Building Home

The excavator made quick work of the stumps and boulders on our building site. It's amazing how much of a tree stump's volume is below ground- the holes are enormous and the giant bundles of roots make for a very large pile of debris.

The boulders that they moved out of the way are huge and really cool. We will definitely use them for something later.

Last week we had some trees cut around the building site. We also cut a few trees to open up a few small views.

The change was fairly dramatic. The building site is significantly more open and sunny. We are starting to see some of the amazing views we'll have.

A few notes on the video and property:

1. Sorry about the shots into the sun. It really shines in your eyes up there in the winter. Good for passive solar though.
2. Does the driveway look steep in the video? It is steeper than it looks.
3. You can see the well (big white pipe sticking out of the ground) in the middle of the building site. We'd love to build right there, unfortunately. Instead we'll have to build just to the north (driveway side) or possibly to the south..
4. Pink ribbons are on trees that we are going to take down. There are about 20 of them and they are all pines. A few of the oak might need to come down.
5. There was a forest fire that burned this property and the surrounding area a while back. We will be required to clear an area within 100 feet of the house. Within that area, we can apparently leave some trees but there has to be a 20 foot spacing between them.
6. There were lots of animals scurrying around. I had to edit out a few shots of me trying to figure out what was in the bushes, and a shot of a super pissed squirrel that was not going to back down when I got onto the main rock formation. I must have been right next to his home.
7. The shots of me walking down the west and east sides show of just a couple of the neat (potential) paths and terraces. I didn't include one of the best ones, which heads off to the southwest corner and we are thinking of using for the small guest house. It will have awesome views.

I thought I would provide a little context about where we have moved. Everyone has a picture of where Seattle is and what it is like (cue montage of the Space Needle, a fish being thrown at Pike Place Market, an espresso shot being pulled, etc) but very few people have heard of Nevada City when I mention it.

First some info from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_City,_California

Nevada City was a mining boom town. It was settled in 1849 and there were 2,683 people there one year later. The population has remained more or less the same ever since.

I've heard the area we live in described as the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. We are at 2,500 feet elevation so we are definitely in the mountains but we don't get a ton of snow.

I'll post a bit more information about the area around our property later.