In 2000, we moved from the city to the country of California in the Sierra foothills near Bass Lake. For five years, I planned the decoration of my dream, a casual camp-style ranch house on a pretty steep slope. In February 2004, the building began and that August we moved into our trailer to wait for…
Starting from scratch – Then and now Laying out garden beds in clay and decomposed granite is the way you start when faced with new construction in the Sierra Foothills. How do you possibly begin a garden? Many house pads are scraped clear of topsoil and planting is not easy without replacing all the soil.…
I’m only mentioning my impressions of the house pad prep, because to tell it all would be very boring. Although,….we country folk can talk for hours amongst ourselves about the details of our septic installations and well digging. Those subjects, especially the depth and gallons per minute for your well are hot topics among the flannel…
We had a dream to move out of Southern California to paradise on seven acres in the Sierra foothills. Here is more about the process, choosing a builder for our mountain home, around which, my Sierra Foothill garden grows. What I wanted was a log cabin. Or any kind of cabin. A real mountain house. We had stayed…
Our adventure We had a dream to move out of Southern California away from the congestion and stress and switch from the daily commute to living in paradise in the Sierra foothills. Here is how we made the big move! Our Move: From Fullerton, CA to the foothills just south of Yosemite in 2005 Old…
House place, mountain, barn wood, waterfalls, these words describe the place we found in the mountains near Yosemite and Bass Lake. When we made the momentous decision to buy property in our favorite vacation spot, it started a whole series of changes, of mind, of lifestyle, of financial decisions and really, the meaning of our families’ lives together.
Keywords.
Thinking of keywords can help when brainstorming about what you want a new home to be like. When faced with the task of creating a new home, you have to come through. Planning is glorious fun, but at some point you have to make the decisions on what to build, what to decorate with, what possessions to keep and use and so forth.…
In a series of Then and Now photos, it’s satisfying to look back nostalgically to see how far we have come. Bought in 2000, and in a completely natural area, we’ve striven to preserve the beauty of our 7 acres near the Sierra foothills of California, as we make a place for ourselves in this beautiful spot.…
When we first saw our property and took the first photos there was somewhat of a circle drive that became our house pad. There was a slope of about 15 degrees, so to make the “pad” level, they bulldozer guy did what is called ‘cut and fill’. The hill was cut into to, and that…
Redwood command post table today, 10 years old
Alexander Selkirk was a Scot whose adventures on an uninhabited island were reputed to be the basis for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. From ‘Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk’ by poet, William Cowper, are these lines:
“I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute.”
2000-11 Command post table plan
When we first bought the property here in October 2000, I was inspired by a shady, cool area above where the house would be built to make for ourselves a spot. This spot is on a rise above where the house is now. There are three tall Ponderosa pines there and three or four oaks, with a line of small manzanitas in front. The mountain, which inspired us to choose this place to live, rises above all.
For the first five years we had no electricity, no water and it was a few months before we even had a flat place to park our small trailer. We needed a living room,…a spot.…
This is a November 2001 entry from my recently found diary. The diary chronicles how we bought the property and our first five years before the house was ready. For how we got to this point, see Inspiration or the category ‘Our diary’ “Just after bidding on our new property near Yosemite, disaster struck! Daughter, Jolie, 19, had been struck…
Last year we had built a retaining wall and I couldn’t resist planting a few things like rosemary and lavender. We had no hose or water supply, so everything would get hand watered on our monthly(hopefully) visits to the property.
After buying property in October 2000, we started the building and site preparation process, by having the house pad graded and the ‘pond’ filled in. Next, were plans for our first ‘outbuilding’, an 8 x 16 shed. The house wouldn’t be begun until Feb 2004. From November 2002 Folks in this area build their garages, barns…
April 7-14, 2002 On the afternoon we arrived, the whole group came to our place for a barbecue. Larry had also invited lots of friends..we had a crowd. Project wise we did a lot of clearing of the small bushes between the trees. Larry tried out the new brush cutting blade for the trimmer. I…
This is a transcript of the diary I kept during the first years of our transition to the mountains. We had lived in Orange County, CA for the past 20 years and decided to check out property in Bass Lake, CA where we had vacationed for several years. Temporary ‘utilities’ Oct 12-16, 2001 This is the…
On this trip our objective is to have the lot graded and have a couple loads of gravel, or mine tailings, spread over the driveway. After some juggling of schedules, Dick comes Saturday morning early and started leveling out the area where the circle drive was. We also planned to fill in the drainage pond area.
We arrive with several objectives. I want to build a table of redwood somewhere, rake out the goat shed, attached the wooden goat I found on eBay and see a deer – on our land. Larry just wanted to be there and camp there with our trailer.
