Let’s Go To Idaho!

It all began in 2011. My wife, Mary, started a blog entitled Let’s Go to Idaho. We lived in central Alabama at the time and we decided to purchase (site unseen) a quaint cabin on Black Lake, located a little under an hour outside of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The cabin was only to be temporary until we found our more permanent homestead. We purchased it mainly for the giant pole barn to store all our stuff. Mary chronicled our journey to Idaho and continued to share our experiences getting settled into our new abode. Although the cabin wasn’t ideal, we decided to put down roots there. We really enjoyed the neighbors and the Black Lake setting.

See additional notes below.

KahnVurj.Me

After about a year, the title of Mary’s blog no longer seemed relevant, so we changed it to KahnVurj.me (“Converge Me”). I joined her in blogging.

The summers in Idaho are fantastic! But the winters are brutal, especially for my sun-loving wife. After a couple of years, we began having discussions about moving to a more temperate climate, somewhere closer to the kids. In the spring of 2013, after a visit from our daughter, Kristie, we learned that we would become grandparents. That cinched it.

Back to ‘Bama

I scrambled to get the property ready for sale, listed it, got a contract and had it sold within 4-5 weeks. It was hard to leave a homestead that we had put so much into, including:

* complete off-grid solar system & backup generator

* lifting the entire cabin to replace the insect eaten wood posts with a concrete & block foundation

* completely new and expanded bath

* excavation & landscaping

* complete updating of paint, hardware, light fixtures & fans, appliances, wood stove, kitchen countertops & island, on-demand water heater – the works

* a full 1,000 gallon propane tank

We made arrangements for temporary living and storage of all our stuff in Alabama. The trip back was an adventure all its own. A four day trip turned into two weeks.

For the next five weeks, the hunt for a new homestead was a full time job. We finally settled on 23+ acres of raw, hilly, hardwood covered land in the Talladega National Forest. Later, a purchase of 3+ adjoining acres would give us road frontage across the entire property and bring our new homestead to nearly 27 acres.

Project Petra Begins

We broke ground the day after closing. The mighty oaks and steep hills were quite the challenge for Terry, our excavator, and his Caterpillar D-9 loader. As Terry cleared the property, we kept moving the build site as the lay of the land became more evident. Taking into account the needs of both the house and solar array, we settled on a build site. Said site ended up being rock, hence the name we gave it, Petra.

The house is earth-bermed on three sides. It is constructed from Quadlock insulated concreted forms (ICF’s), including the roof. Most of the 10 months of construction was covered on this blog and my YouTube channel.

Hiatus

I’d flipped houses in the past and had some experience with remodeling and construction. But this was the first house I had ever built from scratch. We used contractors very little (septic, well, initial excavation and minimal concrete and block work). The majority of the effort was performed by us. As it turns out, building the house was just the beginning of the work.