Today Things Were On Fire

It's been a good couple of weeks. The weather has been nice. I rebuilt the batter boards. I'm getting everything leveled out. I've poured about a ton and a half of cement in the ground. I have a large stack of cinder blocks and am preparing to get them in the ground.

This evening as I was finishing up, the farmer that owns the surrounding land came out and started some controlled burns. At first I thought it strange that he would start so late in the day. However, when the sun got low in the sky the flames and smoke were just stunning to look at. I grabbed my camera and shot some images to share.

While shooting this I saw a squirrel on our land for the first time. We have a lot of hawks and eagles out here, so small eatable creatures tend to lay low. This little guy, however, was tearing through the tree tops as fast as his little squirrel legs would propel him. I believe he was saying in squirrel language, "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, HOT, shit, shit shit."

While on the roof of the little house, I also took a shot of the build site. I think I'll be taking progression shots from up there as things progress.

More as it happens.

Building Department, Round 6.825

So... after getting that mildly threatening letter from the county, and being told that we have to get a surety bond to renew our residence permit...

After telling them that the original inspector told us we didn't need one...

After contacting multiple online surety bond companies and being told that we can't get a surety bond for simply moving/disconnecting a trailer...

After contacting multiple local surety bond agents and being told the same thing...

After calling the building department and having them refer us to the local agent that supposedly does these surety bonds...

After driving to the recommended agent's office...

The agent looks the building department's form and says he can't write a bond for simply moving/disconnecting a trailer.

He calls the building department and tells them this.

Now the building department says we don't need one.

This is my face right now

On the plus side, now I can use that money for building materials instead of a stupid bond. We also went ahead and renewed the building permit and I can start doing some preliminary work on the site. It's still too cold to start on the masonry, but I can get things ready. I want to hit the ground running this spring.

Dealing with the Building Department, Round 6.5

I actually don't know what round this is. Really, I don't think there are rounds. It's more like a continuous melee.

But whatever.

Yesterday I got a letter from the Building Department telling me my building permit expired. Well, duh. The next step is masonry. I can't exactly do masonry in below freezing weather, now can I? So, why would I renew the permit until I can actually work?

They also said my temporary residence permit expired. What? I was under the impression that it didn't expire.

So I go down there.

Getting the building permit renewed: $125. I knew that. No paper work involved, so there's a bonus.

The residence permit didn't expire. She said my surety bond expired.

Oh, boy.

When we first got started on this project, I read about the surety bonds. These bonds are a guarantee that once building was complete we would remove the temporary residence from the site. Some of the county's sources said we would have to pay a bond for the travel trailer, others said we didn't. So I asked John, the first inspector I worked with. He said we didn't have to pay it. There was no reason to pay it because a travel trailer doesn't have to be removed; we just stop living in it.

But, nooooooooo. Now it's a different story. Now they want a bond. A $5000 bond.

They have to have this bond. How else will can they be sure that after we build our house we won't live in a trailer next to it?

Who does this?

No one. No. One.

No one builds a house so they can live in a trailer in the back yard.

It's already against zoning regulations to do so. We could be fined for doing so. But it is such a threat that they have to have a bond to make sure that they can fine us and get paid.

Really?

Really.

Yeah, really.

So, I'm getting bond quotes now. Later I will eat country ribs and beans. And whiskey.

UPDATE: One of the bond underwriter people persons called us back. He can't give as a quote because he can't write a bond to guarantee something like this. So, there this saying about asses and holes in the ground...

Etsy, Google Sheets, Smarty Pig, and Managing Debt Free Home Building

Since El Nino has run out of steam and our unseasonably warm weather has left us, I have a moment or two to catch up here. Briefly, we've been winterizing the little house, making some handmade Christmas gifts, and putting Jack in fuzzy sweaters.

Draw me like one of your French Girls

Raising money through Etsy

As I've stated in previous posts, I have supplemented our income by selling off our possessions, most notably my massive collection of My Little Ponies. I had to stop while I was working on the house, but I started back up in mid November.

The last round of pony sales went on eBay. I've been selling there since 1999, but over the past several years I have grown to HATE that venue. Their website is clunky, their fees suck, and sellers regularly get screwed by unscrupulous buyers.

Fortunately, since the items I'm selling are vintage I have another option. I have been selling handmade items on Etsy since 2010 and I LOVE selling there. I have opened up a new shop for my vintage items and it has been going pretty well. In the six weeks it has been open I've been able to raise over 75% of the money we need for our next step.

It's mostly stocked with collectibles and household items ranging from the 1940s to the 1970s right now, but I have so much more to add. There are more collectibles and boxes and boxes of ponies that need to go.

See all the things here

The profits from every sale I make are directly funding our homestead. In order to keep the funds organized, I have employed a couple different tools.

Google Sheets

The first is Google Sheets. Google Sheets is simply a spread sheet program that you can access through your Google Plus account. This is very handy considering how often I bounce from computer to computer. Here's an example of how I have mine set up:

The first column is the price that I sold the item for. The next column is what I originally paid for the item. This is an important figure to have as it will be needed come tax season.

The next two columns are Etsy fees. Etsy charges $0.20 for listing an item for three months, and processing fees after it sells.

If you use PayPal, you'd want to include those fees as well. However Etsy now has a feature that manages direct payments and PayPal payments through their account manager.

The next two columns are the total profits and self-employment tax. Total profits are figured by taking the sale price and subtracting the item cost, listing fees, and processing fees.

Since I am selling items at a profit, I must pay taxes on the income. One of these taxes is the self-employment tax. The self-employment tax is your FICA taxes: social security and Medicare. The rate is 15.3%. So, to find your total tax, multiply your profit by .0153.

You also have to pay income tax, however since we alway have extra withheld from my husband's paycheck, I don't bother saving for that.

The next column is an adjustment column. Most of the time, I only put the net profit into savings. However, on some items (mostly ponies), I want the initial cost of the item to go into savings as well. This column allows me to offset the initial cost being taken out of the profits.

The column marked "Total for SP" is the amount I put into savings. The last column helps me keep track of which sub-account that total is deposited into.

Speaking of sub-accounts, that brings me to:

Smarty Pig

When we first started packing money away so we could buy our land, I started shopping around for a place to stash our money. I don't like having it all in our checking account (darling husband is a spender) and I wanted to earn a little interest.

My Google Fu led me to Smarty Pig. Their interest rate was attractive. Well, as attractive as interest rates get in this day and age (which is pretty sad).

State of this country's banking system aside, Smarty Pig is a really great tool for saving money. The feature that I love the most is the ability to create sub accounts within your Smarty Pig account. These "Savings Goals" really fit into how we are financing this build. Here's their info page on creating goals.

When we first started planning how to do this, we were torn between buying a kit house like a Katrina Cottage or buying plans and building it all ourselves. One benefit to kit houses is that they would be easier and faster to build. A down side is that we would not be able to do any work on the house until we had saved 100% of the money.

This would be a big problem when it came to our temporary residence permit. Most counties (ours included) will want you actively building to keep your permit.

With the DIY house plans, we have the ability to save funds for each piece of the house, and build it as we reach each individual savings goal.

For example, late last winter, I calculated out the material cost for each part of our foundation. I started savings goals for the footings, the rebar, the cinder blocks, and the mortar. (I had to combine the funds and shuffle things around because of the re-design, but the funds were there nonetheless).

Smarty Pig lets you set automatic payments into your goals, or if you're a control freak like me you can transfer funds manually. It seems that they used to require a monthly transfer, but from my experience that is no longer the case.

A word of advice concerning goals: it may be wise to keep your goals small or even divide larger goals up into a couple smaller goals. Once the money has been transfered into a goal, you cannot do a partial withdrawal. If you have an emergency crop up and need to free up some funds, you have to close out the goal and withdraw all of it. This isn't a HUGE problem. You can just transfer it all back to the bank, and then create a new goal and transfer some of the money back to Smarty Pig. That's a little clunky, but not the end of the world.

One you reach your goal, you get to close it out and go buy things. This can be done by transferring it back to your bank, or you can put it on a gift card. They incentivize the gift card option by offering a bonus cash boost. There is a hardware store on the list of retailers, so this can really help on a project like this. Here's their page with gift card info.

I've been able to integrate this into my Etsy shop and use it as a tool to show customers exactly where their funds are going. Recently, the most aggressively funded goal has been the architectural blocks.

With each purchase I'm including a thank you note that tells them what part of the building project their purchase will go to. 

I'm going to try to update with more detail on each piece of the build so people can see exactly what is being saved for, where it fits into the house, and when it is purchased and installed. Until then, I have some Etsy orders to fill.

Pouring the Foundation aka More Things Are Happening!

Quick but pivotal update tonight: we have achieved concrete. I may have jinxed myself with the last post on being almost done, as three days later we had a catastrophic collapse around 85% of the trench.

Now, I'm not going to say that I wish I had stuck to my guns and refused to compromise on my original plans. However, When 6-8 inches of mud has fallen into the bottom of a trench, it is significantly easier to clear it out when the rebar is only three inches high than when it is 24 inches high.

So I spent many uncomfortable weeks straddling an awkward metal cage, which is held together with sharp pointy wire. I lost about three gallons of blood in the process and ripped the crotch out of five pairs of jeans.

Being that we are rapidly approaching winter, I was afraid we would run out of appropriate weather for pouring concrete. I think we managed to hit the last warm snap of the season. Thanks, global warming! Thanks, El Nino!

This morning I was all set to get my daughter to school and come home to pour some concrete. I started this journey by stepping off the porch, rolling my ankle, and falling right on my face. I thought, oh no, a wonky ankle is going to totally fuck up my day.

Oh, but the Fuck-up Fairy wasn't done with me yet.
I drop off my kid, start heading back, my tire blew out, and I skidded into a ditch.

Mind you, this is the tire that I just replaced in May. This is also the one day I decided not to put on jeans and went out in my PJ bottoms. No one is going to see me, right?

Wrong. Everyone dropping their kid off to school that day got to see me in my jammies yelling at my tire in a ditch. C'est la vie.

So, Mom to the rescue (thanks, Mom!) I get dropped off just in time to do 2 hours worth of prep in 45 minutes. So much panic.

All the drama aside, it's done. We worked 13 yards of concrete into a 24 inch high,134 foot long footing before breakfast. Before coffee even.

Level up.

Here's a few photos of before and after. There was too much to do to take any "during" photos.

I am disappointed that Jack did not supervise us at all through the pour. The little snot slept through the whole thing. Oh well. Here's a photo of him snuggling his grumpy cat plushie anyway.

Now I can relax a bit. The next step is to build four courses of architectural blocks on top of this footing. I'm not going to have enough warm weather to get anything significant done on that front, so it's time to head to the garage for some wood working.

Update on the Foundation Redesign and Other Things

After what's felt like a horribly long time of getting nowhere, things are finally coming together. We've had a break in the rain. The trench was cleaned out, the sides have been mostly repaired, and we're just about ready to have another inspection.

After talking with the inspector, he had a suggestion that would speed things up and make it a bit easier on us. Instead of pouring our footings 10 inches thick, we're pouring it up to 24 inches and laying a cinder block stem wall on that. It's costing us a little more and requires us to do a bit more rebar than the original plans. I've been a bit stressed out about that because I've never done rebar like this nor did I have a lot of time to go over the code. I really hope I got it right, because there's not much time left before cold weather sets in. No pressure, right?

This required three pieces of rebar running horizontally and vertical rebar placed every four feet. The verticals had to be placed just so since they will be running through the cavities of the cinder blocks. To make sure I was on the mark I ran the lines on the batter boards and checked my placement with a template of the cinder blocks.

Jack decided that cats are more interesting than rebar. I agree.

So here's more Jack:

Beyond the rebar, we've just been enjoying a quiet summer on the prairie. Our garden has done pretty well for the first year. We have a tiny black cat that has been hanging around. We're calling her Beyonce. She loves to sing, and since all our cats are boys she is the single lady.

No photos of her yet. She's still very skittish.

We have some prairie sunflowers that have grown on the property. Normally, I dislike sunflowers. A lot. Sunflowers are what interior decorators use when they want a place to be Kansas-y. I always associate them with truck stops, gas station bathrooms, kitschy gift shops, and the girls locker room all throughout the 90s. OK, that last one was just Elizabeth Arden's Sunflowers, but it still sucks.

These sunflowers, however, are MY sunflowers, so they're totally different. I love them. The bees really seem to like them too so they are definitely staying.

Edgar is still doing well.

I put up our mailbox and started decorating it. I'm painting mushrooms from my favorite 1970s enamelware set, and yes, the stems look like dicks. Ha ha, dicks.

diiiiiiiiiiicks

The farmer that owns the surrounding land came through and hayed. Now we have large hay bales.

Yeah, they're really not that interesting.

Not us though. We don't really want the grasses cut and hauled away. We're letting it grow wild for now and will be mulching it so we can help restore the top soil.

Damn long-grassed hippies.

I've done some work down in the tree line. There's flat spot that I want to turn into a meditation garden. It sits under a huge oak tree and next to our little stream. Right now it's full of flowers...

Awwwww.

... and a giant honking orb spider.

EEEEEEEEEEEE

That's pretty much it for now. I've had some new stuff happen as far as the trenches go since I started this post, but that will wait for now. Hopefully I'll be sharing some concrete pouring in the next week or so.

How to Excavate a Foundation in a Monsoon

When we applied for our building permit in December, there was a provision that required us to have an inspection done once every six months or the permit had to be renewed. Translation: work fast or hand over even more money. That gave us until mid June to have the inspection for the footings. The ground thaws out in our area late March into early April and the temperatures are reliably warm enough to pour concrete by early May. I had all my necessary equipment to do they layout on site in mid April.

This year, that is when monsoon season began. No, that is not a usual thing for Kansas.

In May it rained two out of every three days with a final total of 12 inches for the month. June was slightly better with rain occurring only one out of every three days. When we realized that having anything done by our six month mark was looking doubtful, we set up meeting with our county inspector so we could talk about our options. He was very understanding about the weather and was gracious enough to give us a little leeway, so long as the inspection happened within the next couple weeks.

So, with the forecast looking mostly OK, we got out batter boards set up, rented an excavator and got to work.

We only use free range batter boards

First thing I did upon the excavator's arrival was stick giant googly eyes to it. Every time we start working on stuff, we have lookie-loos drive by. I thought I'd give them something to gawk at.

Whachu lookin' at?

It amused me greatly.

OM NOM NOM NOM!!!

Jack still felt the need to supervise our work even though the giant noisy diggy thing was sheer terror to his little kitty brain. He took up his vigil under the trailer.

Human... WTF???

It went well. Jorgen dug, I wheelbarrowed dirt out of the way and squared up the bottom of the trench.

A few days of moving earth and the trench was deep enough and clean enough for me to start on the rebar. That was also when my nemesis, the Rain Fairy, returned.

The Rain Fairy is a malicious creature that exists for the sole purpose of drowning your dreams. Going on a picnic? Camping trip? Building a ten foot tall unicorn out of sugar in your backyard? Not on her watch.

She shoots precipitation from her armpits and despair directly into your soul 

First night it rained, the trench filled with about four inches of water. Not catastrophic, but very annoying.

*grumble grumble grumble*

I got that water pumped out (mostly) and went back to doing rebar.

Rebar!

I was well on my way to having everything ready for the inspection that Tuesday when the Rain Fairy got nasty. On Sunday, the forecast was calling for 2.5 to 3 inches of rain on Monday and showers continuing for the next few days. The forecast was correct.

Incoming...

As the storm rolled in, I got out the submersible pump and went to work pumping water out as it was coming down.

Sump pump powers, ACTIVATE!

I built a dam out of cinder blocks and mud to guide the pumped water away from the trench.

It was mostly effective

The pumping continued through the night and again on Tuesday. The whole site was an awful muddy mess. I could see that the rebar was buried under mud and silt and large pieces of earth had fallen into the trench.

Mudegeddon

*grumbling intensifies*

The pump was starting to act up, so I went into town to find something to help things along. I found a pond pump that was very reasonably priced. I wrapped a piece of pantyhose around the filter to keep the silt from clogging it and dropped it in. It worked well.

Cheap but effective

As a bonus, I stopped into the thrift shop while I was in town and found these two ponies. Even though I'm selling off my collection, I'll never pass up a first generation pony. Ever.

Also, a piece of amberina glass. Score!

The forecast for Thursday called for a 50% chance of rain and after that we were in the clear. When the rain missed us Thursday I thought I had my chance to get everything cleaned out and finished up. I got in the trench Friday morning and got to work. There was eight inches of sludge in some spots, completely burying the rebar but I powered through it. By that afternoon I had made good progress. I was going to get it done... but then...

The Rain Fairy returned.

Now, there was no mention of rain in the forecast for that day. There was no rain on the radar when I had checked it four hours earlier. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. But there it was. Thunder and lightning to the east and heading my way.

It was at that point that I did what any reasonable person would do: I lost my shit.

I know there is no real point to hurling profanities at the weather. That didn't stop me.

If vitriol and obscenities could burn away Cumulonimbus, all would have been well. Alas, the downpour commenced unabated and the trench was once again filled with water.

Fucking Rain Fairy.

ASDJKFL;ADSJF I QUIT

So, that right there is how you dig a foundation in a monsoon: with great frustration. We had the building inspector come out and look at the site and his main commentary was, "Oh, man..." We then set up a meeting and he had some ideas for us on how to proceed. I'm very grateful for his input and understanding and we're in the process of revising our plans to make up for lost time.

This revision may require a little more cement and may cost a little extra, but it should be worth it. If it is approved, I'll share the details in a future post.

As T.F. Hodge said, "To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome, not the obstacles.”

But.

If I do happen upon that Rain Fairy... I. Will. End. Her.