Post 1-
BUILDING THE DREAM
(Backstory)


***Disclaimer.  I've got mixed feelings on blogs.  I joke regularly about "blogging angrily" as a  (kind of sad but hilarious) harmless way to vent that will have absolutely no impact whatsoever.  While not being nearly so narcissistic to think that everyone will be hanging on every word that's typed here, I still have enough of the self-inflated-ego to hope that some of this stuff may be amusing and possibly helpful if you're going to try something similar at some point.  Laugh, mock, learn from my mistakes, take from it what you will: the intent in putting it here for me is primarily to have something to look back on and laugh about.
***

We've finally found some land, after many years of looking. It's pretty close to work and church, not too far out of town.  We're in East TN, near Knoxville-ish.  We've been living in a pretty small apartment for a while now while we looked for land: squirrelling our money and trying to live frugally.  So, just as we were about to buy some land out in Blaine (10 acres, 1 hour away from knoxville), we found a property closer in that had 17 acres.

We expressed interest, and got the ball rolling on purchasing.  On some very good advice, I had the land surveyed.  Here's a side note on surveying: shop around.  We had some quotes coming in at over $5000 for a survey.  I  found a guy locally who did a great job and only charged me 100 per acre.  That's the good news. The bad news is: 17 acres more or less = 12 acres in this instance.   GET A SURVEY DONE before buying property, it's well worth it.  We renegotiated, and closed, but saved a lot of money because we'd done the survey.

Here's a picture of the land, looking in from the driveway.  There is a cleared off area to the left where there used to be a mobile home, and the small trailer that was parked there (now gone) is sitting on a spot where there used to be a double wide.  I'll put a few pics from the land looking out later.

The land itself is beautiful, low sloped to flat on the front, a mountain ridge in the middle, and low sloped on the back.  Remote enough that I won't have anyone right beside me, but close enough to the city for convenience.  Lots of hardwoods and trees, and great views.  The top point has an elevation of about 1200' and most of the rest of it is right around the 1000' mark.

We've done a lot of soul searching on the best way to proceed in building.  Our long term plan is to have an almost zero carbon footprint home, that is resistant to as many natural or unnatural disasters as possible.  So, how to best do that?  We're currently living in a small apartment (frugal!), but I'd like to get onto the land as soon as possible to begin applying that rent money towards building money.

So, here were the options we considered:
Tent/Pop Up Camper/Roughing It- I'd be ok with this, my wife likes her creature comforts.  If we're being totally honest, the older I get the more I like my creature comforts too.  I'd be ok with this for short term, but there's no way I could sell this idea to the family.  I'm not even bought into it entirely myself if we're considering a time period of 3 months or more (and especially as we're just coming into winter...).  Moving on...

Tiny Home on Wheels, Small Trailer- Definitely the cheapest and most viable option monetarily, would allow the quickest movement with some level of comfort, and would be my preference if I were the only factor to account for.  I've got a brilliant custom design for a tiny house on wheels that I'd be totally happy in for a few years that I've worked up.  This is the quickest/cheapest way to get moved on, simply because if it's on wheels, you don't really need a permit.  The drawback to this method is: I've got a family of 4.  I'm fine with roughing it for a while, but I think my wife would kill me.  Bottom line: this option works for me, but it would strain our relationship, so it doesn't really work for "us".  I'm still personally very bought into the whole "tiny house movement" thing, but it's not always about just me.

Tiny House/Guest Cottage- Something small enough to build well but at reasonable cost, but large enough to live in a bit more spaciously while we slowly build the "big house".   This is about the "middle ground" as far as cost and time/effort.  It needs to be small enough to be cost effective (ie, 600 square ft or less) in both building costs and energy expenses, but built sturdily enough to withstand as many potential disasters as possible, yet still feel big enough that we're not on top of each other all the time.  This is a good compromise between "smaller footprint" and "space", we still plan on trying to build as "green" as possible.  I've been leaning towards green for a while now: not so much because I want to be militantly conservative ecologically, but more because I'm very much for being frugal and this will save me money long term.

Big House- Go ahead and just start on the big house.  On the pro side, building costs will be significantly less since all focus/money would be directed at the main residence.  On the negative side: I've got some very particular ideas of how I want to build this, and it's going to be a long drawn out process in a couple key areas.  I'm pretty sure that the building materials savings would be negated by our ongoing costs to stay in the apartment while building.  If we could live in the pop up without killing each other, this would probably be the best option long term.  I'm pretty sure we couldn't though.