Lisa & Adam Goldberg Deer Hill Blog #1

We are trying to document the building of our new house, so we decided to try an email blog.  If you have no interest let us know and we will remove your email from the list.  Anyway lets begin.

About 2 1/2 years ago Peter & Bettylou Bowles offered to subdivide their property and give us a lot.  After hiring an Engineer, going to many Inland/Wetlands meetings, Zoning meetings etc. (and of course great expense) we got the lot approved.  On June  25, 2009 Lisa and I became the proud owners of  4.25 acres in Woodbury CT.  Thank you Peter & Bettylou. 

During that time Lisa and I traveled New England in search of the Timber Frame (Post & Beam) Company to build our house.  We visited about 10 companies over a period of three months and a couple of thousand miles.  In April of 2009 we decided on Brooks Post & Beam in Lyndeborough, New Hampshire (www.brookspostandbeam.com)..  We have spent the last 5 months designing the house with their help. 

We decided to be our own general contractors so as we were designing the house we also began getting bids for our subcontractors.  We joined Direct Buy so that we may get most of our appliances, flooring, windows, kitchen cabinets and soo much more for wholesale rates.  We designed our kitchen ourselves (it took about 80 hours).  Every little detail of the house had to be decided on and since we are the GC we had no one to guide us (it was very time consuming but rewarding).  Anyway we got a mortgage approved ( we close tomorrow 9/29/2009).  So let the building begin.

We actually broke ground (started the land clearing) on 9/24/09.  It was a glorious day except for the fact that Lisa and I both had the flu.  The bottom line after 2 1/2 years the project was finally starting.  Even though we were both sick we have walked the grounds every day taking pictures to document the progress.  FYI as I write this we are still recovering from the flu and hopefully going back to work tomorrow. 

Attached are pictures showing the lot before land clearing thru today.  Its amazing what they can do in 3 days.

Town made us put 2.6 acres into a conservation easement	The glade where are driveway will be	House Lot	House Lot
St. View	St. View	Beginning of Driveway	Driveway
Looking up end of driveway	Looking down driveway	Adam, Lisa (with 101 fevers) Oz & Raz	Heavy equip
clearing/driveway	clearing/driveway	clearing/driveway	Lisa - still sick
clearing/driveway	clearing/driveway	clearing/driveway	Adam with the flu but working hard
same with Lisa	Lisa getting ready to go for a ride	Anti-tracking pad installed	huge stump
driveway/clearing	moving up to bldg lot	moving up to bldg lot	bldg lot
bldg lot	bldg lot	bldg lot	bldg lot

So there is the 1st installment.  Tomorrow they take down 4 white oak trees that are all 36" in diameter (200 + years old) or bigger .  We found someone who will take them and mill them into flooring and slabs for tables for us.  Anyway we hope you enjoyed this and we keep the photo's coming.