Filling 'er up

We've finally allowed ourselves to begin acquiring things for the new house. We are firm believers in waiting to buy as you invariably change your mind. But we're close enough now to start looking for good deals on things that we are very confident we want.
The first item purchased was my kitchen sink:

Ignore the wonky cabinet - that's temporary and came with the sink. The sink is in great shape (although a bit dirty) and we found it on Craig's list. Amazing what you can find there. I was incredibly specific in what I wanted for a kitchen sink: white porcelain over cast iron, double drainboard, single basin (shallow), and big enough to fit my favorite cookie sheet in a flat position. Whew! Took 5 years to find one in good enough condition.

Now we're looking at cast iron tubs and bathroom sinks. Habitat for Humanity Restore is a great resource as is Craig's List. Wish us luck!

Progress Update

Ethan has completed the concept drawings and will start the engineered plans. He's done a great job translating my floor plan into an actual structure.

We've made it to the road with the power corridor. At least the cutting portion of the power corridor - the digging stage is still to come and I'm sure it will prove much more time consuming. We altered the path a bit. After getting past the tractor shed we were showing the path to D and J. J very calmly asked why we went left (tilted hill) when we could have gone right (flat hiking path already cleared). The answer was because we started at the home site and worked North and it's only when you look back that you realize that you could have gone a different way. We measured both and they are very similar lengths so we'll take the path of least resistance when we dig.

Now we could have pissed and moaned about the wasted effort (we had to clear quite a bit of brush to get to that point) but instead let go of that to choose the better path. In accounting we call those expenditures sunk costs and they should not be considered when making decisions about the next stage of a project. You spent it, there is no way to get it back, and you don't want to throw good money after bad. Same thing applies to physical effort (oddly, it's easier when applied to physical effort - it's really hard to ignore dollars spent).