrote, our three potential custom home builders have been compiling detailed bids on the plans we had drawn up.  While we wait for them to do their thing, we've been contacting the references that each of them gave us.  Overall, the results are pretty close for the three.  Here's what we've learned.

Choosing a new lawn mower

When we bought our old house 16 years ago, we bought an inexpensive Craftsman push mower to care for the smallish lawn.  It held up well (a little less so after our kids started using it), but has been showing its age lately.  I patched the rusted-through deck with duct tape (which worked quite well), and I've had to rebuild the carburetor every couple years when it didn't want to start.  Last week, even cleaning the carb wasn't enough to keep it running, so I decided it was finally time to upgrade.  I did lots of research and ended up coming home with another Craftsman that was very similar in concept to our old mower.  Given the amount of time I spent on this decision, I figured I should share my thought process with you all.

We've got our house drawings!

After interviewing three potential custom home builders, one of the next steps was for us to get our desired plans put to paper so that the builders could each give us an accurate cost estimate and we could do an apples-to-apples comparison.  Cost isn't the only criteria we're using to choose a builder, of course, but it is a big part of it.  According to all three builders, there are basically two draftsmen in town that do the majority of the custom plans: New Ventures and Residential Drafting Services (RDS).  We went with the latter.

Goldilocks and the three builders

I mentioned last time that we're once again trying to build a new home.  Since we've already got a pretty good idea what floor plan we'll be using, our next step is to choose a local custom home builder after the guy we'd been planning to use retired on us.  We compiled a short list of three builders who were recommended by friends or whose work we'd seen & liked on the Parade of Homes.  We interviewed all three of them this week, and while we haven't selected one yet, I wanted to share our initial thoughts about each one.  If you're looking to build a home near Lincoln, Nebraska, hopefully this info will help you.

New acreage: take two

A lot has happened in the 18 months since I last wrote about our plans to build a new house on our 3-acre lot just outside town.  A lot of things changed during that time, and we think we're going to be able to see it through to completion this time.

A simple garden trellis for growing squash

We've got three 4x16' raised garden beds at our house.  My family enjoys growing squash and other sprawling vines, but the problem is that they take up so darned much space in the garden.  One way around that is to grow them upward along a trellis instead of sideways.