Great site. We have been following the discussions here for a while and I've made my first post (more to follow). Mancong in Seattle

Christy's Forum Posts: 13
Journal Entries: 14
Interview Answers: 4
Average Forum Rating: 3.94



Image from Christy's blog

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Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 11/1/2006

This is another view of the exterior.

This is the window wall of the bonus room that we added. This plan came with a two-story great room that we just thought was a waste of space, so Tom redrew the CAD to include this bonus room. Love it! Then we had the framers add another portion over the 2-story foyer..another waste of space..and quite a problem for efficient HVAC, so now we have about a 2700 sf house!!

The last picture is the side porch to show you the concrete porches we put in. Almost maintenace-free and so much more solid feeling. These really are going to be so much easier to care for.

More pics in a couple of days!

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New Entry 11/1/06

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 11/1/2006

Well, we are moving right along.. I am working on the paint right now, but here are some pictures of what has been going on on the mountain.

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More Framing

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

Here are some more framing shots.

Tom setting up for the concrete pour on our porches.

They are really working it! The last photos are the first walls up on the second floor!

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Barn almost finished

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

Yeah!

The barn is almost finished. Tom is excited because he will be able to store his tools and be able to work on stuff for the house in the barn. For instance, he wants to build the columns instead of buy them. So, we are working like crazy to get it finished. This is the finished metal roof and getting the siding on. He constructed this crazy pully system of using the framer's forklift and ropes to pull the hardie sheets up and then he got up on the ladder to nail them in. Crazy, but it worked! My older son who is 7 helped him with a lot of this too!

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Framing Begins

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

We lucked out and found some fabulous framers..mighty cute ones too! Anyway, they finally got started framing. So exciting! I just pulled up a chair down at the barn and watched them raise the walls. So cool!

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The plan

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

It was a .bmp

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The plan again..

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

Evidently, I didn't load the plan .jpg right. Here it is..I hope!

Posted by Darlene on 7/17/2006 Darlene's Forum Posts: 21 Average Forum Rating: 3.53 Randomly Selected Image 7/17/2006	Still can't see the plan. Can you email me the name of the Don Gardner plan & I will look it up on the website.   Your property is GORGEOUS!! I'm jealous! Love the trees and winding driveway through the trees!   Thanks!
Posted by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/18/2006 Christy's Forum Posts: 13 Journal Entries: 14 Interview Answers: 4 Average Forum Rating: 3.94 Image from Christy's blog 7/18/2006	Thank you so much! We are tickled with it too...and honestly quite surprised that we found it at all! Christy

Tom's Barn Cont'd..

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

More of the barn. He is going to use metal on the roof and hardie 4x8 sheets on the siding. We'll see how this turns out!

We had a slight emergency in the framing of the barn. Tom's dad in the earlier pics fell off one of the ladders and got knocked out. The ambulance driver's and paramedics decided that because of his age, they wanted him flown to Vanderbilt. He's fine, but he hates flying, so he's a little perturbed that he was put on the helicopter. It scared us pretty badly that day. Of course, now Tom, my husband, is back to climbing and doing his normal scary stuff. Tom, his dad, and I put that roof on ourselves....about 30 feet off the ground on the back side.

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Tom's Barn

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

We spent Tom's vacation and a few weekends before building his barn. This is the gravel work for the slab and the framing. Can you see the cedar tree posts?

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The plan

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

Our house plan is from Don Gardner. We went back and forth b/c we couldn't find the perfect mix of openness and low sqft for cost savings. We finally decided to order the CAD for the house we liked and Tom changed the items we didn't like. Here is the elevation.

Breaking Ground!!

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

After the dozer came in we had the footer dug and poured, blockwork done and the termite treatment. You wouldn't believe the nests of termite all over this place!!

It was during this time also that Patrick, my 7-yr-old, and I decided to make a camp fire. We did not remove enough leaves though and it turned into a raging fire that my father-in-law and husband had to come save us from. It was so scary. They had to get the tractor in there, cut down trees. I cried. It sucked so bad. My husband just thought it was funny once they got in under control, of course. He took pictures of it to memorialize the event. You can't see it here, but at one point, the fire was covering about 20 ft in diameter and threatening to catch on the trees above.

And we had to rent the portapotty which I think is hilarious up there by itself.

One night while the backhoe was parked up there during the digging, I let the kids get on it. What a treat..to get to ride on Scoop! They loved it..for about 3 minutes..then it was on to the next thing since we wouldn't let them turn it on.

Tom set up the temporary electric and it was approved. I would take a picture of the 50' of trees that they made us cut down for the electric poles, but it is just too sad!!

Playing in the dirt piles!

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Along Comes a Dozer

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

The bulldozer finally arrived and there was some serious discussion between Tom and I about my lovely curving driveway and his precious old cedars..couldn't keep both. I'm just kidding. He's a good sport. He decided to take down about 30 of the cedars and use them as posts in his barn. I got my lovely driveway that is 900' long. It is SO cool!

Now this part blew my mind. You have to imagine that we bought 30 ac that was all essentially trees. Then I get there after the bull dozer came in, and there is sunlight filtering through the trees..it was so weird. That wasn't like that before. Then there is this giant hole..it looked like we had been attacked by tree thieves!

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More pics before breaking ground

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

Here are some pics of all of us hanging out up there while we waited for the bulldozer to come see us!

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Getting Out of Town...

Posted to Buchanan-Mountain by Christy in Dickson, TN on 7/17/2006

Tom and I have been married for ten years. We spent the majority of that time happily, for the most part, remodeled a sixties ranch with walk-out basement. We thought we would live there forever and proceeded to have two darling little boys. We did all the work ourselves as my husband is quite talented, but it took WAY too much time, and when it was over, I made him swear that we would never live in the middle of construction again.

But, Tom grew up on a huge dairy farm, and the country never left the boy, so we decided to try and find some land and another house attached to it. :-) Well, that didn't go so well since we don't want to be in debt forever, and real estate around here is just too scarce and too expensive. We also were taking care of our rental properties and Tom's full-time engineering job.

We finally managed to sell the house and all the rentals in March of this year. We found 30 acres eight minutes from town for a great price. The only problem was that it all sold so fast that we had to find a rental and start building before we were really ready. I wish we had started the planning long ago. I was looking at house plans for a year, but that is not planning, as I have now found out.

Here is a pic of our property. It is high on a hill so the kids have started calling it the mountain. I love our long driveway, and my husband loves the privacy. There are tons of dogwoods, very old cedars, white oaks, and other trees that are normally select-cut out of the property around here. I can't get over the dogwoods... most of them have perished in TN due to the disease problems.

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