Sagebrush & Solar

I’m not sure if it’s the time of year, the weather, or the ‘hangover’ from finishing a major project, but man — we have been in a slump. Not just a writing slump, but it feels as if we’ve hit a progress slump, too.

At about this time last year, we received the news that we had to start over from the first layer on our build. The weather had already hit early — and continued to hit into spring. We’ve been blessed this year with a mild winter. The last two weeks or so have been freezing, snowy and icy, which isn’t conducive to build progress. In fact, the snow was so deep, my parents had to dig their way out and Keith got his truck stuck on our driveway. This definitely gave us some planning points for next winter.

The good thing about slumps? All you have to do is get over it and move forward.

One month ago, we rented an excavator and got to work on our septic system. It was a week of nonstop working and progression — it was amazing to see the visual progress of the landscape around our house change within a few days.

Once inspections were finished and we had the green light to go, we put down sand and gravel in the leach field, laid down pipe and began backfilling everything.

Our friend, Coty, did an amazing job peeling back the massive hill to the north of our house; it’s actually usable now and opened everything up. We failed at getting a proper before picture to do the change of scenery justice, but Luke loves being able to walk up the hill without assistance.

Lastly, there were some spots on the driveway from hell that needed to be cleaned up.

We have three major projects up next on the docket: mold remediation, plumbing and electric.

Due to not being dried in last winter/spring, as well as not being able to backfill (aka slope the dirt away from the house), our crawlspace had moisture this summer. The Mormon crickets aren’t the only things that love a dark, damp crawlspace — the mold loves it, too. We have some mold on our floor joists that needs to be taken care of ASAP. We received two mold quotes; thankfully, the second one (a friend of a friend) offered to tell us how to (safely) do it ourselves. We’ve special ordered some chemicals and PPE and will tackle that project later this week.

Our general contractor (ahem, my dad) is hard at work putting together our electrical and plumbing plans. This involves lots of difficult questions that I’ve never thought about, like “where do you want your light switches?” and “where do you want your ceiling lights?” He leaves for his real, paying job in March, so we have a lofty goal of tackling these projects before he leaves.

Our solar system is due to be delivered this week, so we’re pretty excited about that, too. We won’t be installing panels outside anytime soon, but at least we have them on hand.

In November, we hit one year of living at our apartment. We laugh because each year, we’ve said “we’ll be happy to be in by the holidays!” and this statement is true for the third year in a row. To be fair, that first one was pretty naive. We’ve had several people ask when we’re going to be done, and the answer is still — we don’t know. But we really hope to be in by the holidays.