Planning For Our New Dream Home 

The actual planning for our new home started in January of 2005 when we knew my husband was going to be having major surgery and that there was the possibility of it not fulfilling our expectations.  If you would like to read about COPD and the difficulties of living with this disease, visit our My Life With COPD website.

Our son suggested we pick out a location on his property to build a smaller home so we could be close enough for him to help with maintenance and my husband's care.  We talked it over and decided that he was right, it was time to give up our dream property and relocate.  35 acres was too much for me to handle without help from my husband and he was fast becoming totally housebound.  

The first thing I did after picking out a location, was to draw up a plot plan of the new site and start the process of deciding where each structure needed to be built.

Our site consisted of approximately 2 acres and had a dry stream bed running through the middle.  There were only a few trees lining the stream bed so most of the property was open.  I knew I wanted the house to face the dry bed and have a bridge crossing it to the carport. The run-off was to feed a landscape pond planned for the front of the property.  We needed a barn/workshop combination as I enjoy working on small projects myself. We did not plan to sell the horses so the barn was needed for them and their tack/feed.  They would also need a pond for water. I also wanted to set aside an area for a garden and orchard. Below is a rendering of our original plans for the property.

The Planning stage was complete as far as possible until the sell of our house.  Since we could do nothing about home construction until our other property sold, we decided to start the ground preparation and erect the perimeter fence.  

We hired a contractor to put a pipe fence around the perimeter of the property and bought a semi-trailer for a storage facility until our house was completed. Making sure the trailer was water-tight and secure was the last project my husband was able to participate in before his surgery.

After the surgery in May and the 3 month stay in the hospital, I knew I had to get busy selling our home and get moved over to my son's location.

Our dozer man completed work on the house pad, barn pad, horse pond, and driveways in the fall of 2005.  Since we didn't know how much money we would have for our new home, we decided we should hold off completion of the bridge and landscape pond until the house was actually sold.