Building a dream house – Addressing the address

Addresses equal your homestead and where you go each night to leave your shoes on a floor. It is your abode, castle and nest. It allows you to know where you live and wash dishes. As trivial and enlightening as it sounds, our future home became real when we received the 911 address the other day.

There are multiple addresses for properties, especially for those in rural areas. As the area turns and becomes populated, rural routes and post office boxes regurgitate into county road and farm market destinations. The government wants to know where to go when you have a fire or health emergency. Therefore, 911 address are created to be able to quickly assist your emergency need. This is a database not easily celebrated or embraced by “other” entities.

Confusion escalates when the utility companies, water, electric and gas, list the property address as it was initially presented. They appear to be unable to change it to the current or most recent label. It may even be an address unrecognizable to a current owner because the address they’ve been using for decades is different. We have actually purchased multiple properties with addresses to connect utilities were unknown to the current owner. They obviously used different information, previous account numbers, ESI ID numbers, etc to light up the house or flush a toilet. You are told when calling the utility to provide the “service address” as well as the “physical address” or the “911 address”!

To get the lights on at our current home, we had to call the previous owners, who had inherited the property and kindly ask them to search out a previous electric bill for an identification marker to get the lights on. This became the project of the week and a grand fiasco. Their search through a deceased member’s past, yielded an ESI ID. We relayed this info to the retail electric provider. Much to our chagrin and wonder, a security light in the back of the property became illuminated. The property had multiple ESI ID’s and the puzzle wasn’t complete until the one for the house was located.

To avoid mishaps like the previous, we worked diligently with the proper authorities to provide the “911 address” to use for hooking up temporary electric meters for construction purposes. The “911 address” was established by walking up and down the subdivision street and notating the current house number assignments. Obviously, where we will live has a “do it yourself” method for creating your new house number. You call the government agency assigning the 911 address and they ask you to provide the current house numbers. The rhyme and reason of next 4 digits did not apply to this application!

Moving the woods

Moving the woods 02-27-2013Technically, we had some of the woods moved or better stated, removed, to make room for the “dream house” and “shop”. The shop is going to be the ultimate man room. It must be completed first so we can store the necessary accoutrements required to have a civilized abode. The dream originated with a small outbuilding. It has been brought to my attention that toilets and tubs take up a lot of room!

There will be 21 doors in this new home. They will not fit in my car until they are ready to be hung.  That will be a lot of possible opening, closing and slamming action! 16 windows must be installed. One is approximately 8 feet high. It is not an item purchased off the shelf at Home Depot. We are building in the country with cows and ducks roaming around. The greatest immediate challenge is obtaining specialty items at reasonable cost, including transportation and freight. So, back to the “shop” – a building was required to store items, in close proximity, to the house building site. Yes, we need a shop. Yes, this is being written by a female with little to no understanding of the future need for a huge tool and man machine storage outlet. The massive trees needed to be run down with a bulldozer. The driveway to the shop had to be cut through. I had to double check to make sure the shop is not visible when I am in the new love nest.

Oncor , the conglomerate mandated to distribute and transmit electricity visited the home site this morning. Much to my dismay, they need 10 feet across to access and lay the required “stuff”, wires and cables to run electricity from the transformer to the the future shop and house. More woods to be moved out of the way. There is no way I can live in a house with no power. God knows what my hair would look like without access to a blow dryer with a diffuser. I knew trees would have to come down, but there’s a lot more trees than even my insane imagination could muster being felled. I had better practice some zen and meditation before the water company and phone company jump on the bandwagon.

The mister and I extensively discussed whether to lay cable for a telephone land line. We do not currently have a land line or permanent residential telephone line. There is no need for one in this day and age. We previously utilized a land line for a fax machine. A fax machine is now an obsolete item in my world now. Everything transmitted from our residence is scanned and emailed. We live in a community that is not technologically savvy. The majority of my acquaintances do not know how to text or have the service on their cell phones. S Continue reading