Another beginning

Well a lot has happened since I last blogged about our project. We replaced our builder because after three months the roof still wasn't finished. He deviated from the plans (which was why that beam was sagging - the way he built the roof, too much weight was transferred to the center of the house instead of the sides) which did not make the building inspector too happy. We had to have the engineers come up with a solution which the builder had to complete before we let him go. As we were digging for the foundations, we found an old well. It was a thirty foot deep, hand dug well lined with stones and about three feet wide. I can't imagine that someone dug this with just a shovel and went that far down. I'm sure many people were killed by cave-ins digging these wells so long ago. Unfortunately, the well was in our living room, so we had to fill it in. My husband and I felt guilty destroying something that took so much hard work to make. Here are some photos of the well.



The foundations were dug and poured by the Guiliam's brothers without any problems. The block work was finished and passed inspection.

So you want to build a house....

Well. I haven't blogged about the house we have been building since June because I had to clear all the profanity out of my head first. It's almost gone but not quite. It is now October and we haven't started framing yet. Why? That's a good question. Maybe it's because our builder was in a contest of wills with our architect and engineer and spent weeks arguing that his design was right instead of following the plans we spent thousands of dollars on. Maybe it's because he decided to spend all summer with the interior of the original house instead of taking advantage of the dry, sunny weather to do all the outside work such as framing and block work and pouring concrete. It took awhile but we realize we made a huge mistake in our choice of builder. I think the project was beyond him and he just wasn't the right one for us. We now have a crew coming in to frame.