Our Eventful Day

We cleared the way for our addition today. Literally. But someone is trying to stop us. You'll hear about that later in this post!

Before. The 3 trees you can see clearly are the ones Brian, Jeremy and Grandad cut down.

It was hardest to see the first one go. This tree has grown so much since we moved here.

My nephew. Everyone helped carry branches to the burning pile.

Even Josiah got in on the action. Most of the time he was on my hip while I dragged branches.

The first half of the last tree is down.

And it was hollow!

The second half was a little tricky. It was definitely leaning toward the house. They attached a rope from the tree to the truck and when it started falling Jeremy was to back up the truck and pull the tree away from the house.

It missed the house and landed on the deck.

While all this was happening our "friend" from the Health Department stopped by to do a perc test. This is a test we have to pass in order to get a new septic permit and a building permit from the Health Dept. Since we are proposing to have 5 bedrooms we have to have a bigger septic system. One that accommodates 10 people because, logically, they assume that two people will be in every bedroom. Today we were told that it is most likely that we will not pass the perc test at all. Meaning that we not only will be not be able to get a bigger system we cannot get a new system the size of our current one. If we were applying to build a new house on this property we would not be allowed to build. At 4:30 he came back around to check on his test and it hadn't finished so he said he hoped to be able to come tomorrow to do a complete test. I guess that is when we would get our final answer. It's easy enough to change the number of bedrooms on paper. It's a little more complicated if we ever want to sell. And it is very complicated since we designed the addition assuming we had to get a new septic and built right up to our current septic tank. It's a bummer.

So....if you ever thought you owned your property....you don't. You have to ask permission to do anything. To add insult to injury this guy advised us not to burn without a permit. Lo and behold you get burning permits through his office. And he was quick to add we wouldn't be able to get one since you have to have 200ft of open space all around the fire. Not only can you not build on your property you cannot burn on your property. This is a free country last I checked, right??? A free country with lots of rules!