And just like that, we're off!

We broke ground on Friday, which was actually a surprise to us. We were scheduled to start on Monday. Even though I'm excited about the build, it still hurt to see the land cleared. I don't know what I thought would happen - maybe a house would be built and magically nestled into the forest with very little destruction. But even though it's small house, they have to clear off enough space to work. Which included the place I had earmarked fro a chicken coop. I am working on just shrugging and trusting that it will all work out.

In the meantime, we've been amassing things required for the build that we'd prefer to pick out ourselves - light fixtures, fans, sinks, and so on. We have things stored in the tiny house, in a storage unit and some in our rental house.

We met with the builder and signed a contract a few days after we closed on our house. He gave us a long itemized list of estimates and we are trying to decide exactly what we want and also where we can economize. I'm making room layouts on graph paper spending ridiculous amounts of time online researching various aspects. Like flooring - wood or bamboo?  What bathtub options are available but still reasonable? And so on ad naseum.

Our builder sent us on missions to particular supply stores he likes to work with to pick out tile and what not. And then we comparison shopped until we were glassy-eyed. You know, there really are too many choices out there. And you can only look at so many samples of anything before it starts blurring together. 

We went back up to the property today to stash a few things in the tiny house and saw this truck, wrecked on our property. My husband called the Sheriff's office and the dispatcher assured him it wasn't wrecked, the truck had just broken down and the owner would be back to get it Monday. Uh huh. Because when my vehicle breaks down, I leave skid marks on the pavement and crumble off the edge of the road and then smash into the bank and crush one corner of my car. And leave it "parked" in the drainage ditch. Nope. This had drunk driver written all over it. We took pictures and called back with more details and the dispatcher allowed as how that was different than the story they'd been given and they'd send an officer out. When we went back to check, they were towing it away.  

I suspect we're in for many more interesting sights in our new hometown.