Stake Out

I copied the last 5-6 posts in one afternoon a week ago.  I can't guarantee any more updates here for a while.  I will be updating Mama Mullholland, so come visit me there!

I got a phone call from our excavator on Friday asking if we were set to start digging on Monday.  I had to explain that we were still waiting on the permits.  He let me know that you don't need to wait for the permits to start digging, but you have to have them before you pour the footing.  Great news!  

He asked me to stake out the house this weekend and then we agreed to meet out at the land on Monday morning!

I called up home depot to see if they carried survey stakes.  The doofus who answered the phone was quite confused as to why I had asked for SURVEYING stakes.  They did carry stakes in several sizes, but he didn't know if surveyor stakes were the same thing.  I just said "thank you" and hung up.  If you will allow, I have a rant about Home Depot.  Something I learned recently that was confirmed by several different contractors in several different areas of expertise is that Home Depot is considered a 'seconds' store.  If a manufacturer has a toilet that isn't quite level at the base, they sell it to Home Depot.  They figure a DIYer will assume it was their mistake and just caulk the heck out of it until it is level.  A plumber won't shop there to begin with.  A manufacturer of a faucet will have a specific style of faucet.  For a distributor like Ferguson, the insides will be made of metal with high quality gaskets.  For home depot, the insides will be make of plastic.  With cabinets, the same thing applies.  Their brand, KraftMaid, can be purchased other places.  Home Depot gets the second quality cast offs.  In most cases, the cost savings is NOT passed on to you.  In some cases it is.  The faucets I wanted were $100 cheaper EACH from Home Depot.  That tells me that a major component is different.  The metal the faucet is made from could even be different.  So, as much as we disliked Home Depot before, we have even more reason to stay away now.  They are basically the Dollar General of building supplies.  If you need building materials, go somewhere like McCray, ProBuild, or Menards.  Get your fixtures, sinks, ect from a place like Ferguson.  Believe it or not, custom cabinets made by hand from solid wood are LESS expensive than Home Depot Cabinets.  I'll do a post on Cabinets in the future.

Anyhow, this post isn't supposed to be about Home Depot.  It is about staking out the house!

John, Paisley, Charley, and I arrived with stakes, a hammer, pink nylon string, and a movie box to use as a square.  Oh, we had a set of plans with us as well.

We picked the front left corner of the house and drove in a stake.  We then measured off the rest of the walls with only minor difficulty.

Here is the first stake and you can see the string going east.  This is the north wall of the house and will be Paisley's room, the shared bath, and the room for the twinkle in John's eye.  

 Here is the bay window in our bedroom.  If you look closely, you can see a cow pie right in the middle.  Some day we will be laying in bed and we will remember this day and how there was once a cow pie where we are now laying.

Have a haiku:

Mindless bovine poop

Permanent?  Impermanent?

Below where we sleep 

Speaking of poop.  Here is our porta pot!  John didn't think it would be quite enough to provide each crew with a spade and a roll of TP. 

Here is the shot of the whole house.  John is at the far left corner and the far right corner is near the right of the screen.  You may be able to see more if you can enlarge the picture.  But, this will be the front view of the house.