The Next Steps!

So the longer I watch the process of building a house the more I realize what has to be done before you just start knocking the place down and building. Starting with making plans for it, seen below...

Then figuring out how to get everything out of the house and in storage containers at the bottom of the hill, pull the power off of the house and onto a temporary power pole, along with transferring the phone line so we can have internet! (How could you survive without that right?!) Once everything is taken out of the house and the power, phone and water taken care of, the paneling in the main room will be taken off of the walls and ceiling. That could be either really difficult or easy, we will find that out in the middle of may. 

After everything is taken care of with the house its time to demo! It's going to be kind of sad to see the place go, I have had so many memories in that cabin from when i was little to now. But at the same time, re-building will bring even more memories in the many many years to come. 

So after the demo, we have to make a little bit more space for the house to go and to dig the foundation. There are some giant red pines that have to be cut down because we will end up cutting some roots and they wouldn't be able to live. These will be milled and used on the inside of the new house as paneling and trim. These trees are TALL!!! See picture below....

So thats it for now, thanks for following along! 

Building Problem Number One

So the first step to making the project of building a new place is the overcome the fact that we need to be able to drive a 60,000 pound cement truck and well drilling truck over a 90 year old concrete bridge.

The problem with this is there is no way to tell if that bridge can even hold a 20,000 pound truck. Oh, and if the bridge would collapse the DNR would not allow for it to be rebuilt. So the question ended up to be how do we build a bridge that will hold the weight without putting any weight on the old existing bridge.

The ideas consisted of rail road ties, sheets of steel, I-Beams, A helicopter (yeah right), possible a cool jump? Months and months go by trying to figure out how to pull it off until Yard King of Cadillac, MI came through to tell us about a bridge that they make for the U.S Military that many people have purchased for exactly the same reason we need it. So after some discussing and some awesome cooperation from a couple different families on our road we decided to buy a bridge to go over the old concrete bridge.

One great advantage to this new bridge is now the fire department can drive their big water tankers over it in the terrible case of a fire near one of the homes on the road. (Which we learned they wouldn't cross it with those trucks a couple years ago when a down power line started a brush fire. Scary!)

Obviously our bridge will be colored different but these are some examples of what it will be looking like.

There will be a lot of work to come to get the ground packed enough to support it but it will be a great improvement to the road.

(Pictures coming soon of bridge that will be on our road.)

Pictures Of The Cabin

Kids Bedroom

Hallway from Family Room

Master Bedroom

Laundry Room

Back Bedroom

Back Bedroom looking into bathroom

Back Bathroom

Back Deck looking off to East Lake

Back Deck

Back of the house 

Looking down the road from back of house

Woodbox under laundry room

Side Deck over basement

Basement Entrance 

Basement

Front of house

Kitchen into dining room

Dining room

Dining room

Front bathroom

Family room looking over basement entrance 

Family room looking into dining room

Family room looking down hallway

Down the hill to dock, fireplace and pavilion 

Looking from front of house off to Long Lake

Dock and Pavilion

Some history of the Brown Cabin

So a long time ago my great great grandpa built the original house as a hunting cabin. The cabin was built on top of a hill looking over Long Lake to the west and East Lake to the east. Such a perfect place to see everything happening on both lakes! The dock was built on Long Lake along with what we call the Pavilion on the end of it. In the past there was a boat house connected to it also but fell down way before I was alive.

The original house was added on to over the years. Standing as it is today April 2nd 2012, it has three bedrooms, two bathrooms a big living room and a dining room/kitchen. Along with a laundry room, small outside access basement and a Car-Port. (Yeah, not too many of those anymore.) See page two for pictures of the house.