The projects have been slow moving. The every day life is just busy with school, work, church, and family. But the septic system was something we had to take care of before anything else could move forward on the house project. And the driveway just kind of fell into our lap. And it’s been really nice 🙂
Septic System
Ah, yes, the septic system. Something that you probably have never thought about unless you’ve lived in the country. If you are far enough out from a city or town, you don’t have sewer lines connected to the city. You are independent. Self sufficient. On your own.
Which can be a little scary sometimes when you’re dealing with … waste.
So country homes have to have some kind of septic system. Ours was a big tank buried in the back yard. After leaving the house, solids would remain in the tank and start to decompose while liquids slowly trickled there way down to a lagoon at the back of the property where it would be treated by the good old sun. It seems like a strange system if you aren’t used to it. But it actually works really well and tons of people have lagoons in their yards out here.
However, septic systems are sized according to the number of bedrooms in a house, to predict roughly how many people will be using it on a daily basis. Our current home has two bedrooms, but we are hoping to expand it to four. So in order to meet the county codes, we needed to increase the size of our septic system.
It sounded like a huge project. They needed to come dig a big hole and put in an additional tank, connect it to the existing tank, and bury it. Plus, since they would be coming out anyway, we wanted to put in a dump station for our 5th wheel. So that meant more digging and more piping.
But the septic company surprised us and got the whole thing done in a morning and afternoon. You can check out the instagram video of it here!
And now we are ready for more showers, sinks and toilets! Hooray!
Driveway
This improvement came sooner than we were expecting. We live 1/4 mile off the highway down a gravel road. And our driveways—yes, we have two—were also gravel. It hasn’t been a big deal, but definitely an adjustment. The cars get pretty dirty, especially if we haven’t gotten a lot of rain. And the kids haven’t been able to do their rollerblades or skateboards. But it has been fine. We figured we would pave it eventually.
Charlie put in for a quote and miraculously a contractor came by to check it out. He said he had a crew that needed work and they could come do it the next day. We opted to just pave the driveway in front of the house. We’ll tackle the back one later after the renovation is finished.
The crew showed up early, they painted the lines indicating exactly where we wanted the driveway to be, and then they started smoothing and leveling the existing gravel. Hot asphalt arrived, it was poured and smoothed, and we had ourselves a sleek, black driveway after only a few hours!
The kids were so excited! After letting it set over night, we were so excited to get out the wheels and ride around. It has been SO nice having it paved. It was unexpected, but we are grateful it happened.
What’s next?
We need to get the shop area cleaned out! We have a builder who has given us a quote and is currently finalizing our plans. So we need to get moving with our part so we are ready for demolition and building! Exciting times! And just a little bit stressful 🙂
~ Rachel
Wow, these are exciting advances for you. How awesome.
The driveway looks awesome rach!