It is the original reason for this site.
As I worked on this page I decided to work on a site for my wife. Her first love, after me I hope, is her Pfaltzgraff dishes.
We will try to pass on what we have learned along the way. People and places we've met as well as those we've yet to see. Maybe we can help some others out as we go.
Well it has been a long time since I updated this site. Over 2 years!!! We have been very busy. My wife and I have built a house and garage since then.
We had rented for 14 years and knew it was time to move back to the country side where we grew up. We were both lucky to have such good parents. My Father-in-law gave us three acres on the land he was born. We had a lot of work ahead of us. We had to do a perk test for the county so they could figure out what kind of septic system we were allowed. That was in December of 1999. We broke ground the next August. We had to wait until I finished a 450 mile week long bicycle ride across Iowa. It is called "Registers Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa", or RAGBRAI for short. There are about 10,000 of us peddeling along the county and state highways of Iowa. It goes from the West side of Iowa, the Missiouri river, to the East side, the Missippi river. It takes place the last week of July.
August 1st we had a local construction company dig the hole for the basement. They were the only company to work on the project. They dug the hole, backfilled the basement and put in the septic system. Everything else was done by my wife, my Father, family members, close friends and neighbors and I. We even poured the concrete for the basement walls and floor. For anyone who has worked concrete for a living it is no big deal, but for us only 2 had done footings, and set forms. Once we got that done we started on the walk out side of the basement. We built it out of 2X8 material because it needed to handle a lot of weight. There was going to be 21 rows of 6" by 8" oak logs on top. The logs were from 4' long to 12' long. This wasn't a pre-cut package. We had to cut them to length. We stacked the logs during the month of October. Most of the time there were 3 or 4 of us working. Mostly my dad, a good friend Mike, my wife and I. We could have moved in by late November early December, but wanted to wait until the interior trim work was done on the main floor and loft. We moved in April of 2001. Not bad for the crew and everyone had full time jobs too.
The 3 projects took a total of 6 years from start to finish. I started the Lambo in 1997. I installed the V8. It took a short time to prep the frame and install the body. It was off to the paint shop where it would sit for long periods of time. By the time I got it back a year later it had a lot of the major blocking done and a double coat of primer layed on. I picked it up from the paint shop because I felt the paint work was taking too long. I let it sit for another year while we contemplated building our log home. We got our land in 1999 and started the Log home building in August of 2000. We moved into the house in April of 2001. I waited until summer of 2002 to build the garage. We finally got the insulation in the garage early 2003. I started the body work myself late summer of 2003 and was driving the car in October of that year. The car was the first thing started and the last to be finished.
