#NaturalHouse #SustainableLiving #EcoFriendlyHome

After four long years of building our home, our solar power system, our farm infrastructure, and our business, we are finally knee-deep in construction for the bedroom re-addition. We thought it would be easier the second time around, but we've already hit speed bumps. The issue is the rebar is a little bit outside of where the wall should be. And have begun to question if we have what it takes to build a house for the second time. Déjà vu. Déjà vu. Hope this one goes a little bit faster. So the first order of business today is going to be fixing our rebar mishap. The wall that runs down from the safe room straight all the way down to the opposite end of the house had a section of rebar that's supposed to be inside the forms that is in the incorrect spot. Luckily, it's not that big of a redo. We pretty much just have to drill some new holes, cut the bottom of the rebar, and move it all over. And then, voila, we're back on track. Right? Right. You can't go through a build without any mistakes here and there. And I think that if we can keep on the track of just making minor mistakes that are fixable and nobody gets injured, then, you know, we're doing all right. Remember that time you shot that nail gun in your hand? That was fixable. You pulled it right out for me. Lily, we are not going to do this today, girl. No, you're not. Did you mess my line again? Yes. You're silly. So where the rebar needs to be is nine foot four inches inside of that wall. Not on the outside, but in the center. I'm good. Are you good? We're good, girl. Is it going to fit? Um, I hope so. The doubt in your voice is like not very comforting. It's tight, girl. It's very tight. It's okay. I'm gonna cut the bottom of the rebar. It's only four sticks, so it's not that big of a deal. Once they're cut, I'll drive new rebar in, pull all the rebar over without disconnecting anything, and tie it all together. Yeah, no big deal at all, right? So now we can just focus on finishing up this entire back section. Yes. Straight runs and a couple turns. Yes. Rebar's moved. Now we'll measure it again to see if it's in the right location. I'm about to be in the wrong spot again. I did a measurement, and I marked it, and I eyeballed all the holes. Right, but just keep in mind, it's always fixable. It's not like the footer's in the wrong spot. If I can do it a third time, we can test. You know what I mean? It's your own fault. You didn't measure. 17 foot four, three quarter. How's that looking? We're established, girl. Let's start rolling. We were able to reuse all of the existing forms for the straight runs that we've been doing, working on this last wall that's going to go around the foundation. However, now that we're on to the turns, we're going to have to take a little bit of a different approach. Those long stretches are not going to work for us, and everything's going to need to be modified. So what the plan is, is we're going to go through, we're going to disassemble some of the forms, cut them down to size, put just the plywood portion in place, and then we can go back and reuse the rest of the two by fours, cut those down to size, and attach them as bracing on the outside. So it's not going to be quite as easy, but we knew that. That's why we started with the straight runs. Very time consuming. So it's about one more day with the form work, and we're done, girl, and ready for concrete. We're going to start cutting wood and dubbing. Yeah, raising walls. Yep, raising roof. That's going to be hard. Yeah, it's going to be a little tricky. Kitty! What are you doing? She's getting old. I don't think she even knows what she's doing anymore. Yeah, so. Let's take the glam for a walk and see if she wants to play with her friends. The glam? Sure. The glam, that's what I said. Say the lamb. She is very beautiful. We are steadily working towards reintroducing Lily back into the flock. She's the smallest of all the lambs born this year and doesn't know what life is like as anything beyond a human companion. As much as we love her company and are happy that we could save her, we know that her best life awaits her out in the pasture, where she will one day be able to live as she was naturally meant to. You're okay. You hear them? They're calling you. You hear that? You know what they're saying? You're going to go over there and hang out a little bit, okay? Be gentle, Leon. Okay? It's okay, Lily. Everybody's making their way over. What do you think? Do you recognize anybody? You're okay, honey. It's okay. Millie and Leon are here checking her out. You're okay. I gotcha. She's a little nervous. Can you see everybody? I know, Lee. You're kind of big and intimidating, you know? She's still adjusting, but everybody's been really friendly. They're just not used to keeping her with them, so she stays with us for now, right? You'll be out there one day. Yesterday, we completed three of the five turns. That's huge for us because that was the hardest part, getting that stuff solidified. Now that it's done, today we're going to pick back up on the opposite side and just start running it around. All we got to do is pull a tape measure out and measure our wood, cut, and screw together. Before we go too far, we're going to go ahead and we're going to re-pull that line and double-check our measurements just because Lily the lamb has been up here chewing on all of our lines. Last thing we need is to get down the road and then realize that she so sweetly pulled us off of our mark. I don't think Josh would be thrilled. That's not her fault. She's a little baby, you know? Just playing. Just playing. She's out of play here. This corner of this building is the quagmire of this entire build so far. As you guys know, we installed water lines, communication line, and a gas line through here a few years back before we designed this house. And right on the corner of the building is where everything's at. That water line actually comes up right through here at the corner of this foundation. It's not too big of a deal. It's going to be a little bit of a workaround, to say the least. The gas line was a perfect workaround. The water line, eh, not so much. But I have a plan for it. Yeah, so as most of you guys probably know, when we first moved here almost five years ago, the five of us were living in a small little RV. And we just wanted to build a house initially for like phase one that was big enough for all five of us to get out of the RV. Yeah, 270 square feet. Yeah. And we lived in there for about the first two years while we got this A-frame built. And the plan was once we got this A-frame built and we were living inside, then we would tackle all of the bedrooms and the rest of the house. Because there's actually no bedrooms, like official bedrooms inside that A-frame. So that's why we ran water lines and gas lines and communication lines just where we ran them at. And we didn't have an idea how we're going to build the back side of the house. Yeah. In the first place. So we didn't, I don't think we anticipated it coming out the back side this far. I think maybe we actually anticipated it going further back that way. Yeah, we had no idea. But we also didn't know the things that we were going to need. Like we didn't, we didn't know that we were going to need space for a lot of like the food processing and dehydrating and canning. We didn't know we were going to need an office. We, you know, just, we didn't know. We were winging it. As time went on with everything we're doing here, we realized we needed more stuff than we originally planned. Yeah, more than just bedrooms. More than just bedrooms. And then here we go. Now we're just going to build the house around the water line. And it'll be a great story to tell. Okay. Even better, we're going to build it on top of the water line. That sounds really good, doesn't it? That's perfect. That side was 30 foot four. Even. This side's 30 foot three and three quarters of an inch. I think that's square enough. We're a quarter inch out with a plywood. Call it a day. That's the weight of my book, girl. The exterior wall forms are completely done. We're squared up. We're in location. And looking back at the water line now, where it's at, it can't stay there. It's actually halfway into the wall and coming out. And we can't pour concrete that way. It's actually starting to leak at the coupling where we spliced it up at. Because we're banging around getting the forms on top. So I know what we need to do. That's not ideal. But the best way to do it is to dig out that dirt on the other side of the footer. Dig down to the water line. Snip it. Bring it up. And then reconnect it and get it out of this wall completely. And we'll have no issues. It's not what we were expecting when we first looked at it. I don't think we thought that it was going to go through the wall the way that it did. If we leave it this way and we pour it and we call it done, I wouldn't feel good about it. And I wouldn't sleep very well either. So do the right thing. We'll just dig it out and fix it. What are the next big steps here? Looks like it's about time to start building a house again. It's very familiar from what it was years back. Yeah. Right? Deja vu. Hopefully this one goes a little bit faster. Hey, we're experienced this time. Kind of. I wouldn't call myself experienced, you know. We're experienced in winging it. Oh, I'm winging it.