The first step was dismantling the barn - piece by piece.
The graph paper came out and I found a book at the library...
Be Your Own Architect !!??
SURE – I’ll try that!
HOW HARD COULD IT BE?
Between dismantling the barn and designing houses, we were moving among random short term rentals with our tools, slate roof in tow, and various other building materials. And property hunting... always property hunting... we drove just about every back road in the Adirondacks.
Then, we came across an Adirondack "Old Timer" on one of those obscure back roads...
His small hand made "FOR SALE" sign caught our real estate weary attention. He lived in a concrete basement with tar paper roof. There was a broken down yellow school bus out front he used for storage. We stopped in to learn more.
Out back were hundreds of forested acres he owned within the Adirondack State Park. He would be willing to split off a 10 acre parcel at the edge of it all that had 2 brooks and a view.
We'll take it!
First up, was to get the foundation for our barn/home built so we had a spot to live on the new property - ASAP.
Well, timing was not in our favor. We set to work building around the end of November.
Who knew it was going to be one of the coldest Adirondack winters on record...
It never got above 0 degrees day or night in the entire month of January. Yes, continual negative temperatures EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It was a tough intro to building.
Here we are chopping 6 inches of ice out of the foundation with a shovel, a long handled metal chisel and a wheelbarrow, so we could get started that day.
That's me on the 'soon-to-be' roof.
After getting over those rough stages of winter building in the Adirondacks,
- ready or not -
we moved in.
(Not sure is was any improvement over the bus option)
HOME SWEET HOME!
but stay tuned - it does get better :)