Monday, March 26, 2007

Over The Hill and Far Away

A lot of people have been curious as to where Allen and I live right now while the house is being built. We were talking about that the other day and there happen to be an article in the local paper encouraging those who were homeless to seek assistance from local resources. They included a checklist in the article to help people determine if they could be considered homeless or not. I think Allen and I are right on the edge. We live in the back of a store basically. We rent a small "apartment" from Fred who very graciously lets us live there for a very reasonable price and it's right next door to our land, which is handy. We sort of have a kitchen and bath although we have to walk next door to Fred's to take a shower or bathe on the porch which I love to do in warm weather. Now, don't get excited; it's fairly remote. The neighbors are not getting a show. At least, I don't think so. The photo above shows my house from Fred's back yard. In the summer you can't see anything for the foliage.
This is the view from our little porch and on the left there you can see my handy-dandy shower rig. Works pretty good. We often come out early in the morning and have deer standing all around in this area. As I am building the house (or trying to) completely out of pocket, this arrangement helps tremendously on living expenses. It's a little restrictive at times. I can't cook certain things and we have a fairly small refrigerator. Things like that. It's one, big room basically so you can't have big parties and Allen loves to stand right in the way in the narrow path through to the "kitchen" while I am trying to cook and so I want to choke him sometimes. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices to have things happen the way you want. It's a fairly comfortable little place though and we get along pretty good there. I grow various herbs and veggies on the deck too. However, after 2 years, I'm getting very anxious to be in my house.
On the subject of the house, we have acquired a free water heater and installed that and hung more sheet rock. We (I, really) also finally decided on the lighting arrangement on the clerestory wall and wired for the ceiling fans. Allen found the faucets for the shower and so I just need to come up with the shower head and we can proceed with tile in the shower. We have just a little more wiring to do for some exterior lighting and plugs and lights under the house. It seems like it never ends.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ann,

Ran across your website some months back. I became interested because because my wife and I are also building a cabin "pay-as-you-go" in northeast Alabama. I thought some of your pictures of town looked familiar and then realised you were in the town I grew up in. I live along the coast of Alabama but wanted a place to stay when I came up for family visits, hurricane evacuations, etc. I visited your shop and found out that I already knew Fred and had been to his house last year. Looks like things are progressing well at your place, we're in the dry as well and plan to come up and work some this coming week. Keep on blogging and God's speed.

MamaHen said...

Hello Anon! Fred told me about your visit to his store the other day and about your house etc. I hope it is going well and thanks for your well wishes. Come by the store on your next visit and Fred can bring you out to see our house if you would like.

Omelay said...

sorry i haven't gotten to call you yet. springy things keep me off kilter and too busy. the blog roll is just a module in the new blogger now. after i converted to the new template system it just came up as one of the options. did that make sense?