Going Vertical

Once the forms came off the foundation, progress really started to happen at the site. Most exciting of all, things started to go vertical with framing!

 

 

 

 

 

Our kids find plenty to keep them busy when we visit, especially when their friend Frankie is on site as "junior contractor" to his dad.

 

 

We delivered lunch one weekend day (yes, the crew was working even on a Saturday!) and the kids took a seat on the back porch with Frankie to chow down on their sandwiches. We love that our kids will remember every step as the house comes off the ground!

Piers, Piers, and More Piers

Our house is in earthquake country, but it won't be going anywhere, ever.

 

We were required to dig more than 100 piers for our pier and beam foundation, a frustrating and lengthy process that took almost all of June. This house will have the most secure footing around!

 

We were still excited to see the footprint of the house, though, and took our first family photo in front of what will be the rear porch. We also grabbed pictures of our awesome team: our contractor, his dad, and our framer! 

 

Story Poles

Before our last design review meeting with our town in December 2013, story poles were erected at the site to demonstrate the size and shape of the planned house. Here we are standing in front of the downstairs master bedroom, thrilled to get a sneak peek!

 

Timber!

To make way for the first house on our property, we had to remove about 13 old pine and redwood trees. Seeing them come down was a first exciting step... the space felt suddenly saturated with light!

 

Here are the "doomed" trees marked for removal, the workers bringing them down, and Joey trying to get in on the action! 

 

And finally, a beautiful shot of one of the redwoods on its side! This was as tall as Molly May!

Planning for a Farmhouse

From the get-go with our house planning process, we knew we wanted to create a home that had farmhouse style. It's an unusual look here in the land of ranchers and Spanish-style homes, but it felt right that whatever house sprang from the ground here would be at home amidst the pear and plum trees, the blackberry bushes, and the still-rural feel of our little town.

 

We asked our architect for farmhouse styling from top to bottom, with covered porches, dormer windows, and fun nooks and crannies. But we also asked for an open floor plan that would connect the kitchen to a great room, making family life run more smoothly, so we could be cooking dinner while supervising homework at the kitchen island and keeping an eye on other kids in the family room or backyard.

 

We had quite the wish list: 5 bedrooms, a master bedroom downstairs, a play room of some kind, and a formal dining room. We're pretty darn pleased that we managed to squeeze all of that into a little more than 3,000 square feet, and can't wait to see it take shape!

 

 

 

 

 

Wide Open Spaces

Our first order of business after closing on our new land in the heart of Moraga was evicting all of the boats, RVs, tractors and cars that were parked all over it. This process was long and tedious (we had to consult the stack of index cards that the owner had left us with, and attempt to track down every owner with just a first name and sometimes a street name as a clue).

 

But when almost every vehicle was gone, including some that had to be taken to a junkyard, we were left with the wide open spaces that had drawn us to this diamond in the rough from the start.

 

If you can't see the allure here, you are probably not from Northern California! This is hard to come by, especially within walking distance of schools and shopping.

 

We envisioned space for a backstop, infield and outfield, space for a basketball sports court, room for a pool, and maybe room for a vegetable garden!

 

 

But we knew we had more than enough land to accomplish most of those goals, and decided to take advantage of the fact that the property already had three separate parcels. If we re-drew the lot lines, with the town's blessing, we could sell the little house on its own smaller piece of property, and leave room for two additional new houses.

 

After a year of planning and negotiating with the town, we finally created two quarter-acre parcels at the front of the property, and a large, square parcel at the back of the property that is now a little over an acre. This year, we sold the little house to a sweet little family, and had plans approved for the creation of a new house on the other smaller parcel, which we'll build and live in, while we build our "dream house" in the back.

 

If this all sounds complicated, crazy and completely nuts, we agree! If we had known just how big and convoluted this project would be, I'm not sure we would have started it.

 

But then we go visit that piece of land, and picture in our minds once again all the fun to be had there, and we feel like we won the lottery! 

Where it Began...

Two years ago, a crazy little family with a 6 year-old, 5 year-old and 2 year-old piled into the car, and drove a few miles to check out a lot that we were going to have to see to believe: a flat almost two-acre space smack in the middle of our little town.

We pulled into a long dirt driveway, passed a third of an acre of dense pine trees and redwoods, and took in the tiny house, the swaying garage, the chicken coop, the pear and plum trees, the overgrown, monstrous blackberry bushes that lined one fence line... and the 50 boats, RVs, tractors, and abandoned cars that dotted the landscape like graffiti.

It looked like a junkyard, and we were desperate to get it.

It's hard to understand just how magical two acres of flat land can be unless you live in the Bay Area, where these kinds of parcels were long ago turned into subdivisions full of single-story ranch-style homes.

This lot seemed to have evaded the march of time, still holding on to quirks from a different era. It was made up of three different parcels, but one of them was a narrow strip only 50 feet wide, a jigsaw piece that had been absorbed long ago to settle a bar tab or a bar bet. The owner, a 90 year-old man who received the Purple Heart Award in World War II, had built the tiny house on the land himself, a compact three-bedroom, one and a half bathroom, unlike any other house in our town. He tended to the chickens and tended to his "tenants": the people who paid him $50 a month to park on his ramshackle property. He kept a pile of index cards as a filing system, each card bearing the first name of the vehicle's owner, as well as a one-word description of their make and model.

The story of how it (finally) came into our hands is long and excruciatingly boring -- it took the better part of a year! -- but this sweetness made it all worthwhile.