Exciting times!

We're starting to build our house!

Currently our family lives on our property in two buildings which were not intended to be family residences. Allen, Ben, and I have bedrooms in the warehouse/bodega, which also contains the kitchen (eat-in), living room, and bathroom, as well as lots of space actually used as warehouse storage. The older children live in the building which was intended as housing for visiting teams.

Here's the most recent plan for the exterior of the actual house. Imagine terracotta tiles on the roof, stucco walls, and stained (rather than painted) wood doors and trim. The left side of the house is set in about 8 feet, behind a covered porch.

Over the course of time since we originally began to build on this property, some of our plans have changed. We've had a foundation and parts of walls for an unfinished building sitting around since before we moved here, and we've determined that we won't be needing to use that location for the originally planned purpose. In order to make the best use of the work already completed, we decided to use that foundation - with some additions and modifications - as part of our own house.

These photos show the foundation early in the day, as the guys were just starting to work on chipping away some unneeded parts:

The photo below, taken around 3pm, shows some of what the workers have accomplished on their first day of demolition.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, we did plan the house to make the most of the magnificent view of Celaque Mountain across the valley.