Raw land does not become a building site on its own. By the summer of 2024 the excavator was finally on the ridge, opening up the tree line and shaping a flat, buildable pad out of a slope.
I was fortunate to get a referral from my neighbor to a local man who had the experience to get in and dig out the property. I had made so many visits, and I really thought I would be building right on top of the ridge: just a 30-by-30 house pad with some kind of driveway to pull up to. But the more I looked at it, the more I saw a natural contour in the land that might allow a walkout basement. The house began to grow, and grow it did! I had a rough idea of something 24 feet wide and 42 or 44 feet long, and that's what we started digging out.
It is loud, dusty work that nobody photographs for the brochure, but it is the real beginning. The first time I came up and saw the excavation finished, I knew my vision was coming together. Watching the shape of the future house appear in the dirt — that is the moment it stopped being an idea.
And this was only step one. I had already had a boundary survey done, which was required for the septic permit, and the excavation had to happen before the septic system could go in. Everything took time.