The old trailer house was 14' wide and 66' long. This was the imprint it left behind on the property:
Looking west, you can see where the old trailer house is now parked:
Looking east, you can see where the camp trailer was parked in the backyard:
Ah, yes. The camp trailer. It became our temporary home for 3 1/2 weeks until the new house was ready to move into. The camp trailer measures 7' wide x 25' long. If I didn't feel cramped in our old house, then I definitely felt cramped in the camping trailer! Especially since 2/3 of the time we lived there, it rained. The rain was a curse for me. It made it so we were all stuck inside without a satellite TV, without room to play, and without internet for part of the time and also created lots of wet, dirty clothes that I had to take to friends' houses frequently in order to get the laundry done. I do not look back on those weeks with fondness. But, despite what people told me, I still like to go camping now that I'm not living in it anymore!!
Here's what the inside looks like (don't look too hard, I didn't clean before these photos). After you walk in the door, to the left is the kitchen area, the table and couch, and the queen-size bed where Josh & I slept:
After you walk in the door, to the right is the boys' room with 4 twin-size beds and 3 closets. Even though each boy had their own bed, they spent several nights sleeping all on the floor together: 
I'm not the only one who was excited to see the excavator digging! Kanyon got right to work with his digging, too!
The new house measures 28' wide x 76' long. That's ten feet longer and twice as wide as our old house. Josh and I had discussed for months exactly where we wanted it placed on the property to accomodate the larger size. It pretty much went in the same place where the old one was, but we changed the angle to follow the driveway rather than the ditch line and we moved it down about five feet from where the old house started. This created about a 30 degree angle difference from where the house was before. In doing so, it took out a little part of our backyard, but a majority of the new space was taken from our driveway parking area.
When the excavator guy came on Tuesday, May 18, we marked out the new site with sticks in each corner and connected string to each stick. We only had to change the layout once before it was finalized with spray paint marking the exterior lines. It was so exciting when he started digging an hour later! In the photo below, the red rock was where the landscaping in the front of the old house was. The orange front-corner stick is in the dirt right in front of the red rock, and you can see part of the orange spray-painted line to the right of the red rock where the front of the new house will be:
I'm not the only one who was excited to see the excavator digging! Kanyon got right to work with his digging, too!
The boys were also glad to see the excavator in action. Thankfully, the guy was still working by the time they got home from school on the bus, and they loved watching him finish (it kind of reminds me of the Mike Mulligan story): 
A different view from our upper terrace of the excavator nearing the end of its job for the day:
After the excavator was finished, we were left with a big rectangular hole to admire: 
The rectangle hole seemed so huge, especially in comparison to the spot in the dirt that we'd been looking at for days left by the old house's outline!
Progress towards the new house felt rewarding, and almost made living in the camping trailer seem worthwhile (well, at least bearable)!!!
...to be continued
1 comment:
This is fun to see the before pictures even after I've actually seen the house. Well done, Kayla!
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