Quick Update

I just noticed that it has been a solid 3 weeks since I posted, no we didn't disappear, it's just we feel like we are in purgatory.

As I mentioned we had a nice visit from our son Jason and Joanne, showed them the land.

After our plans came back and we sent them to our prospective builder the first estimate came back much higher than expected, enough that we had to question the whole project:-(   We were in a bit of a funk, and told ourselves we needed to take a deep breath, let some time go by, digest it, and then sent it out to 4 other builders.

Meanwhile we decided to take care of our tire issue, so we ran up to a great place in Dalton, GA, Southern Tire Mart to get new tires for our steer axle and had them move the old steer tires to the tag so we could get rid of the 2 tires that had timed and worn out.  We did some more figuring and determined we had put about 70,000 miles on those tires, so not bad:-)

With all the time we are sitting around waiting, we managed to find a few new, to us, restaurants, one a pizza place in Cartersville, The Mule House, which has a very unique and delicious brussel sprouts appetizer and quite good wood fired pizza, definitely added to our list.  

So where are we now, Jan and I have sat down and worked hard to save money on the build, downsizing, altering, taking out some of the extravagances, you know, like running water, to see if we can't make this manageable without changing the complexion and feel of what we want.  Only time will tell, we knew when we embarked on this change in our lives that we might not be able to do exactly what we wanted and knew there would have to be compromises along the way.  Turns out that it might be one of the worst times to do this.  Our plan now is over the next week or so is to get back with the architect and change the plan to incorporate our savings ideas and add in any he can come up with, resubmit it to our prospective builders and see what we can come up with, otherwise........who knows.

An Update With Little to Report

Well, we are about 3 weeks in and thought we'd be rolling along by now, and have a lot to report, but no.

We are all settled into our 2 month site, and found out at this RV park, there are different rules for monthly renters versus overnighters or shorter term stayers.  We were told on check-in that although we might see a lot of folks with canopies set up, we were not allowed to have one?!?  So if you're here 29 days you can put up a canopy, but if staying 30 days or more, no can do.  Then another item caught us, we were told and in the rule book it says they want the sewer hoses to be elevated, why I don't know, and something we have never done or been asked to do in all our 30 plus years of doing this, and then we figured it meant if you had a normal 3 inch slinky hose you had to elevate, for what purpose, who knows?  Since we have a small macerator hose we didn't give it a thought, although we did run our hose carefully up the concrete, then made the turn to the hookup.  Well, about 3 days into our stay we had a staff member walk over and present me with an envelope, saying, "I was told to give you this, and I'm only the messenger", what?  I open it up and it says we have 48 hours to comply with elevating our sewer hose or else!  Well, we guess they are serious.  The commercially made supports are all made for 3" slinky hoses and they cost about $80!  So Jan decided she could comply with what we had on board, so she got out our folding ladder and a couple flower pots and managed to support our sewer hose on the ladder top and then across 2 flower pots, it must have met their criteria since we haven't heard anything more:-)  And looking around, we have to admit that although the short stays rarely have their hoses elevated, all the long term we could see, do.  Oh well, what it comes down to is this is the only acceptable park somewhat near our property, and the long term price is very good, so we'll just have to accept their funky rules and very lax caretaking and landscaping of the "resort".  You can also see in this picture the weeds growing near us, we haven't seen them cut any grass yet.

Jan has already started her garden, even before the house:-)

And even has a baby tomato!

Now as for the house, we have received all the final drawings and documents for the build, and all have been forwarded to the builder for his pricing.  He said about 2 weeks, and at the 2 week point, he reported that he had about 90% of the required estimates, but was still waiting on lumber and trusses estimate, we thought that might be fairly important so we were told another week or so.  Our anxiety level goes up and down depending on the day and what we are internally thinking at each moment, so we have to get through another week or so hoping, fingers crossed that his number is going to align with the stars and our budget and we can actually get this rolling:-)  We do go down to the property often to look around, visualize, have coffee, watch our new neighbor's progress, keeping our fingers crossed all the time.

Jan checking things out

So we are a bit stir crazy, but have been able to visit some friends, go out to eat here and there, met Karen a couple times, and just had a very nice Easter weekend visit from our son, Jason and Joanne.  We found out that our little cupping on the tag tires is bad enough to have to replace them, they are the oldest tires on the coach also with the highest mileage, so it's time.  We will buy 2 new tires for the steer axle and move the present steers back to the tag.  Frustrating that we didn't catch it when we were in Florida at Josam's as it's where we've bought our last several sets of tires:-)  So we'll do some research and maybe hook it up with a short trip to be doing something worthwhile while we wait.