Here We Go!!

This makes me think of playing Mario Kart on Nintendo 64 with the kids when they were younger (and so were we). Both of us liked that phrase "Here we go!!" I guess you'd have had to hear it to understand what I mean.

We are building a new house and someone suggested that we start a blog because there seems to be a lot of interest in the house. So I decided to take a cue from my daughter-in-law who has had 2 different blogspots, first, the hansentwins when our twin grandchildren were born and she was trying to keep everyone posted on their status because they were so premature, and then she converted to the second and current blogspot, fivehansens, where she keeps us posted and amused with the difficulties of raising 3 children all under the age of three!

Tom has been working on this project for several years. He is a professional engineer and an electrician. His intent is to build a house for us (he says for me) for our retirement that will be user friendly to stoved-up old people, easy to maintain, and affordable to heat.

Like I said, Tom is an engineer and an electrician. He understands design and wiring but he is not a carpenter. I think he can do anything so why shouldn't he be the contractor and builder? Well, there were some problems with getting a builder and we had some outrageous price quotes for the construction, so it fell to Tom. But on the plus side, his friend Rich from Bremerton, WA offered to help. And Rich got additional help from his friend Mel. They are all retired engineers and Rich has building/carpentry skills also. They have been working on this project for 2 weeks now and yesterday they, with the help of my brother Butch, TJ, and Chik, poured the basement walls. I didn't get there in time to get pictures but I hear that about a half a dozen other people did! We'll have to see if it makes the local paper.

Tom has been taking pictures from the start and that is my next project for the blogspot, to post the pictures. In the meantime, if you want to get an idea of what the basic design is, check out the Katrina design at http://sunplans.com. We liked the concept and after Tom made all the modifications we needed, had an architect draw up the plans.