Welp...Last Monday began the official ground breaking for our home. A little background:

My wife and I decided to build our own home...not acting as general contractor but to physically build our own home nail by nail, board by board, pipe by pipe.

Our plan is to do what we can ourselves with the exception of excavation and foundation (concrete- continuous wall) and electrical - although we will rough wire the house and just have the electrician connect power to the box. So I guess there will be somewhat of a GC role, but we intend to keep that to a minimum.

We are using Shelter-Kit out of Tilton, NH for the shell. He specializes in pre-cutting the home and supplying all that is needed for a complete shell. His niche is to design his homes for the novice/amature do-it-yourself-builder.

I won't bog down the post with details on Shelter-Kit, the website provides plenty of info.

First Week:
The excavation went fine...until we hit ledge. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] Then a one day dig turned into three days - moving the stakes 3ft N, 2ft S, 8 inchE, and 24ft W until we found a good spot (we chose not to blast the ledge). The house will sit much higher now than originally planned, but we have some creative finishing work in mind to camouflage the exterior concrete basement walls.

And now comes the rain. Due to an incessant deluge of wet stuff over the past 5 days our "reservation" on the concrete dude's calendar has gotten pushed back. And with the report for more wet weather in the future who knows when the pour will actually occur. No surprise - delays are part of the process.

I've babbled enough. I'll keep a running journal of the entire process. Especially once we start assembling the Shelter-Kit home. For those interested, we are using the Barn-House style, 24 X 40ft w/ an 18inch Knee wall. The basement will be a full finished basement with a 16ft walkout opening.

Hope ya'll find this interesting. We are totally enjoying the experience...good and bad. That's what makes the most entertaining stories dontchathink? [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

RY