The Story of our Dream Home
We moved from a 500 acre farm in Glen Rose, Texas to a small lot in Alpine. We loved the area and decided that this is where we were going to build our dream house. There was a small fixer upper home already on the lot and we had a 19 foot travel trailer to live in meanwhile. We decided to take the small fixer upper down and start from scratch with a new house. We needed the small house for storage though. I decided to take a enough wood and tin from the small house without actually tearing it down. I took the scraps and built us a storage shed. Once we had a storage shed built out of the way from where we would build our house we moved our storage from the little house into the shed. Now we could totally demolish the little house. I have never built a house before and I figured this would be a great project to document. The house was originally going to be a small one story but now we have decided to give us a little more room and beautiful views with a two story home. I have learned that help is very hard to come by out here and have basically been all alone on this project so far and I learn new things everyday. Below and the next pages is my documentation of this process and it will continuously be added to, so check back periodically.

9/28/2007
Here is a picture of our lot. The travel trailer is where we live. The new building going up on the right is is our storage shed. The small house in the back we will take down and build a small L shaped home in its place. Our plan is to have a stucco style home with a surrounding courtyard. Look close and you can see Belle on the roof taking off tin for the shed.

12/15/2007
Paluxy our cat ran the backhoe to dig our footing. I watched and learned :)

It was a little too cold to work today so I stayed inside and tried to stay warm.

12/27/2007
Since I had never ran a backhoe before I could only do so good with the machine. I had to clear and clean up much of the footing by hand. I began to get really strong during this process :)

1/4/2008
The footing is now dug. It is about 18" W x 20" D. I am waiting for my transit to show up in the mail so I can check for a level foundation. Once I am level and square all around I will lay in my rebar and call the cement truck.

2/12/2008
I am now finished adding rebar for my steel reinforcement. I will be calling the cement truck soon to poor cement into my footing. The city building inspector said I have done such a good job that he wants to take pictures of my work to display as an example of the proper way to dig footing and lay in rebar. What a compliment!

More rebar up close.