Framing

My trailer is situated so I can sit right here at the dinette and look out the front windows at my new house taking shape.  I've  been trying to stay in here and out of the way of the workmen as much as possible, but I have to go out now and then to take pictures.

They brought me Matt's generator today so I could charge my trailer batteries, and while I was at it, I treated myself to a little air conditioning. Still pretty warm here in Campo in the second week of October, but we did get a light sprinkle of rain this morning.

I'm pretty worried about Molly out here, because I know there are coyotes, and today one of the workmen had laid his nail pouch on the ground and found a baby rattler in it! (shudder...)  Molly has been free to run on two acres back in Alpine and snoop under things looking for lizards.  I'm sure she doesn't understand why I keep her on a leash most of the time here, but this is wilder country.  I only have one neighbor, and all the land on three sides of me is undeveloped with lots of trees and brush.

This evening before dark she made a break for it, pushing the screen door open with her nose and bolting.  By the time I got my hat (and my coyote gun) she was out of sight, finally coming back from way across the property after I called her several times.

It's a dilemma: do I let her run free and enjoy life, even if it means a premature and rather unpleasant death, or keep her on a rope the rest of her life until she dies of old age?  Poor thing... She doesn't bark or complain, but she really wants to run.  I suppose I will end up building some kind of a fenced yard, but I've read that coyotes can jump a 7' fence, so unless I want this place to look like a gulag, any fence I build will just be to keep her close to the house.  It won't keep the bad guys out.

Well, I guess it's official

A five-acre place ought to have a name, and I've been thinking the name of my place should be Sábado, which means Saturday in Spanish.  (I'm only five miles from the Mexican border.)

Saturday is the happiest day of the week, and I consider retirement to be the Saturday of life.  You work all week, but when Saturday rolls around, you get to do whatever you like!


Today the name became literally etched in stone.  They finished pouring the porches and trailer slabs, and I got there in time to do a little graffiti with a sharp nail.

I scratched the name in the front edge of my porch, right where you enter.

Also autographed the corner.  That's almost a requirement for new concrete.

 So I now have two nice pads adjoining the shop: one for the trailer, and one for my little electric boat.  Eventually I hope to build carport roofs over the pads.

Framing starts Friday.  Stay tuned!

Foundation

On September 23, exactly one year from the day I bought the land, the groundbreaking is done, the footing trenches are complete for both the house and the shop, and the under-slab plumbing is in,

The house, seen from the back

That's a toilet and a bathtub you're looking at.

The Shop

Next comes a plastic vapor barrier, a four-inch layer of sand, and rebar.

These guys really get into their work!  They're standing in my dining room.

Couple more trucks on the way for the shop

And here's the shop.

Next week, we'll get the porch floors and a parking slab on each side of the shop, and after the concrete all cures a few days, framing!

Stay tuned!

Groundbreaking!

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Well, we pushed the ground around a bit getting a level pad, but I choose to consider today, Tuesday September 22, 2015, the day we actually broke ground in Campo.

Today the concrete crew dug the form trenches for the house.  The guy driving the excavator is actually my next door neighbor Josiah.  Just worked out that way.

The small square on the right is the breakfast nook; on the left is the screened porch.

Living in 100 square feet

This month marks one year that I have been living in my little 1967 travel trailer. Escrow closed on our 1500 square foot house in Lakeside last September 26 and I moved the trailer behind my kids' house and became a squatter, apprentice childcare assistant, and farm hand. I have dinner with the kids every night, and two nights a week, I'm the cook.

After a year in my cozy 8'x12' box, I can truly say that it's really quite nice. I share it with my little Molly dog, and she rarely leaves my side, even in the twin bed.

My little spot under the eucalyptus tree

The trailer doesn't always look this neat, but here's the interior:

Bedroom

This couch makes into a double bed, but I only use it when I go camping.

This is the twin bed Molly and I share.

Bathroom

One thing I am looking forward to is a bigger bathroom.  This one has everything I need, but it's pretty cramped.  The shower is 2'x2'.  I am hooked up to the kids' city water and electricity, my grey water runs on the ground to water the weeds, and every week or so I empty my "black tank" using a portable tank on wheels.

Kitchen

Since I mostly mooch dinners, I don't cook a lot in my own kitchen, but I make coffee every morning and usually a sandwich for lunch.  I quickly learned to live without some kitchen niceties, like a microwave and stove burners that light themselves.  And you really don't need cupboards full of dishes, pots, and utensils. With a tiny sink, dishes need to get washed right away, but it's just me, so usually it's just a bowl and a coffee cup.

The fridge is small, so I buy milk in half gallons, and go to the store fairly often.

  


This handy addition to the stove doubles my counter space:

    

Dining Room

One of the things I like  best about old travel trailers is the cozy dinette up front. It's where I'm sitting right now, with a little white dog curled up next to me, and it also serves as office, workbench, catch-all, and lounge.  I don't have a TV, so if I watch something on Netflix, it's here at the computer. More often than not, the "dining room" looks like this:

When I was designing the bungalow, I had the big desktop computer on this table, and had to push the keyboard aside to make room for my cereal bowl.

Occasionally I do have bachelor dinner here, like Hawaiian roll French toast! BFD - Breakfast for Dinner... one of my favorites.

If  you don't have room for a big coffee maker, you get along just fine with a teapot and a pour-over cone.

Living Room

Okay, I don't really have a living room.  I have this dinette, and a bed. I am looking forward to a recliner and a woodstove, but for now, I do fine with what I have.  

I have a library...

...a reading lamp..

A killer sound system...

 

"Trailer trash"

Air conditioning...

Heat...

...And a dog.

And after all...

Next week the concrete crew will start on the foundation, and then we'll start to see framing, and my little bungalow will begin to take shape at long last.

But in the mean time, I have a wonderful family feeding and caring for me, and the truth is I'm not really limited to 100 square feet.  I have a huge pile of stuff from the old house stored in my kids' shop and garage.  A lot of it is my woodshop equipment, but an awful lot of it is stuff I thought I couldn't live without when I was in a three-bedroom suburban house, but haven't used in a year.

I wonder how much of it I'll still think I need when I finally unpack the boxes.

Cheers, 

Gary

September 5, Grading Redux

The soil on my place is fine decomposed granite - almost sandy, and there are zero rocks.  That's great, and makes it easy to work, but made us a little nervous about the grading work we did a couple weeks ago. I personally wasn't comfortable with how careful we had been about making sure the "fill" part of the pad was compacted adequately.  So the boys agreed to come back this weekend with two bobcats, one heavier one with a bigger bucket and bulldozer-type treads instead of tires.

They dug out all the fill and piled it up, scraped the entire pad a little deeper, and then laid the soil back down in layers, running back and forth across each layer with the heavy tracked cat while I kept it wet with a hose and big sprinkler.

Hopefully we'll start on the foundation next week and I can post something besides pictures of dirt!

Grading in 104 degree heat

Matt and Alex brought the bobcat out yesterday morning and got a lot of leveling done, but didn't quite finish. It was stinkin' hot.  We went through about half a case of water bottles, and had to pull the generator completely out of the box because it was overheating while I was using the well pump to wet down the dirt.

Had a little bit of panic when the pump wouldn't come on.  It had worked in the morning, but when I tried to fire it up later, the switch had failed.  We just bypassed it and were back in business.


By the way, did you read the song lyric over to the right, John Prine's Spanish Pipedream? If you're reading this in email, you probably can't see it.  You have to be on the blogger page.

I've decided it should be my theme song.... :)

The thing on the tripod is a laser transit that they're using to get the pad dead level