Welcome

Category: country living

  • And we have land access!

    It has always been a dream of ours to build our own house.  We looked at several different options and decided to use Owner Builder Network (OBN).  In a short summary, you pay them a fee per square foot, and they help you be the general contractor for your house build.  They are there for every step of the whole construction process.  We had hoped to build our house in 6 months (from the time we sold our other house)…that is NOT going to happen!

    • January- bought the property
    • February- struggled with backing out of the sale of the property due to the culvert issue
    • March- decided to move forward and build a culvert; hired a designer for our plans; signed a contract with OBN
    • April- put our house up for sale
    • May- sold our house; moved everything into 2 storage units; signed a 6mo apt lease
    • June- began bank construction loan
    • July- signed on a construction loan; culvert started
    • August- Wade had open heart surgery, everything went on hold except culvert construction
    • September- the culvert is finally finished

    Now that it is October, and we have access to the property, we can actually get started!

    The first thing we did was get a storage container.  We had a storage unit that contained our outside garage stuff (the same one that flooded back in May), but we doubled the size and cut the price in half by putting a container on the property.  This also gives us room to store building materials.

    I am not going to lie, the guy almost flipped over in the ditch getting this on the property.  You see, Henry never did finish the culvert.  It was good enough to drive a car/truck on but not good enough for big construction trucks/equipment of any kind.  We tried to get Henry to come back and add more to build up the sides, but he kept telling us he was not sure what to do.  To be continued…

  • Working the land

    We bought our property in January. At the end of the month, our local master gardeners had a tree sale.  We bought 1 of each navel orange, blood orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, apricot, pear, fig, avocado, and some blackberries.  Around the last frost, we went and planted them all.  Every few days, we jumped across the ditch and hauled water from the creek to water everything…walking the 4.5 acres…with 5-gallon buckets of water.  Sometimes we used the wagon when we remembered to bring it.

    With record flooding in May…by mid-summer, we were in desperate need of someone to mow the property.  Without a culvert, it was hard to find someone willing, with the right equipment to get across to mow.  We finally found someone, and paid him way too much.  Once.

    Now is a good time to mention our wonderful neighbors.  We met them the first day we came out to the property, and we totally lucked out with such good people next to us.  During the summer, as the grass and weeds grew up, when Mr. M next door would mow his lot, he would make a lap around all of the trees making it easier for us to get to them to water.

    By the end of the summer (a VERY dry summer on top of one of the wettest Springs), the creek was dry again and we had no way to water the trees.  We hoped that it would rain…or the culvert would be finished.

    The culvert won.  Just as we gained access…the rainy season came.  (And we only lost one orange tree and the avocado tree.)

  • Finally- a box culvert!

    There was much drama from the start of the culvert construction until the end.

    We contacted Henry in March.  Between permitting and ordering materials and Henry accepting a bigger job than he could handle…construction started in July–4 months later.  We could FINALLY drive onto our land mid-September.

    The county would not allow us to build a bridge.  It had to be a “box” culvert.  Henry built a base, then forms for the concrete sides and eventually the top.  We cannot complain at all about the actual construction project.  He did a great job on the concrete box.  Here it is in pictures.

    The re-bar used is pretty impressive.  It is 1.5″ in diameter.  There is 15″ of concrete on the top of the culvert.  Hopefully it won’t go anywhere!!!

    More rain…And this is why it is so important to have good drainage in our ditch.

    FINALLY

  • Designing a box culvert

    When we tell people about our culvert, they cannot possibly understand what we are talking about.  If you even KNOW what a culvert is, then you typically picture the round concrete pipe that the driveway goes over.

    Ours is a very special culvert.

    Just a review of our timeline…We bought our property mid-January.  By mid-March we were about to sell off our dream because we could not figure out how to gain access to our land without spending 40K+ on a culvert.  In a desperate plea on Facebook one day, I posted a picture of a small concrete bridge and asked if anyone knew of someone that could build it.  Henry answered that he could do it.

    We took a chance.  Would we do it again the same way? NO WAY.  But we learned a lot and so did Henry.  We made some major mistakes, but it is only money right???  You cannot die with it.  We spent more than we should have, but we still came in under 20K for the culvert.

    Lessons learned:

    • Get the contract in writing…every single detail.  How much money, exactly what materials and a DATE.OF.COMPLETION.
    • If there is a change order, make sure it is in writing.
    • Do research BEFORE agreeing to additional purchases. Henry used a structural engineer to design the culvert and it cost the same as our engineered house plans!  We were told after the fact what we owed the engineer.  YIKES!
    • Pay NOTHING up front.  If they are a professional, they will get started without having to buy materials.
    • Pay in chunks.  We paid too much along the way, and ended up getting screwed at the end.
    • Be present as much as possible.  It was not until the culvert washed away that we found out Henry did not use stabilized sand and we had to re-fill the sides.
    • Get everything in writing.
    • Get everything in writing.

  • New property and flooding

    As we continued struggling with our culvert, we proceeded to move forward with plans to build a house on our property (once we finally had access…).  We put our house up for sale in April…had a contract on it in less than 3 weeks and closed the end of May.

    We figured that once the culvert was in place we would begin building.  We planned on doing it ourselves with Owner Builder Network and already had an agreement with them.  Given that we would do it ourselves and had a good idea of what we wanted, we opted for a small, 1 bedroom, 1 study and 1 bath, 850 sq ft apartment.

    The weekend we moved out…we had some major flooding.  Luckily our house that we were selling was high and dry!  The buyers were pleased to see how the water came up close to other houses, but not ours!

    Our storage unit was another story…we had 4 inches of water in it, and it cause the boxes to crumble spilling the contents onto the floor…making an even bigger mess.

    We also made several trips out to the property to look at where the flooding would happen.  It was pretty much right along the flood zone.  Good for us as we planned on our house location!

    That is our creek behind there that is normally dry.  This is the edge of the property where the ditch and the creek comes to a point.

  • The Culvert- Our first hurdle

    Over the course of the next 6 months, the culvert will become our biggest regret buying our property.

    Let me back up to pre-sale of our property.  In the HAR description, it stated “Culvert must be installed per county specifications.”  We thoroughly read the county page and from everything we could figure, the county will install the culvert as long as the owner buys the pipe.  Just to make sure we understood correctly, we called the county.  The girl was super nice, asked if it was residential or commercial, I told her residential and she reiterated what was on the website.  The county would install the culvert.  Great!  We bought the land…without having driven on it.  We jumped the ditch (a very DEEP ditch) to walk the property.

    One week after the purchase, we called the county and said we were ready for the culvert installation.  We were instructed to fill out the paperwork online and go mark where we wanted the culvert.  Make sure to clearly label the address so the county knows they are in the right place.

    Excited to finally be building our dream…we did exactly as we were told.

    Wade filled the paperwork the next day.  This is January.  About 5 minutes later, the county called.

    We had a special piece of land…our property required a commercial grade, box culvert and the county would NOT be installing it.

    Wait…what????  But we called and verified BEFORE buying the land!!!!  Yes…but we did not give the EXACT address when we called.  We asked a generic question which the generic answer is that the county installs culverts…unless it is over 60″ diameter, in which case it is considered a commercial install and the county does not do that.

    Taking a deep breath, we decided to move forward.  I mean, really, how much can a box culvert cost?  Surely…not more than 10K right???  WRONG.

    WRONG.

    WRONG.

    Hindsight is 20/20.  Knowing what we know now, we might have been able to find something a bit cheaper…but not by much.  Most places that sell box culverts do not sell to the public…they are commercial culverts!  The ones that do sell to the public were giving us quotes of 20K+ JUST.FOR.THE.BOXES.

    After spending weeks trying to figure out what to do…we were at a loss.  The cheapest we figured it would cost to gain drive-able access to the land was close to 40K.  Wade had talked to an attorney about the sellers who we bought the land from being responsible for not disclosing in the description exactly what it meant about the “culvert” and “county specs.”

    UPDATE: We found out from the county some more information about our property.  It seems that the gentleman that originally owned the farm land with grazing cows (in the 90’s) decided to break it up into 14 lots of 2.5 acres each with his house on 5 acres and the lot next to him was 4.5 acres (which will become ours).  The county told him with the development of the lots, the drainage would be an issue.  They tried to work out several different options…possibly an alley with back entrance so the drainage ditch would not be disturbed, or have the neighbors share driveways to have fewer obstructions in the ditch…the owner did not want to do anything the county suggested.  In the end, he said it would be up to the buyers to do what the county wanted…install commercial box culverts.  The lots sold like hot cakes.  Every single one of them.  And then came the first houses.  The county saw what an issue the drainage was going to become so the first homeowners were able to work something out.  They would buy the culvert, but the county would help with some of the install.  It was an all or none thing…so the property owners that agreed had nice box culverts put in for a fraction of what we paid.  The others have sold off the land (without disclosing what it would take to gain access to the property).  After ours…there are still 3 lots that need culverts.  When you call the county now about installing residential culverts, they ask your location just in case it happens to be on our street…

  • Dreaming of land

    It has always been a dream of ours to have a small piece of land.  Ok…or a big piece of land.  But God is not making anymore so it is hard to come by.  After looking for months (well really years if you count the time from when we first got married and started looking), we thought we found the perfect piece of property.  It was 2 acres on a small stocked pond with extra-large oak trees filled with Spanish moss.  Wade went on and on about how it reminded him of growing up on Caddo Lake.  We put an offer on it…and things got weird.  The seller was getting several offers and they decided they wanted a “final offer” and they would choose the best one.  We had no idea how much to offer (we offered 20K over asking price) and in the end it was not enough because we never heard back.

    Wade was devastated.  It is hard to understand why things don’t work out as you think they should.

    Several months later we found another piece of property.  This time it was 4.5 acres on a small dry creek.  The front was cleared and the back was full of oak, elm and pecan trees.  Hesitantly we offered asking price and the seller agreed.  We signed on our dream property in January of 2015.  And so the adventure begins…