We've been to the Mountaintop.
And we've seen The Promised Land.
On a bee-you-tee-ful August day, 8-8-08 at 8:08am, to be exact, the four of us met the former owner of our land and our new next-door neighbor to start carving out a property line through the thicket and woods.
It began with our finding four deer in the field/clearing part of the land. my sister exclaimed, "Those are MY deer!" Yes, sweetie, they are. Deer that carry glocks, shoot first and ask questions later.
The neighbor fired up his bulldozer (he called it a 'doze-your') and started running up the bottom part of the property line, using the exposed rock areas as a potential drive way. About 300 feet up into the land, we found the surveyor's stake and Ralph then made a left turn into the bottom part of the 'flag' towards the east.
The plan was for the four of us to follow along in his 'Gator', a six wheeled, chain driven diesel-powered ATV. My BiL, however, chose to scout ahead of the 'dozer on foot, whilst Sis, her son, and I grew restless watching the 'dozer power a path through the trees and rocks.
The power of the 'dozer amazed us. Nothing stopped it--until it found poor traction on bare rock while trying to climb a slight rise in the land. No problem, the 'dozer simply went off into the brush and came up around the rock incline and continued his path of destruction.
As I said, we grew restless watching this, so we decided to start following the various old logging roads through the property. We found that the Gator went pretty much anywhere, and the logging roads, like our new driveway, were build largely on top of the rock outcroppings. We wound our way up the hill and had a great time exploring parts of the land we'd not seen before.
Finally, after about two hours, the farmer's attention span waned. My BiL by this time had been covered with blackberry bramble scrapes, my nephew was hungry, and my sister and I were just plain excited over the possibility of the build.
We had already had a great trip to Middle Tennesse; we'd been to some lumber companies shopping for windows and doors and were outraged at the prices (thinking $3,000 for the doors alone). But then we--on my insistence, of course--went to one of the local Habitat for Humanity ReStores and saw that the same companies that ask top dollar for windows and doors and scads of other materials donated the exact same stuff to the ReStore and now they cost less than 30% of what they were listed for in the store.
Suddenly, the Crazy Brother/Uncle who'd been preaching a cheap build looked a little less crazy; that tin foil hat had turned into a builder's hardhat. They started to believe that it could be done for less.
In addition--and in another post--we have great news from our potential contractor on the job.
Stay tuned.
