|
|
|
||||
|
The Missouri Journal
|
|||||
 |
|||||
|
Like a lot of people who approach middle age, I started to wish for a simpler life based on the quiet of the country. So a few years ago, my friends, Jon and Roger, and I, started to look for a suitable place, either an old house to fix up or some raw land to build on. Eventually we found Neil Shelton's site, OzarkLand.com, and we bought six acres with a pond at Origanna Woods, 17 miles from Lebanon in Laclede County. That was October of 1998. |
|
||||
|
We bought that first parcel sight unseen and the next March, we finally went down to look at it. Even in the gray of early spring, I could see how nice it was, and as luck would have it, Neil had 6 more acres across the lane for sale, so we bought that, too. The new parcel came complete with an electric pole, an outhouse, a shed, and the log frame of a pole barn, courtesy of the previous owner. All this was set in a nice shady clearing so we decided that this was where we would build our house. That old pole frame made a dandy arbor so we set up camp there with a nice fire ring and a few comforts. We started to make our plans and begin our improvements.
This journal is meant to be a record of our plans and adventures. I hope to add to it as we go along and the house grows and improves. |
||||
 |
|
||||
|
In August of 1999, we made our first improvement. We bought an 8 x 12 foot wooden garden shed from Mr. Green up in Waynesville. He has a huge selection of well built sheds and he will deliver them to your site. He brought ours on a huge flat bed truck and, in less than 30 minutes, it was all set up next to our electric pole and 30 feet or so from our pole arbor. It wasn't very big, but it gave us plenty of space to store our equipment and it gave us a warm dry place to sleep if the weather went bad. In October, we added a 12 x 20 foot pole shed across the front of that little shed and by snowfly, it was enclosed. This gave us a big room to use as a kitchen and living room and the shed became a sleeping room when we added a window on one end as well as a built-in bed. These two rooms would become the nucleus of our house. That original structure is what you see in the pictures on this page. In the summer of 2000, we finally got electricity hooked up to the cottage. You can't imagine what a boon that was! NO MORE rented generator or building with hand tools. I kinda miss the lantern light, and we still use a lot of candles, but now we can have a refrigerator and a real stove for cooking. We added some new windows and a side door. We also installed some old kitchen cabinets. Before we knew it, the cottage was too small again, and we started to think about adding more space. Yeah I know, there's a motif there; so we made a concerted effort NOT to over-design and build. I spent that winter planning the final addition. |
|||||
 |
|
||||
Continued on Page 2 |
|||||
|
|
mmm | ||||
