Son of Crap: The Gathering

Dumb Stir Dye Vyng--There's Gold in Them Thar Skips!


Remember how I said I'd tell you more about the cheap stuff I'm gathering to build the house? Here's the fulfillment of that pledge.

While much of the nation languishes in a housing slump as of this writing, northwest Mississippi, along the Tennessee border, has over five families--that's families, not people--moving to it daily. The housing boom still exists as does the new construction boom. Thus, the area is a veritable scrounger's paradise, a 'cheepo deepo' (tip of the hat to Oxford, MS) for the person who's willing to scour the construction sites for 2x4s, plywood, plumbing, and other building materials.

So, my Saturday mornings start early; I hop in the truck, pull my work gloves from under the seat, and hit my rounds of sites. I use a large metal broom handle as my dumpster 'poker' to sift through the detritus and hook bucket handles, move items, etc.

Dumpster Diving Hall of Fame Finds.

- A construction-grade wheel barrow, sans wheel, that is practically new
- About 50 5-gallon buckets (these suckers cost about $2 or more at Home Depot)
- Several 4"x4"x8' posts--some of which are metal with a rubberized coating!
- A large (12'x12') tarp with paint stains--but otherwise fine
- A sink + 6' long countertop from a motel rehab that includes the hot/cold faucet and a drain
- Four entire door frames--brand new!
- Two bronzed interior light fixtures still in their plastic and box
- Two kitchen base cabinets without doors but with drawers
- Assorted 2x4s, 4x8 plywood, PVC piping, plus a spool of electrical wiring
- Other items too numerous to mention

The on-going construction here has provided me the luxury of being picky; I don't go after any old scrap, but I have my pick of some really good wood and other items. The store room is filling fast. Cost: $0 (Gas money, technically, but I never stray more than a mile from the house); Total Cost So Far: $270

Construction Largess. One of my bosses used to own her own construction company, but her husband, the muscle (she was the brains), passed away some years ago. For some reason, she maintained a storage shed in Memphis with construction equipment and ephemera in it. One day this winter, she called me to her office and asked if I would clean out her shed. She said I could do whatever I wanted with what was in the shed--keep it, throw it away, or sell it.

I jumped at her offer and called my neighbor (the Truck Giver) to get him to help me clean out the shed the following Saturday. In the shed, we found several hand tools (saws, drills, hammers, etc), several large sheets of foam insulation, a saws-all, two interior doors, THREE brand new windows, three 4' levels (!), about 300 pounds of nails of all kinds--roofing nails, galvanized nails, etc--and several boxes of screws. All in all, it was the Mother Lode of freebies. AND, my boss paid me $200 to clean it up! While I'm tempted to show this payment on my bottom line for the Dirt.Cheap.Build., I will resist that temptation. Cost: $0; Total Cost to Date: $270.

More soon!

Crap-The Gathering

Part 2 of this blog concerns 'Cheap'.

Perhaps growing up po' meant that I learned how to make do on less from an early age; now that I'm in my 'peak earning years', I still don't pay full price for anything if'n I don't have to.

Ergo, what do I need to build a house? I need lots of materials, a place to keep all that stuff while I get ready to build, and something to haul all of that stuff around in.

A truck for hauling stuff. Check. Used to have a beat up Nissan 5 speed that would have been perfect, but it was stolen from my house about two years ago. Man, I miss that truck! So, I put out 'feelers' for another cheap truck.

One day, my across the street neighbor, a retired Navy vet, came trudging across the cove towards me like Popeye after a weekend spinach bender. He glared at me and asked, "You still lookin' for a truck?" "Yeah," I said, wary that questions like from him tend to end with me doing slave labor for him for free or riding shotgun--literally--as he makes a run to Tijuana for Interferon on a "can't miss" deal he has.

He stretched out his hand; in it was a key on a cheap key ring. "Here's the key to my truck; I just bought a new one," he said.

Amazing. A 1993 Ford Ranger for free. Can't get much cheaper than than. And, it's a five speed, has a bed liner, and is an extended bed, to boot. Now I had something to haul my stuff in when I go dumpster diving around the construction sites. Total Cost So Far: $0

A storage shed. Ok, this also has a story behind it. My son's house in Mississippi sits next to a self-storage place. The town is in the exburbs (a suburb of a suburb) and prices are lower; thus, the cost of a 10'x10' storage shed is only $45 a month. I had an old pad lock set, so I rented the unit on a six month lease, knowing that by mid-summer I could either go month to month on the rent or start building the house with the contents of the shed. Cost: $45/month for six months= $270; Total So Far: $270

Another storage shed. Our next door neighbors got divorced. One man's misery is another man's...free shed. Jeremy, my neighbor, came over as he was loading his moving van and told me that I could have the 8'x4' storage shed--made by Rubbermaid and fairly new--and all of its contents. Within the hour, I had the shed broken down and moved to my larger storage shed. It will make a great composting toilet once I erect it at our site and cover the outside with some cob! It has its own floor, too, and is completely weather proof. The bonus here is that there were several tools inside--rakes, hoes, and shovels--as well as some solar patio lights. Cost: $0; Total So Far: $270.

Sliding Glass Doors. My work as a facilities specialist allows me to supervise rehabilitation of the properties we manage. One such rehab involved a 152 unit complex in North Mississippi located minutes from our house. The contractor in charge of the job is a good friend; when I saw that the job included the replacement of all patio doors in the complex, I immediately asked Ron, the contractor's job supervisor, to save two buildings' worth of doors for me. He did.

Now, I have 16 sets (32 glass doors total) of tempered glass doors in aluminum frames. Some of them will make a great south-facing wall for my house to gain thermal mass (and free light) in the winter; others will be employed to build the greenhouse that Jan will use to grow veggies and herbs year-round. Cost: $0; Total So Far: $270.

More cheap building material finds in the next post!

Eureka

Which one is the farmer in this picture?


After our last, unproductive trip to Middle Tennessee in search of land, we decided to redouble our efforts to find land--even if it was a smaller parcel--closer to the friends my sister's family had made two decades earlier.

I knew that the people in that area had several large land holdings but didn't know if they would be willing to part with any of it. I asked my sister about that, but she put the thought away. She'd not dared dream of such a thing; not only would she never ask any of them (she has couth, my sister, whilst I have chutzpah), but she would also never think such a good turn of events could befall her and hers.

Yet, in a series of phone conversations with the people in the valley over several weeks, one such opportunity opened.

The farmer is depicted above. He and his family have an old farm of several hundred acres. They offered to sell us about 11 acres of it because they so dearly love my sister and her boys and because the farmer's mom and my sister were close back when the dear old lady was alive.

We were ecstatic.

So, we immediately planned a trip back to that area to not only look at the land that was offered, but to also talk to those there about practical yet inexpensive building methods. Middle Tennessee State University is one of the leading institutions in the south in using slip-form insulated concrete in construction. One of the people in the church teaches in that department, so my sister and my brother-in-law picked her brain on that method of building their house.

Meanwhile, we scheduled a viewing of the property with the farmer for Sunday, May 18th. We met him at his barn near the proposed site; he revved up his 'gator' and we clambered aboard and took off into a field that lined a thick wooded area.

He proposed +/- 11 acres that is roughly shaped like a backwards flag or a hatchet; a 100' wide road frontage (where electricity is and, recently, city water has been added) that cuts a 300' long swath up alongside the field through the woods and the flares out left (towards the west) into a large, gently sloping area with several flat places for building sites. Behind the gentle slope--and beyond the proposed property--is a 1200' hill, or what they call a 'mountain' in that part of the world. Ralph owns all of it.

Now, the farmer has had the proposed site tested for septic and found at least three 'perc' sites, so we're good there. As we walked into the woods, we crossed a wet-weather creek (the farmer says he will put a culvert in for us) and came to one smaller cleared area in the trees. This is one possible build site--probably for my house.

We continued on through a slight thicket and came to a larger cleared site. This is where my sister's house probably should be built. The electricity folks will pay for one pole and will 'give' us the first 100' feet, but then we pay for installation per foot to the pole/house. I'll find out the exact amount and let you all know soon.

Anyway, we took in the site, enjoyed the woods, and saw walnut trees, mountain junipers, a dogwood or two, and a bunch of blackberries as well as fragrant honeysuckle. My sister paused a moment and begged us to be still and silent; she wanted to listen to the sweet sound of...nothing! We heard the birds, heard the breeze in the leaves, and the buzz of the odd insect, but that was it. No car noises, no highway traffic--nothing but nature.

The farmer says the land isn't worth that much to him; he'd rather sell it to us than have it sit there and do nothing. Thus, it all looked too good to be true, but there was more.

As we trudged up the slight incline ahead of us, we heard my BiL cry out, "Come on, you two! This is amazing!"

We came up the hill and the path (an old logging road, actually) broke out into a cathedral-like clearing with knee-high grass (see picture above). It was as if God had created a special glen, a forest sanctuary, for us.

My sister was literally moved to tears; the BiL had a goofy grin on his face; my nephew, despite his allergies, smiled broadly. I was snapping pictures but was as amazed as they were. It was so lovely!

The farmer showed us another logging road that ran to the back (top) of the glen and then another that ran along side it. He said he would include this area in the parcel as well. It's farther from the road than the other site, so to build there would be more expensive to run water/electricity, but it could be done. He reminded us that we would have access to the mountain behind our land to roam at our leisure. No one could build around us--ever.

My sister thinks we should leave that area as-is and use it as a park-like area or commons for gatherings or reflective time--a natural chapel, of sorts.

We asked the farmer one more time if he were sure he wanted to sell. He assured us that he did.

With hugs and handshakes, we agreed. Who says you can't do business with a handshake these days?

The farmer will now have the land surveyed, staked, and a contract drawn up for the purchase.

Looks like we've found it.

Badlands Here We Come

Off the grid, scrubby trees, and mud-caked tires--if you want cheap land you gotta go here!


So, with a general idea of wanting to be somewhere within the triangle of Nashville, Pulaski, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, we struck out one weekend after perusing the interweb to take a look at some land.

Now, we were wanting somewhere from 20 to 60 acres--and didn't want to pay more than $3500 an acre for it. That meant the land we would be looking at was largely 'unimproved'--that means, usually, far REMoved from water and power sources.

While that was OK by me, the sister and family want to be grid-tied, at least at first, and to have some--emphasis, some--of the mod cons at their disposal (although not necessarily a disposal).

So we looked. And looked. And drove out to parts unknown in the backwoods and meth labs of middle Tennessee to see what we could see.

Yes, there is land that is less than $3500 an acre. Yes, it is usually unimproved and filled with trees. What we saw that we liked was far from--well, let me back up a second.

Years (as in over 20) ago, my sister and her husband ministered to a congregation of about 100 folks outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They fell in love with the land and the people, finding solace for their bodies and minds there. Our objective for choosing middle Tennessee was to be within an hour of these people so those relationships--which never faded when my sister and my brother-in-law accepted teaching positions at a university--could be sustained into redundancy.

Fast forward to the land hunting again; what we saw was too far away from these good people in that lovely valley. Besides, what we saw was too wild for us to consider.

So, yes, we found land. And no, it was not land we would buy.

We returned from our first land-hunting trip extremely depressed because we were right back where we'd started.

On the other hand, we now had knowledge that 20 acres was quite a bit of land, and we knew we could and would take less land in the right place.

Background To It All

We've lived in urban or suburban areas most of our lives. My sister, who is 16 years older than I, is nearing retirement age (beyond this information she would kill me) and was looking to get away from cities and back to a more simple, more efficient, and more 'robust' lifestyle in retirement.

I wanted that, too. There is something good--a good, in fact--about building your own building, about producing your own food and having care of the land. Perhaps it goes back to our being made from 'dust' and returning to 'dust', something profoundly spiritual and physically re-creative (in both senses of the term) at the same time

There are socio-economic and political implications for wanting to do this, too. The American experiment may have run its course; rising gas prices put constant pressure on the consumer. All of this will be explored in detail later.

For now, here is the basic plan:

1.) Get land in conjunction with my sister, her husband, and their son.
2.) Start gathering information on how to 'homestead', live off the land, lard the lean earth, etc.
3.) Find methods of building that are low-maintenance, cheap, but strong and long-lasting.
4.) Build my (small) house first (within the first six months after purchasing the land); I move there.
5.) Start the fruit trees, start the outbuildings for food production, and get the land 'ready'.
6.) Build my sister's house within 18 months of land purchase
7.) My sister's family retires to the land.

AND do all this for as cheaply as possible.

Now, the caveats.

I am not a builder. I can hammer, patch drywall, lay tile, or do pretty much anything only because I don't know that I can't! Show me how, and I'll do it.

On the other hand, I know people who do know these things. I can act as facilitator for a collaboration. I can look for creative financing. I can scrounge for scrap and supplies. I'm in my late 40s and in poor shape physically but am a former athlete trapped in this now-sedentary body.

My sister has never been a 'worker' per se; she and her husband are academics. Their lovable, clever, but anemic son has never really used any sorts of tools other than whilst working on a car engine.

I plan to channel my deceased father's knowledge--he was a builder--and will this plan into actuality.