Just the Beginning

 I have to say that I am so glad that I forced myself to keep this blog up along our journey. It's easy to get wrapped up in the work and progress, get lazy and just skip the documenting. I've said before it was more of a personal journal than anything, to one day look back and remember the process and appreciate all of the work and time that went in to turning our idea into a reality. I didn't make entries often, which I'm also glad of because it makes going back through the process much more succinct. So if you're interested at all in the fun filled, action packed journey we took to turn 40 acres of untouched woods into a popular tiny house vacation retreat I highly recommend you start at the beginning of this blog. It won't take you long to get through it and it's quite entertaining if I do say so myself.  In reality though, there isn't an end to this journal. This entire story up to today is only just the beginning. We have big plans for 2021 that we will begin documenting soon! Meanwhile, here's the wrap up to chapter one, The Cottage:

My last entry was back in August. It's so cool to see how covid affected (or didn't affect) the process through 2020. And now here it is at the end of the year, having lived through such a crazy time it's hard to tell how our future plans will lay out. New president, new economy. But one thing is certain. Since we put the cabin up for rent, it has been consistently gang busters! 

We went live on Airbnb and VRBO back in September. We initially thought that if we could rent it one weekend a month we'd be happy. It has been WAY more than that. In fact, we haven't had less than 3 bookings per month since we started. We have had to adjust to scheduling our own time there, in between guests. And there's not a lot of time to choose from! This is our calendar of bookings in December alone:

The light and dark purple indicates a guest is staying.

Needless to say, we book a tad more than one weekend a month!

Rentals have become so popular that we had to hire a housekeeper to clean and reset for us. We met a terrific lady who lives in Hugo that we just love. She and her crew do an amazing job and we're so lucky to have her. We still go up at least once per month to check on maintenance issues or repairs. We usually end up staying a night or two also. 

We ended up booking a couple of days for ourselves through the week this month to go hunting and if you've read the blog you know I've been looking for a specific large black feral hog for a year now. Well, I finally got him! My friend John and I were in the box blind we built.

He had already harvested a deer and I was looking for this hog. It was cold and raining. The rain was loud on the tin roof of the blind. With about twenty minutes of shooting light left John spotted him. He was coming out of the woods behind the feeder. He slowly made his way toward us down a thick game trail when he suddenly stopped. Spooked, he turned back into the woods, but he didn't run. I knew he'd be back. And so for the next ten minutes I waited, looking through the scope into the woods barely being able to make out some movement through the brush. Then he stepped out onto the trail again. It was getting dark and through all of the limbs and brush I could only see a silhouette of a pig facing me. John was in my ear saying "Take him! Take him! I can't believe you don't have a shot! Take him!" With my crosshairs in between the ears of the black silhouette, through the trees and brush I squeezed the trigger. The whole blind lit up with a flash and the pig fell straight down, dead in his tracks. John couldn't believe it, happy and jumping up and down in his chair. It was a great shot! After a few minutes we walked over to inspect him and he was big. He had nice tusks and best of all due to the rain he was clean. 

We had walked out to the blind because the rain had made the ATV trails muddy. So we walked back to the cabin and grabbed a four wheeler and went back out to grab my harvest. Michelle helped me load him onto John's four wheeler and we road back to camp. It was now dark and very cold. I hung him up in a tree on my gambrel and saw he weighed 150 pounds. While I gutted him it began to snow. It was already near freezing and would freeze overnight so after I removed his entrails we let him hang overnight.

The next morning I skinned and butchered him and saw we would end up with about 60 lbs of meat. It was a fantastic hunt and we ended up drinking whiskey, visiting our neighbor friends and having a ball the rest of the trip.

When we got home, Michelle and I began processing the hog. We made bulk breakfast sausage out of the belly, unseasoned ground pork and beer bratwurst out of one shoulder, cut two loins and two tenderloins and then just wrapped both hams, the other shoulder and both slabs of ribs for later processing. It's the most delicious sausage we've ever had!

How much better could our little cabin in the woods get?! 

So far, our guests seem to be enjoying it as much as we do. We have a perfect 5 stars on VRBO and a 4.8 stars on Airbnb. All of our feedback has been extremely positive. We even have repeat guests already!

I have mentioned previously about our next project named The Hideaway. It is underway! It will be a second cabin that sleeps 4. We already have water ran to it and the septic plumbing in nearly complete. The Hideaway sets back in the woods about 100 yards from the cottage and has it's own driveway, parking and will have its own outdoor BBQ area and firepit as well. We plan on renting it out too, although it will also serve as our personal hideaway to stay even while the cottage is occupied.

I look forward so much to continuing documenting the progress of the Hideaway and hope you enjoying sharing in it with us!

Click Here to View the Cottage on Airbnb

Click Here to View the Cottage on VRBO

 

WE'RE (not quite) DONE!

Some of ya'll might have seen I posted the cabin ready to rent on Facebook today. It is! I mean, it soon will be!

Friends and family are welcome to stay and check it out beginning this September, when we'll have it all ready. The rest of this month we're finishing up some final details on the main build. Small details, you know like water.

Believe it or not, we have a WELL! It only took literally 8 months to get it done. We have a 180 foot well producing a not so amazing 6 gallons per minute. It's as good as it gets there and we'll take it! It is not, however, currently plumbed in. That's coming the weekend after next. 

We also have a functioning full blown septic system! That, took two tries...

The last blog post I made in April told you about how Michelle and I started to hand dig the septic. Yeah, bad idea. It soon rained (if you follow these blog posts you know that's not out of the ordinary) and filled our hole in (in more ways than one). We soon ended up renting an excavator and got it dug and put in quickly, mud and all.

Much easier!

We ended up getting it set, the leach field put in and everything buried that weekend.

Then we filled it with all of the water we had on hand, about 150 gallons. It's a 500 gallon tank, so we knew it wasn't enough. But there was no rain in the forecast so we figured we'd just bring more water the next weekend to finish filling it. After all if you don't fill it with water and it rains, it will float up out of the ground. Thankfully though, no rain was forecast.

So we came back the following weekend with additional barrels of water and pulled in to see this...

You guessed it. It fucking rained.

So it was back to square one. We went several weeks waiting on the rain to stop and lo and behold it did stop in late June. 

Now that we were in the dry season we were able to get topsoil, fill dirt, road base and gravel brought in.

Soon thereafter we were able to put in our permanent gates. My dad built the H braces and I installed them and the new double gates. The idea was now that we have the road base in and our permanent wide entrance we'd be ready for the well drilling rig soon.

Meanwhile, we were able to do more interior decorating and furniture buying.

We even put in a porch swing.

Forth of July rolled through and we were treated to an awesome fireworks show by our neighbors across the road. This display went on solid for hours!

Then my folks came down and helped put the septic back in. It was awesome because my dad is a professional heavy equipment operator and he made it quick.

This time we buried it deeper and ran a 100' lateral line.

Then came the day these guys showed up.

The well drillers are here!

And two days later we have a well!

It may not look like much but it's everything I always wanted!

With the septic in and well dug we were then free to begin the outdoor kitchen and living space. We've been waiting so long to start that addition! Michelle and I built it in a weekend.

It's a 10' X 20' addition.

There's lots more left to do, but it's happening fast! There will be gutters all around with rain barrels. Those will be used to irrigate the raised bed gardens that will surround the front porch and other side of the cottage.

These two 60" fans put out a lot of cool breeze!

The white pipe sticking up is our future outside bathroom and shower next to the hot tub!

We also have a bar going in, including a 2 keg kegerator, stainless sink, shelves and tables and furniture.

We'll be all set by September and can't wait to see our friends and family enjoying it as a soft opening. Then we'll go live on Air B&B and VRBO and see how it goes. 

After that we plan to take off the rest of the year and hunt and enjoy the place. Then early next year we will begin the second project we're calling the Hideaway... 

From Vacation Rental to Survival Bunker

So, what's going on with you guys? Anything new?

Yeah. Well. It's really great to have a place to get away these days. Ya know what I mean? I really wish we were further along though. A couple of weeks back we went up and threw some details in the cottage. We had big plans for the following few weekends like furniture and then beginning the outdoor kitchen/party areas but we were slightly derailed what with a global fucking meltdown overnight and all. Our lives haven't really changed all that much, but the ol' cliche of uncertainty has surely made us cool our jets on spending. Our business is still good - for the moment. We actually turned down some work last week. But since these days we're hyper focused on risk management both in our health and wealth, we're deciding to take it easy on the cottage spending for the moment.

Last weekend we went up with plans to finish the cabinet doors, build some other cabinets and finish the minor amount of kitchen tile as well as finish painting the trim. But all we ended up doing was relaxing and taking it easy. Kind of hard to motivate these days. We did begin digging for our septic tank. Which we did just to see if it would be possible to do it by hand rather than rent equipment. It will be relatively easy to do by hand so we dug about a third of the way, happy to continue at a later date.

A little muddy to start.

But we quickly got down to dry dirt. This is about 2 feet deep and took about an hour.

All together we have to dig about 5 feet deep, 4 feet wide and 7 feet long. Not too bad.

Since it was just a relaxing type weekend we walked the trails and took some photo's along the way to print and hang in the cottage.

This massive tree is about six feet across at the base. It's about 1/4 mile back on the main trail and we plan to put a cool swing in it made of branches.

Near the back pond we found this guy all by himself.

This new growth forest is at the start of the main trail heading to the deep woods.

This old hay rake is left over from when the property used to be farm land. Trees now grow up through it.

The previous trip we did some decorating. Just before the non essential business were forced closed we picked up this guy at an antique store in Powderly, Texas just south of the Red River and about 15 miles from the cottage.

Meet Smuckers. He looks cool wearing a bow tie and sunglasses.

Refrigerator, counter tops, sink, shelving and lighting all in.

A full size, deep sink is a super step up from the tiny camper one.

We also were able to put the slides on the drawers, install the stove and put in the microwave as well as install all of the door trim and baseboards.

Need to get the doors built and finish up the tile.

We hung the second TV and some wall decor.

Including a cool old cross cut saw. Lot's more decor to come.

We put in the bathroom light fixtures as well as all the towel bars.

Although camping chairs work, we really are ready for furniture.

Nothing like sitting by the fake fire!

Spring has sprung!

We even mowed the grass. Everything is so green now.

We are very lucky to be this far along and to have such a great escape. We're so close to being finished now it's ridiculous. But it is 100% livable as it is, even down to hot running water. I'm just really anxious to get the outdoor space finished. It's going to be bad ass!

It's pretty freaking good as is and even more importantly, there ain't no Covid at Fireside. So if things get crazy, you'll know where to find us.