The Trusses are Going UP!

December 14, 2014January 1, 2015 / Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

OK, a few months ago I didn’t even know what a truss was. Now I feel like an expert! Two men were balancing up there, while guiding the trusses from a small crane!

Check out the scene at our mountain property yesterday as we watched the trusses going up!

It was warm and a bit too windy for my comfort, but the brave men putting up our new home in southern Colorado were working very hard anyway, even on a Saturday!

When we arrived they had already completed the trusses on the south-facing part of our home and were working on the back, garage section.

Check out the view from our south-facing windows!

And the view looking west towards the guest bedroom!

Finally it’s beginning to look like an actual house, and they got them in just in time for a little bit of snow today.

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More Construction Photos!

December 7, 2014October 8, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Just got back from our build site. The weather is great so far this winter with 60 degrees plus today! This is the part of our house that faces west, towards Mount Mestas.

Mike is facing our solar gain side, directly south with a perfect view of the Spanish Peaks! Here he’s either contemplating his future or perhaps just his navel…

And here’s the future view from our bedroom, a great view of the snowy Sangres southwest of us!

Yes, the meaning of life IS A SPECTACULAR VIEW!”

To learn more about how we ended up here, going solar in the Colorado outback, check out: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado

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Construction begins!

December 3, 2014December 22, 2014 / Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

Now that our slab is done, we have a bit of genuine construction doing on up in them thar hills! OK, so it’s only a little framing so far, but after waiting five months for anything, we are quite excited! Just seeing men putting up walls was enough for me…

I can finally get a feel for how the house is laid out and only now I realize how large our garage will be. Mike says it’s only about one-third of the total square footage. I should have known he’d be putting in one hell of a man cave!

All in all, I can’t complain. I’m getting a solar home in the foothills, with views of 13,000 foot peaks from my kitchen sink! Sure beats looking at the neighbors…

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Our Small Town Thanksgiving!

November 28, 2014December 22, 2014 / Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

With all of the bad news, I would like to share something good…

This Thanksgiving we are new in town with no one to share our holiday with. I read in the local paper about a free Thanksgiving feast at our county community center.

At first, because I come from the big city, I assumed this would be only for the homeless, but when I read about it again, they were clearly inviting everyone.

Next I assumed it would be a mob scene, because such an event would surely be quite crowded if it were offered in Fort Collins, our previous home town.

Come to find out, none of my misgivings came to pass. The dinner wasn’t crowded at all. There was no line, the food was the best I’ve ever had, and everyone in that room full of strangers welcomed us warmly!

We even ran into a small group of our future neighbors from up at Navajo Ranch. So nice making new friends, and they invited us to their upcoming Christmas Party.

Small town living continues to surprise us, and always in a good way… such great inspiration to go home and put up our holiday decorations, after all it was 55 degrees outside!

We have a SLAB!!!

November 23, 2014November 23, 2014 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Yes, we knew it had to happen eventually, and now, in spite of the polar surge and everything else, it happened this week!

Now we’re finally ready to start the building process!

It took five months, but it finally happened! It’s snowing today so it will be a few days before anything else happens, but this is great progress!

Just back from our first trip up to metroland since moving down south… What a culture shock that was!

Today the plumbing, next week the SLAB!

November 7, 2014November 9, 2014 / Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Do any of you have experience in the excruciatingly slow process of building a new home in rural settings? I’m a new viewer to HGTV, and when they complain there about 6 weeks to remodel I think, try waiting 5 months to produce a slab!

Because we are building a slab on grade foundation, all plumbing had to be built under our slab… and inspected twenty times! But now, we can finally see one big slab in our future!

I never thought I would be planning a slab celebration, but we already have the champagne on hand… we’re even thinking about a slab photo for our holiday cards!

See, once the slab is completed, we can start the actual building of walls. In other words, the house will finally begin to take shape. It’s completely crazy how much time this process takes, but our contractor/builder tells us that this is as good as it gets if you want to hire the best workers out here in rural Colorado.

And we do want the BEST…