-->
 |
| A design from Firstday Cottage that may be our Unalakleet House |
To build or not to build, that is the question. Though the situation we are considering is
far less weighty than what young Hamlet wrestled with, it is filled with almost
as much uncertainty.
Building is
not a new concept to us as we have built one house already as well as a couple
outbuildings. While in Galena, we
literally built from the ground up as friends taught us to put in pilings, mill
sills, run plumbing and wires—the carpentry came from earlier experiences and by
reading a book.
The game in
Unalakleet is completely different though.
Whereas we had multiple friends who had physically built their own homes
in Galena, we are somewhat pioneers here.
There are a couple of guys in town who do it for a living, but not really
anyone who starts from foundation and sees it through to the lights going on
and the toilet flushing.
Multiple
barge runs stopped in Galena each summer and when we built our house, 16 cents
per pound was the base barge shipping rate.
Gravel was less than $100 per dump truck load, and sill log sized trees
sloughed off the banks and were easily harvested with a chainsaw, snow machine
and sled in winter.
We have
transitioned to a very beautiful place with some of the best fishing in the
world, a tundra full of berries, good trapping, decent hunting, and family
close by… where fewer than a handful of barges arrive each summer, most freight
is moved by air, trees 8-10 inches across the butt are considered large, and a
load of gravel is measured in thousands of dollars.
Maybe that
is the reason we have struggled to get information on the process and figures
to budget from. Myra and I believe it is
important to help others through our experiences and so starts this strand of
posts. We are not sure if a completed house
will be the end result of this journey, but maybe someone can learn from our successes
and failures and be better off for it.
Teacher
housing in the Bering Straits School District has come a long way since the
time I found a sock frozen to the inside of the closet wall in our trailer
house we rented from them after first getting married. It still leaves a lot to be desired though
too—there is no room to build a shop, I am struggling to find garden space, we
refer to the puddle where we park our car and boat while on trailer as Lake
Superior, we have nearly zero storage space, and have neighbors literally on
the other side of two of our four walls.
The plus side is that we have not had to purchase a cable package as
long as we are good with what the neighbor across the one lane road from us is
watching.
Our little
family has a lot going on right now though as we plan for a possible build in
Unalakleet, work on upgrading our plane, and looking at a future build in
Michigan. Unlike Buying Alaska, our budget is dictated by reason and a limited
income. Not being licensed contractors
nor wanting to hire one means banks are not an option… trust me, we tried on
the first house. Honestly, we found we
like the freedom that comes from not owing anyone any money anyway.
At some
point as we figure out the budget for this build, we may discover that what it
costs to put in a driveway here would go much better toward our build in
Michigan, or would go a long way toward the plane we are shopping for.
As we move
forward in this process, I’ll stay as transparent as possible. Otherwise it does no good for anyone.
We continue
to say in our house that there are two ways to gain wisdom: by learning from
those who have gone through similar experiences before, and by, sometimes costly,
experience.
Hopefully
we can share a little wisdom that we gain through both means.
 |
| Kenton Moos and I setting rafters on our first house build. It was also a Firstday Cottage design. |
No comments:
Post a Comment