The House Build is in Sight - Here's How We Get There

PPO3 is supported by Timber King sawmills. For more information on my 1220 CRZ mill or one of many Foley hydraulic options, go to TimberKing.com. It is September, middle of September, which means next month I will not be turning 40. Let me say that again, I'm not turning 40. I'm going to stay 39 for the foreseeable future. I will be 39 for the next 30 years. But, you know, if you don't stay moving, you get old. And that's, that's why I firmly live by you got to keep moving or you're going to get old. Me and my wife were talking about Jamie and I were talking about the house plans and whatnot. And I initially wanted a two story house. And Jamie said, well, the master has to be down on the bottom floor, because we're not going to want to climb up those stairs when we get old. And I thought that is, that's a horrible outlook. You're not going to want, you have to, you have to stay moving. You have to be able to keep climbing those stairs as much as you possibly can to stay young. Anyway, I think we decided on a house plan that's not a second story. But my point is you stay moving or you lose it. You don't move it, you lose it. And you got to be able to walk upstairs as long as you possibly can. I watched a video a long time ago on social media from the channel Squat University. This guy does a bunch of rehab with people who have, well, physical problems. And he was, he was talking to a client and the doctor told him that you're never going to be able to squat again. So don't, don't do heavy lifting squat and whatnot. So our strength training goes. And the guy from Squat University basically said that that was horrible advice, where you're never going to be able to get off a toilet. You have to be able to squat. So if you don't move it, you lose it. You don't use it, you lose it. Keep moving. Well, maybe you saw that poking through the side of the video right there. It was Talika's birthday the other day. Last year, I guess it was actually more than last year. When she was six turning seven, she requested a trampoline because her friends had some trampolines. Some of her friends had a trampoline and a family member has a trampoline. She loves it. Absolutely loves jumping on a trampoline. Okay, well, you're turning seven. Let's go get you a trampoline. So we kind of beat around the bush, didn't tell her anything. And then took her to a store to get a trampoline. Without her knowing, walk up to the trampoline and say, Happy birthday! Surprise! This is what you're going to get. And she kind of looked like, uh-oh, defeated. And we're like, well, don't you want a trampoline? And she said, yeah. You know, that really unsure yeah. And we're like, okay, well, you don't want a trampoline after saying you do want a trampoline. Well, is there anything else you'd like to pick out instead? She lit up. She walked straight to the doll aisle. And I kid you not, she picked out a $3 doll. And she said, that's all I want. Really? Okay. All right. So we got that doll and life moved on. Well, halfway through her being seven, she hinted around at a trampoline. And Jamie finally asked her, do you regret not getting that trampoline? And she said, yeah, I have no idea where that doll is right now. So she still loves the trampoline. And we surprised her with this one this year. And it's, it was like thousand out of a hundred. It was, uh, you know, turn the volume up to 11. Absolutely loves this thing. And she's been on it nonstop. As a matter of fact, I've been on it with her back when I, back in the day, you know, and along in the galaxy far, far away, the time was 1999. I found a video clip of, uh, my dad found some old cassettes, cassettes, videos, the smaller tapes that used to go into the camcorders, you know, and he put them on CD and sent them to me. And, uh, this clip is from 1999. My friend, Jesse, uh, my friend, Greg, this is Greg's backyard, his trampoline. And of course I'm in there too. Um, but, uh, this is, um, 1999. I was 13 years old. We used to wrestle all the time on the trampoline. Trampoline, uh, came during the day of the WWF attitude area. Of course, era, we of course knew wrestling was fake, but it was the thing, you know, and, uh, we wrestled on there nonstop. We jumped on there nonstop. I was an extremely active kid, uh, as far as playing hockey, playing football, uh, playing basketball in the driveway. If the, if the sun was up and it wasn't raining, we were told to get outside. And I'm, of course, most people from our generation were like that. Get outside and, and, and do something outside, get outside. And I grew up in Livonia, Michigan in a house without air conditioning. So the house, it's not like, you know, down here in the South where, uh, I did actually live without air conditioning down here for a little bit. It wasn't too, too bad. And staying outside and staying active was the thing to do when it was hot. And of course, if it rained, I was inside glued to Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. You know how that is. Anyway, so we got to this trampoline. We've been playing on it quite a bit. It is just been so much fun. Brings back so many memories. You know, it's, it's kind of like a, a reality check. I can still do the flips. I can still jump real high. I can still do all that stuff, but it just isn't the same. If you know what I'm saying, jumping, I'm a little heavy right now, but jumping. I can feel every little fiber in my face, my cheeks, all of my muscles just being torn down off of the bones every time I jump and the momentum and the inertia that I have as an adult is it's physical. We'll say it is physical, but it's so much fun. It is so much fun. It brings back so many memories. Anyway, Tyler K had a birthday. Something that we have always done since she's been born is anytime she gets any money, we don't spend it or let her spend it. Rather, we put it into a savings account for her. And recently I rolled all that savings. She had $1,500 saved up since she was born and rolled all that into an investment fund for her and she can't access it until she's 18. I'm going to encourage her to keep it in there until retirement. She doesn't, you know, she's, she's eight years old now. She's eight years old. Where did eight years just go? Anyway, I'm going to do my best to teach her fiscal responsibility and try and keep her, encourage her to keep it in there until she's at a retirement age. If anyone else would like to contribute to her investment fund, I'll put a little QR code on the screen and a link down in the description. Don't feel obligated to do so, but I know there's a lot of kind people out there. So I want to throw that out there for her sake. Of course, we can't access the funds ever. Only she can. So that's, that's awesome. Not to say that we would, but that's really, really awesome. Anyway, we got a trampoline. So much fun. Something else that's fun. Not really fun. It's kind of been a headache is we're making ground on getting these, making progress on getting these trees cleared. So this has been a saga. We initially had a guy lined up that was highly recommended by a couple people, including our tree service company that we work with quite frequently. Someone he recommended that straight shooter kind of a guy and treat you right. All right. Well, we contacted the first guy, which is the person that I've talked about frequently in these videos that we were lined up to have these pines harvested in fall. Well, he got back with me finally and said, listen, just to be honest with you, we can't keep up with everything we have going on. We're not going to be able to get to you anytime soon. It's like, okay, so let's find somebody else to get this done because we want this done yesterday. We, when we initially bought this property, one of the selling points for us was it had this harvestable timber on it and to put a little bit of equity back into our pocket and help us accelerate the house build. That's one of the reasons why we're dragging our feet on the house built. Guy number one backed out. Guy number two. I found somebody on Facebook marketplace advertising that looking for tracks to clear in our area in the three counties around us. Okay. Well, I contacted him. He showed up and he got out of his truck and all I could smell is alcohol. And from the sound of his voice, he was, he was a little lit, which is horrible. Don't be driving drunk out there, people. That's just don't do it. Anyway, topic for another day. So he, he comes out and I immediately am like, well, I'm not going with you because of that. But you're here and you want to walk the timber and tell me about it. So go ahead and walk the timber and tell me about it. And of course he, he walks with his, with his guy that was with him and about a half hour later, they come back and say, yeah, you've got a lot of really good timber here. A couple pieces here and there. I got a little bit of a twist or whatever, but this is primarily all saw logs. So if I'm not mistaken, there's several different types of the pine harvest because, because timber industry in Mississippi is massive. The pine that'll bring the most value is telephone poles straight as an arrow, a good diameter. That's a telephone pole. They'll pay the most amount per ton. Below that is saw lumber, saw logs is what they say. So sawmill quality trees, which is like 90% of these pines on the property is good quality saw logs. And then below that is like, I think it's called chip and saw or pulp. Anyway, he came and told me all this stuff and said, you know, told his spiel about how he works. Everything's on contract. You see all the load tickets, all that good stuff. They agree on a tonnage price. So whatever the tons are, when they hit the mill, I get X amount of dollars per ton. And of course the cost of doing business is the rest of it. He said, I'll get back with you on a contract and then tell you some, some actual numbers and time passed, time passed. He did not get back with me with a contract and he just text messaged me some, some numbers and I'm like, all right, well, I wasn't really planning on going with you after you stumbled out of your vehicle drunk. Don't drive drunk anyway. So that was number two was a dud and I'm like, this is just discouraging. Let's just get this done. I don't know what I'm doing. Logging this stuff. As far as lining people up, I don't want to get taken advantage of. So I got on, I forget the exact website, but it was like the Mississippi registered, the registered foresters commission, something or other found several people in our area. Finally got one person to respond back. A gentleman who's been in the timber industry basically his whole life and started out doing timber cruises. I think it was in Oklahoma or Arkansas and ended up getting burnt out on walking massive, massive, massive tracts of land that really didn't have much value on them. So he works on a commission basis to where he, he cruises the timber. He tells you what everything's worth. And then he handles setting up a logging company. That's trustworthy that he's worked with before. He keeps them on their toes, making sure everything's checked because it's a commission basis. He has vested interest in getting as much value out of the property as possible or out of the harvest as possible. And there's that. So that's where we're at right now. We hired this guy. He came out, looked at the property. As a matter of fact, me and him walked the property and looked at all the pines. The same information, but a much better quality of information. I would say some telephone poles here and there, a lot of really good saw logs, saw trees and a couple of ones here and there that are a little bit goofy and wonky. But what he also told me is something that I was kind of thinking about is he encouraged me to harvest some of the massive trees on this property because during our ice storm, it was kind of an eye opener at how damaged they can get from natural disasters around here. And they're not going to stay up long, especially with the heavy winds that we have. We've got a lot of trees on this property, big trees that were blown over in the past year. Of course, the ice storm damage did a lot. And then also he pointed out, which I already knew, but it's kind of reinforcing what I was thinking is these bigger trees, they're not going to live forever. They're going to fall. Harvest them while you can. Not all of them, by the way, and not some of the most amazing signature trees, but the big ones that we're really not interacting with that are just kind of out there, harvest those as well. And then manage around them where there's all kinds of crowding and too big of canopy for those to succeed. Manage around them so you get the next generation of bigger trees to come up to their full potential. You know, I'm 39. I'm going to be, like I said, I'm going to be 39 for the rest of my life. And by the time I'm, say, 80, another 40 years from now, I'll still be 39. Don't worry about it. But at that time, you know, the trees that we're going to give priority to in the next year or two, those should be doing really, really well. I just don't want to run into a situation where we're just pulling too many trees off the property. And it just looks, it loses its appeal. It loses its appearance because when this gets harvested, it's going to look like a war zone. It's going to look like absolute trash for a few years until we figure out a strategy to make it look better. So that's, I want that to happen sooner rather than later. So we are going to harvest all of the pines on the property that are easily accessible in the major pine tract. It doesn't make sense to plow through a bunch of what I'm calling the jungle. A bunch of really dense, smaller hardwoods and whatnot to get to this spare pine tree that's big and out in the middle of nowhere. We're going to save those because it doesn't make sense for that. And then also if I need some pine, I can harvest them myself. But we're going to get rid of a lot of hardwoods too. And what are we going to do with that? This is the plan. This is where we're, well, first off, let's go back to the hardwoods. So most of all of that is near the creek. And that's where they're also starting to fall a lot. And we have just this majestic monster white oak that last year was gorgeous. And this year there's not a single leaf on it. So I don't know if the ice storm took it out. But stuff like that, like it's just going to fall over. And white oak is a good prized hardwood. It's way too big for my mill or the mill that I want to get after this one. It's way too big for all that. And it's way out in the middle of nowhere. So might as well capitalize on it while we can. And then another thing about all of this decision to get some of the hardwoods too is like, I don't ever foresee an opportunity for having a logging company in here ever again. You know, like a lot of these logging companies, they won't even mess with us because it's 30 to 40 acres. That's not that much in the grand scheme of things as far as logging in this area. These logging companies, they want like 100 acre tracks, 200 acre tracks, 300 acre tracks. Just bigger stuff. You know, Weyerhaeuser is a big manufacturer of lumber. And they own a tremendous amount of land in Mississippi. So Weyerhaeuser has these massive big tracks. And these logging companies, that's what they want. They want to be able to pull all their equipment out there and stay out there making money. They don't make any money going to and from different locations. So another thing we had going against us is this is only 30 to 40 acres of pines only. To me, it's huge. But you know, in the grand scheme of things, it's not. Nobody really wants to mess with something this small. So if we're going to get a logging company out here to get the pines, well, opportunity strikes. And it makes sense to get some of these hardwoods as well. Because like I said, I don't see another time where we're going to have a logging company on this property. I just don't. When that happens, what is the plan for the funds? Well, the plan for the funds hasn't changed. We were always wanting to use those funds to start the house build, which will go right here. The burn pile that I've been pulling from quite a bit, it's going to be pushed off a little bit back towards the log area. But the house is going to go on this side of the property. And when we're over here in the house, what I want is I want the sunrise to come right into my face every single morning on the porch. So obviously we're looking east. The sun's coming up over the shop. But if this is our front porch where I'm standing, being able to sit on the front porch, sip some coffee, and then see the sunrise come over the trees, over the shop, come through the... Well, those trees won't be there, will they? We may even see the walnut trees in the driveway. But to see the sunrise come up, sun hitting your face first thing in the morning, sipping a cup of coffee on the porch, man, that just sounds awesome. Not only would it be awesome for that, but once the sun starts to go past noon and set behind us, then our porch becomes a shaded, I guess, entertaining area for all the get-togethers and whatnot we like to do. So perfect spot for the house. We've gone back and forth on a few different house plans. We've narrowed it down to a couple over the past year and just kind of dwelling on it. You know, this is a kind of a big decision. We're going to stay with it for a while, for the rest of our life. For the rest of my years being 39. And we need to check all the boxes. We really do. What we're leaning towards is not a big two-story or a vaulted type of a house that we had as our number... Our number one and number two just kind of sort of go back and forth. A ranch-style house, so single floor, longer north and south than east and west. That should reduce the amount of side surface area of the structure. Oh, I thought I was about to get taken out by dogs. That should reduce the amount of exterior wall being beat on by the sun. And then also a very unique design we want to kind of achieve is, I don't want to say two houses under one roof, but it's going to feel like that. We'll have a master bedroom, the kitchen, dining room, and a second bedroom all under... It's all under one roof. Basically, its own little house, essentially. And then there'll be a breezeway. And then the extension of the house, which should be connected to the house, but the extension of the house will somewhat be like a mother-in-law suite. A couple bedrooms, one of them being a bunkhouse to have as many beds as possible because my family in Michigan, when they travel, it's like a gang or a circus. A gang or a circus. I guess you could say either one would be appropriate, and they'll be okay with that. So a lot of people travel. We love, absolutely love to have as many family members as possible, as much friends as possible to get together. And yeah, so the second part of the house separated by a breezeway will be not a full-blown house. We're thinking not even a kitchen over there, just bedrooms, maybe one like, you know, gathering space. I wouldn't want to call it a living room, but just bedrooms and an ADA-compliant bathroom. It has to be ADA-compliant. This is for many reasons. I have a handicapped cousin who I absolutely want to include in this decision. I hate the fact that our bathroom is elevated in the shop right now because she just can't get in there, and that sucks. But also, we're not going to be spring chickens forever. I don't ever want to be in an assisted living home if ever possible. I want someone, if it's possible, to help me stay in my home at the very end of life. And if we have an ADA-compliant bathroom from the very beginning, that's not much of a cost at the very beginning to make sure everything works out right there. Also, another reason for that is Jamie's mom and uncle, both of them are declining, we'll say. And we've come to the conclusion that they're pretty much going to have to move in with us. So I don't know when that's going to happen. I pretty much know that it's going to happen, but I want that to be a very real possibility. So anyway, long story short, if we get enough funds from the timber, I want to get enough funds from the timber to hopefully do the roof and possibly the foundation. We're going to go with a post-and-beam style, like a barn-dominium style roof, I guess you could say. Something that we can get a roof up, and I can work on the walls and all that at my convenience. This is going to solve another issue for us, and that is, where do we put the sawmill? Because I've got to get it out from underneath that lean-to. So if we get the roof up and the foundation done, or at the very minimum, very minimum, we get the roof up, then until the house is ready to really be worked on, that becomes the sawmill shed. We'll have a really big space to mill lumber, actually closer to the log yard than what the sawmill is right now. And then we can stockpile all the materials underneath that roof when the time comes to actually start building. Well, use the sawmill to build as much of the house as absolutely possible. So the plan is to put a metal roof on, kind of like a pole barn, and then probably do board and batten siding and all the framing material and all that stuff. That's the plan. That's the route. We've been pondering this for, well, we've been on the property for two and a half years now. We've been pondering this for a while. And the amount of wiggle off of our decision that happens seems to be getting lower and lower and lower. We're getting more and more focused on what we actually want to achieve. And we're getting closer to achieving it. This whole journey, we knew was going to be a slow process, very incremental improvements along the way. And things are starting to be a little bit more straight line. And it's inspiring, it's motivating, it's great, especially considering we're trying our best and so far have succeeded to do all of this debt free. Of course, we could go get a mortgage and be done with the house in six months. But I don't want that. I do not want a mortgage. My wife does not want a mortgage. Tyler K doesn't want a mortgage. We've been talking about finances with her. And she is so intelligent. Jamie has done such a good job homeschooling. And I try and make everything a life lesson with her. And it's just Tyler K, she's a smart kid. She just turned eight years old. She's reading on like an eighth and ninth grade reading level. She reads like these big chapter books that are real thick books in like a day. It is insane. The kid loves to read. Oh, I'm just so proud of her. Anyway, I think I just got into the rambling stage. Trees are coming down. Roof is going up. Life is getting good. Life has always been good. Life is great. And I feel like I'm getting younger.