Side Trip - Lumber and The Well

One side story to the cabin.

One week Daniel worked in Greenville. The highway to Greenville was being widened into a divided highway and he noticed that they were tearing down some houses to accomplish this.

That weekend we worked in Blue Ridge but after lunch we grabbed our tools and drove out that way.

Most of the houses that we passed were just piles of broken lumber, but on one we passed, the floor was pretty much intact just lying on top of the rest of the house. Of course, as we drove by, another man was already there poking around, so we went on by. As we neared Greenville, we could see smoke and as we got to the last house, there was a construction guy there burning it. Nothing else looked promising so we turned around and headed back. As we got near the one house we were interested in, we noticed the guy was gone, so we pulled over.

Daniel got out and started busting up the floorboards with his sledgehammer so we could salvage the beams. As he did that I walked to the next house (pile of rubble) and salvaged a couple of 2 X 4s. As I walked back to load them in the truck, I noticed the other man was back talking to Daniel. He was an older retired man, named James, and we visited with him a few minutes. He was very nice. ((the darker vertical boards in the picture are the salvaged boards))

He helped Daniel break up some of the floorboards, as I went back to the other house and picked up a few miscellaneous bricks. He noticed my bricks and pointed us to another house farther down and said it had lots of bricks laying around everywhere down there.

After he left Daniel and I loaded up the lumber. We got ten or eleven 2 X 8s in all and they were all 13 feet long. Really nice boards, however they stuck way out of the back of the truck. While Daniel was securing them with tiestraps I tied a bright orange glove to the end of them so people would notice they stuck out. (Daniel laughed)

On our way back to Blue Ridge, Daniel stopped at the "brickhouse" and I immediately began loading bricks into the back of the truck. Daniel (always thinkin) noticed a gaping hole in the ground and went to investigate.

There was a fairly deep brick lined well that the construction workers had evidently uncovered. And they just left it uncovered for anybody to wander up on! It was creepy because it wasn't just a straight column -- at the bottom it was bulbous (like a thermometer). Daniel and I took some pictures and got out of there before we tried to throw each other in.

a LOT to get you caught up

So Daniel and I are building a cabin. For awhile we bickered back and forth regarding the plans. His plans vs my plans; 1 story vs 2; kitchen vs no kitchen; itty bitty vs big. What we’ve come up with is 20 X 24, 1 story with a loft, open floor plan. 672 square feet of living space.

Well before we settled on a floor plan we decided to try to salvage some old wood to build this with. We actually talked about this way back when we were living in Tyler, but nothing ever came out of it. I’m a craigslist junkie so one day while perusing (back last Feb or March) I spied a listing for a house to be torn down. Most of the free stuff on craigslist goes really quickly, so I called the guy and we made arrangements to go out and see it. It was in Blue Ridge which is just east of McKinney. A very small, old, farming town. Daniel liked the look of the house and thought there was a lot of salvageable wood, so he made arrangements with Mark Littlejohn that we would take it.

That first weekend my mom, and uncle Doug, and cousin Austin came up to help us work on it. When Doug, Austin and I arrived, there were 3 buzzards sitting on the roofline. Doug said “Hey do you think I can hit one of them?” I being the doubter said “NO!” and Austin just laughed. So Doug sneaks out of the car and sidearms his knife at them. Believe it or not – he hit one! But it didn’t hurt it and they just flew off.

It took us 6 months to finish demolishing that house. (originally I'd told Mark 2 weeks!) We got 4 or 5 trailer loads of lumber. That summer was the tannest I’ve been in years! Additionally, we got to know Mark and his son Jake really well. They’re great people and I wish them all the best. Lastly, if you’re ever in Blue Ridge, there’s a little restaurant on the square called “Cattleman’s Café”, you should definitely eat there. They have great chicken fried steak and awesome chicken fried chicken. (( below is the last of the floor))

Also one fall day I noticed another ad on craigslist to tear down a shop/garage in Detroit. Daniel and I went to see it that Sunday and decided we wanted it. Made the arrangements with Scott the owner. Daniel was off the next Friday and he went and tore the shingles off. Clayton came up Friday night and we got up early Saturday and went out there. We worked on it all day – except for our lunch break. It was BITTER cold that day – I believe Detroit TX is a suburb of Antartica. Anyway, we finished knocking it down just as the sun was setting. I fell asleep on the drive home but woke up just in time to order pizza from Picasso’s for pick up. The next Friday Daniel went back to take the trailer load of lumber back to Liberty City. While he was there he ran into Scott – Scott said he couldn’t believe that we tore the whole thing down in essentially one day! (A funny aside – Clayton took a poop out in the pasture with the horses watching him. ewww)

So now we have lumber literally running out our ears. This is where the plan bickering happened. Not bad bickering, just “you don’t like my idea because you didn’t come up with it” stuff. But we eventually worked it all out, or tabled it until we have to talk about it.

Last fall, Daniel took a week of vacation and borrowed his bro-in-law’s tractor. That was a busy week for him: He cleared an area of land just on the Gregg County/Smith County line to build the cabin on; He put in a septic system for the cabin; He started building me an outhouse out of some of the reclaimed wood. We drove to Houston for my cousin’s wedding; We went to visit Rusty in Bryan/College Station. ETC.

Then I took off January 2nd so we had a 4 day weekend because of the Holiday. We finished up the outhouse that weekend and Daniel’s mom(Lorraine), my mom (Debra), and I raked and burned about 1 million leaves. We also pruned trees and weeds that have been growing unmolested for a long time. Really we’ve ignored the land for several years so we had a lot of cleaning up to do.

While we did this, Daniel mostly worked on the outhouse and it is mostly done. It is so cool!
A – it’s not a tree. This is very important.
B – It has a super-expensive toilet that we got from the Longview Restore (for $5). The toilet was brand new and the next day we went to Home Depot – where it was priced $309. WOW!
C – It has a totally awesome old mission style door. Yes, with glass that you can see through.
Anyway, the outhouse is 6 X 6 with a toilet and a sink and some storage. The sink came from a house on White Oak and is very old and very heavy.

The first week of March we both took a week of vacation. We worked Monday through Saturday of that week every day. My mom’s house was our hotel, and our schedule was pretty much the same every day.
7:30 – 8:00 a.m. wake up
8:15 a.m. leave and head to Home Depot or Lowe’s (drive through for breakfast)
9:30 a.m. leave store and head to land
10:00 a.m. arrive and start to work on whatever was that day’s project
1:00 p.m. I’d leave and go get lunch
1:20 – 2 p.m. lunch break
6:30 – 7 p.m. evening break – go get supper, go take showers, fall asleep on couch
By the end of the week I was so sore we could hardly walk. I mean – I work at a desk, people! But I know Daniel was a little sore also. One day we did venture to Tyler and we ate at Stanley’s BBQ. We also went to the Tyler Restore and purchased an old door for the cabin. It’s really cool. But that was about the only break we took during the week. Of course “some people” (DD) think we went shopping too much. But we worked really hard and we did need an awful lot of supplies. That week we started and completed the foundation (pier and beam), installed the sub-floor, and built 3 exterior and 3 interior walls. It doesn’t seem like much when you can write it all in one sentence, but I was really happy with what we got accomplished in those 6 days.

Now we are really working just 2 or 3 days a week. Daniel is usually off on Friday, so he usually will head east about 6 a.m. and work out there while I am at my job. Then Saturday morning we both get up and head out there about 7:30 and work all day. Sometimes we come home on Saturday night and sometimes we stay the night at my mom’s house and come home on Sunday.

The last 2 weekends we’ve been working on getting the rafters up. Since ½ of the cabin is open to the roof and the ceiling is 18 feet, we had to build some temporary flooring to work up there. It was shaky and scary. But we got those rafters finished up this weekend.

That's it for now. Mor e to come