And pull.... and pull... and pull....

and so finally the whole pump and hose came out of the well hole... 45 metres later!

Preparing for blasting

When we arrived at the scene on Friday, the place was full of little holes with red plastic cones in preparation for the blasting (sprängning), very exciting! The lilacs (syrenerna) are blossoming and another lovely white flower bush too! Those we'll get to keep, the goose berry (krusbär) bush has been pulled up for us to move, but not sure if we'll manage to keep it alive. They've also cut down another lilac bush almost to the ground, but at least it will hopefully stay and not get bulldozed by all the flying rock from the blasting...

Et voila!

How much simpler it would have been to use the digger from the start! Check this out! The house is gone! Left is the ground! And good news is that the mountain was quite shallow, so we won't have blow so much away.

Met with Dynamite Krister and Digger Kenneth this morning and measured and calculated. I'm becoming a real pro and am thinking of changing profession. How does Miss Leach, building engineer sound haha!

Kotten (The pine cone) also showed his face. I had complained that he'd left too many branches and twigs laying about (he cut down 18 trees), so he arrived with his chain saw and made the place a little tidier! Actually, felt quite silly asking him about cleaning up, since the place looks like the building site it is, but the leftover branches were scattered allover the area where we won't build, so it actually made a little difference!

I've added a 'before' picture at the bottom, to compare with the scraped area now!

Hard labour Saturday

So came the first time for us to go and see (and remove, was the plan) the rubble that was once the summerhouse and friggebod. Oh dear! He said the pile was big, but come on! So we started carrying... and carrying... and carrying... And the pile was still huge... The only thing left to do was to admit defeat and ring digger guy who will now finish the job for us - costing lots of money of course. And a new skip will be delivered this morning, the 30 m3 one we used was full by the end of the day!

Matt will go out there this afternoon to see how the digger guy is doing.

ps. Look at the pics where you can see the digger. Compare the height of the pile in the beginning and towards the end... you can even see the shed behind the pile then...

Let's skip forward a little...

...past the hours and hours spent on getting quotes in, actually learning about the process, preparing for meetings with the council, the architects, the house people, the builders... Let's forget about all the trips back and forth to the land, to show it to builders, to count trees or estimate the placement of the septic tank. Let's not mention the calculations, the time spent on 'build your house forums', the searches for windows, materials, references and inspiration. Let's not speak about all the emails sent, the phone calls made and the long lists of 'to do's'. Let's just focus on the rest of the journey, with all of the above included over and over again! Yihaaa!

The master plan

After inspiration presentations and hours and hours of drawing and making changes by our brilliant architects and friends Jelena & Bojan, the look and plan of the house is final! The renderings are from early on in the process, but gives you an idea of the final look.

Sold!

This is what made us buy the plot of land! An oasis on raised from the street, a naturtomt as us Swedes call it, a 'natural piece of land' for you English speaking readers. Beautiful surroundings, the thought of George having the woods to himself, close walking distance to two lakes, and good communications into the city.

Ready, set, go!

And we're off! After months and months of planning and preparation, we've finally taken the first step towards our goal - Villa Leach Squire.

Join us on our rollercoaster ride towards the dream, up and down, upside down, fast forward, spinning out of control and most likely some whiplash injuries along the way.

And please stay friends with us when we come begging for money, food and a place to sleep...

Here we go!