······   Creation - Building Our Home in the Woods

This is it! Our little home in the woods.

I won't even go into all the landscaping that needs to be done! You can see from the photos that there isn't any at this point. We made a 5' cut off the top of the ridge to gain level solid ground to build on, the perimeter areas are fill. That cut took the top soil, so we are left with the local hard pan of clay. In time we will have raised planting areas, and a lot of California native plantings that are drought resistant. Of course, none of that can be done until we have DEER fencing around our curtilage. Fortunately for me, deer don't seem to like most of my succulents, so they survive in pots. We do have a fenced veggie garden...photo coming!

I bought Broderbunds 3D Home Architect program the same day we bought our first computer in 1998. I had been hand drawing on graph paper for years, and this program was such an improvement! I had never used a computer before, so I learned how to use the computer by learning how to use this program.

This is the basic plan view. As you can see this is a small house by any standards, only about 1000 square feet with a very open floor plan that my husband wanted. This is not our 'dream house', but simply a home for us in the hills. It has been a long process even getting to this point.

This 3D over head rendering gives you a better idea of what it will maybe look like one day.

We are off the grid, meaning that there are no power power lines to our house. We will need to set up an alternative power system, using a generator, batteries, inverter and eventually solar panels. We pump our water from a spring that is gravity fed to a holding tank below the building site. We are at the top of a ridge, so our water tank is about level with the house, not good for water pressure, so we will also need to put in a pressure tank for the water.

I have photos of the whole process, from the time we had a tipi there to where we are now. Too bad they aren't on a digital camera! I have tons of scanning to do, to get them ready I know I will need to work them a bit in Photoshop too. I want to put together a photo gallery type script to show them. I haven't decided on which one to use just yet.