It's Been a Slow Slog

 

About a week ago we finally saw the power trucks appear to set the power poles necessary for our getting electric power. We applied with this private coop company in January and paid the necessary membership fees with application. Marc met with the field engineer to determine pole and line placement in mid-April. Since then, it’s been one thing after another to delay us, so it was a relief to see them finally appear. Never before have we had to fork over all the money up front as was required for them to even consider putting us on the list, where we were #24. Once things began however, they moved quickly and we finally got “wired”. 

Dealing with no electricity as Marc started construction work was a major headache. Running the generators ended up costing us around $300/mo. for fuel so definitely not cheap electric! We got the 500 gal. propane tank set and filled and we moved the RV closer to it so we can hook directly to it instead of having to fill the ten-gallon tanks continuously. Just this past week our well was dug and although it is filled with iron, it is a good well at a shallow depth. He went down 40 feet and found about a 50-gpm flow through gravel. It’s going to require quite a bit of filtration and water softening to make it potable.

(our temporary RV power hookup)

Marc started the boat shed, 10x20’ with a 9-foot ceiling, as he intends to hang the kayaks and still be able to park our small aluminum boat underneath on its trailer. Premade trusses were too much so he opted to do it old school and build rafters himself. He’s now on the roofing; siding will be vinyl. The door is ready for pickup at Menard’s; it’s a roll up. Everything seems to be taking longer than expected; throw in a handful of really hot, humid days when not much got done, and it doesn’t seem as though we are very far along. Marc often crawls down from the roof and ladder and says “I’m too old to do this shit” so I know it is a hard trial for him and his body at his stage of life.

So, I think we are leaning towards making the decision towards just building a cabin instead of a full-blown house, but thankfully, we won’t make a decision about that until next year. I want for it to be as simple and easy as possible for him. Meanwhile, I continue to run back and forth home to Waupaca to keep up with things there, mainly the mowing and weed whacking and doing about four loads of laundry each time in the short space of a day and a half including the long drive. We still pack drinking water from the spring there (another chore). 

Marc is having difficulty finding a cement contractor with any availability, which may force him to take a different tack in building the shop. He wanted to have the slab foundation done first but that may not be possible. Although he has the know-how to do the job himself, it’s just too much at his age and dealing with his two artificial knees, which means no kneeling or squatting. 

Right now, it’s his turn to be in Waupaca, where he is finishing welding the gate and loading it onto his flat bed trailer; he plans to bring up smaller items like a burn barrel, our screen room tent, and finally, our kayaks! He’s also done some wheeling-dealing with the estate of a neighbor who passed away and is stepping in to clean up a bunch of old wooden single pane windows and two old pontoon boats. They don’t run and are in sorry shape, but he should be able to scrap the pontoons off one and we’re thinking we may be able to use the other one as a dock if we tear it down to just the pontoons and deck. 

Speaking of pontoons, you all know how long I’ve lusted for a boat (years and years) so we finally decided to look around. The boat market has been red hot since Covid lockdown and good, used boats are scarce as hen’s teeth but we managed to find one on consignment the first day of looking. It’s a little larger than we were considering (22’), but it’s in exceptional condition, a 2015, with only 31 hours on the boat, motor, and trailer! We’ve had it out a few times and are having such fun with it. It’s easy for us to launch right at the ramp next door and Marc just did get it equipped with a fish finder he is learning to use. It’s easy to see why people love these boats so much—they are extremely comfortable, stable, easy to move about, they hold a ton of gear and they would be very fun to use with friends. Even on holidays, our lake is very lightly used and never crowded so it’ll be nice to get more time to use it in the future. 

 

We’re Camping Finally!

 

Weather after weather delay kept happening to keep us from our Northwoods paradise but we finally managed to arrive around noon on April 28^th.  The first day was for setup and drinking in our views and all the possibilities. 

We set to work in the cold under cloudy skies most days, with the first order of business being to figure some layouts as we started the gargantuan task of clearing. At first, I had it in mind that I wanted the additional screening of the deadfall and broken branches as screening, not that we show up that much from the road. Even though we’ll have a stout locking gate, I’d like to be as hidden as possible going on the premise that “out of sight is out of mind” when it comes to anything of a nefarious nature.

It was burn season when we started clearing so we’d pull the trailer to various areas and proceed to pick up sticks to fill it, then haul it to where we established a burn pile. We maintained the same fire each morning early from the previous coals, for five continuous days. Quite suddenly, weather turned unseasonably warm, so they shut off burning. By then, we were about worked to death from the constant stoop-over, pick up, and haul mode we were putting our bodies through (I say we but it was mostly me!) so we figured we would make piles and later rent a chipper.

Daily I work on making piles, as Marc gets more brazen about cutting bigger and bigger trees. He used to cut lots of firewood back in the day when he was much younger and agile but now, he takes his time. However, sometimes the trees don’t fall as he wants or much more likely, get hung up on their way down since the forest is so thick here. One particularly large pine required some advance planning as he figured out to ensure it fell the way he wanted. He decided to put a chain and rope tight strain on it using the truck. It worked!

 

We’re making lots of firewood out of all these trees. It will need to season for a year but Marc set up a woodcutting “station” where he spends much time slicing and dicing things into 16-inch chunks.

Somewhere along the line I went from wanting to leave a natural look to liking the cleaned up, parked out look. As you can see in these before and after photos, it makes a huge difference in being able to actually use and get around on the property, plus mitigates fire danger, I’m sure.

In between all the woodcutting activity, we laid out the location of the garage, 24’x30’. We changed course a couple months back and decided to scale back this project from a large shop and fulltime house to just a stand-alone garage, a boat/storage shed, RV shed, and a 748 one-bedroom cabin with a 300 s.f. screened porch.

There were various reasons for our new decision. Obviously, cost is the overriding factor but also coming into play was the harshness of the winters here and the lack of shopping. In Waupaca, which sits on a major four lane state highway, either Stevens Point or Appleton is easily reached in winter with excellent maintenance of snow removal. Here, our major shopping is an hour away over two-lane highway often left to turn to packed ice in winter. We’re loving the remoteness in summer but how would we do with it in a long winter?

Making things smaller in size will also be much easier on us in terms of building. We are finding skilled labor in short supply here (one well guy we called is already fully booked for the entire year) so we suspect that it will fall to the two of us to do much of the manual labor. House systems can also be less costly, for instance, no need for an expensive propane HVAC system with all its sheet metal runs. We can use a wood stove as primary heat with baseboard electric or Cadet room heaters, saving thousands. The kitchen will be smaller, with a peninsula instead of a costly island. There will be very few interior doors (we like to use solid wood doors); again, cutting way down on cost.

We’re informed that getting power into the lot is still about three weeks away; a well can happen sometime in June, and fiber optic cable around three weeks. Septic is a questionable timeline. Camp life without utilities is a bit harder as you extended boondockers know. But each and every day I awake amazed that we own such a stellar piece of property. The property is large enough that just walking through it leaves one with nuances of difference. Areas with thicker trees, areas with towering cathedral of trees, different elevations, flora and tree species. We’re watching Spring arrive as trees bud out with their leaves. There is a special tranquility to the place that no place has ever touched me like this. I can sit and watch the lake for hours. I simply love it and it’s a wonderful thing to be able to shape it into what we want it to be, to enjoy for as long as we can. 

 

 

Dreams

 

Do any others besides myself find websites like Pinterest and Houzz to be both a blessing and a curse? A blessing of course, for all the wonderful and unique ideas they can give you when you’re building, and a curse, because let’s face it: 90% of the ideas shown might be out of the reach of the average person building just a simple cabin/house.

We are facing some tough choices with this build. For ourselves, we don’t need things too fancy or extravagant and we are purposely keeping this place small. The reality though, is that it will not be our final home (unless we die prematurely), given the harsh weather. I somehow can’t imagine being mid to late 80’s and wanting to plow snow for six months of the year and feed a wood stove every day. At some point this home will come up for sale, so to some extent we need to be mindful of its resale value in the choices we make. 

Thus, the conundrum of the granite kitchen. We got the quote from the stone yard and to do both the perimeters and island (rough quote as we don’t have exact size of island as yet) is around $8000! Man, that’s a lot of money when an equally serviceable laminate could be had for probably around $2000 or less. We could do just the island for about $3000 so that is in contention, but for now, the granite idea is tabled while I’ve sent away for all sorts of Formica and Wilsonart samples to play with.

We made it up to the property for a quick trip yesterday; Marc wanted the Mule left there in our storage unit to be able to work with as we tackle the beginning work of clearing. The ground was still soft and there were still spots of snow in the trees and totally filling the boggy portions of property and the lake is still frozen. 

We stopped in and obtained library cards, stopped by the post office to arrange for them to determine where our mailbox will be set, and visited the county building offices to obtain the application paperwork for our initial permits for both the RV storage shed and our pole barn. Ya gotta love small Wisconsin towns: all accessory buildings over 80 square feet require a permit and the cost is only 10/cents/square foot. Even the house will only run 22/cents which means the permit for that will be under $300. Compare that to Bend, OR where last I heard a building permit ranged around $30,000+. Insane. Plus, there’s no taking six months to acquire it either; they will be ready in less than two weeks once submitted. I guess some municipalities actually want to foster building more houses and then enjoy the future tax benefit that accrues to the county, rather than find all sorts of impediments to throw in people’s way in the form of high fees and cumbersome rules and regs. 

Back at the property, we were finally able to do a full walk-around to better visualize placement of our buildings. In addition to the RV shed, house and shop, Marc wants an 8x10 shed and maybe also a small wood shed/lean-to. We had purchased the property under snow so this was the first time we saw what we actually purchased! It was a very windy day so it was nice to hear the wind passing through the tall, swaying pines. We did determine where we want to set our RV this summer to enjoy maximum beautiful views, which will allow the large picture window in the RV to look out at this:

We definitely agreed that the current stairway has to go! It is very uneven, has huge distance between steps, no handrail and is a terrible accident waiting to happen. Marc will tear it out and build a normal house style stairway, making them much less steep and far safer.

Our bog area is still snow covered so we didn’t venture to lake’s edge. We determined we’ll need waders to fully explore it at a later time if we wish and probably would be better served taking the boat down the shoreline to try and find our property pin. We have 1000 foot of shoreline. You may recall that the bulk of our property is in bog, with probably around three acres out of the fifteen sitting on top the knoll as the usable portion. This works perfectly for us because it allows us the 360 degrees of total privacy we were looking for with no other building around us possible, and also three acres is plenty for us to maintain and care for.

This is the lower end of our dry portion which then joins the bog.

This is the area where the pole barn will likely go; yes we have a ton of clearing to do! 

And here’s where the RV shed will go; we kind of want it tucked unobtrusively into the trees: 

We have an appointment with the power company field guy on April 26^th so we’re hopeful to move up to the lot around the 23^rd. The library has free highspeed internet but we won’t have access to much from our lot all summer. My phone will do a hotspot but I don’t have many gigs of use and we are shutting down our cable internet at our home since we won’t be here much at all. I’ll plan on doing updates to the blog as I can so thanks for following along! This should be fun!