New Land

A little over a year and a half ago Steve and I purchased 9.23 acres of land. The land had a new foundation already poured on it and a new septic tank put in.

Last year my brother, David, and I went out with a GPS to find the approximate property lines and search for any property markers (one of which is a big rock that I picked up to look for a marker under, lol). As we walked around the perimeter of the property we realized the foundation and septic were not placed on our land.

The guy we bought our land from had purchased a front lot and a rear lot of land. His intent was to break it into 4 or 5 lots and build houses. Well it looks like he didn't do his research because in our town you need a minimum of 5 acres to build a house on a rear lot. The front lot had 2.33 acres and our lot, the rear lot, had 9.23. The guy opted to just build 2 houses so, with the Town's approval, he went ahead and poured the foundations. The problem is the foundation for the rear lot was poured where he originally planned on putting the second house (when he was going to divide the lot).  This is on the front lot and not the rear lot.  :(

We were paying taxes on a foundation we didn't even own. After consulting with a surveyor, I was able to show the Town that the foundation was not on our land. Now our poor neighbors who own the front lot have to pay taxes on this hole in their yard that they can't legally build on! I feel bad about this.  Thankfully, our neighbors have been really supportive to us about this mess.  

This leaves us with a mostly wooded lot of land, with the exception of where the CL&P right of way is. I'm planning on clearing almost the whole lot, except where I'll be leaving trees up to block the view of the power lines.

I had called a builder to ask for an estimate of how much it would cost to have a small area cleared for a house, a septic put in, and a foundation put in (all things we were told when we were buying we already owned). I was told it would cost $80-90k!!! Are you kidding me? That's almost what we spent on the land.

Well I don't have that type of money so my attorney filed a title insurance claim because we didn't receive what we were told we were purchasing. I heard back on Monday and was told the insurance company is denying out claim. My attorney is going to see of there's anything we can do to dispute that.

I'm trying to stay positive about this land and I'm hopeful one day we'll be able to build a home on it.  On Thursday, I'll be meeting with the owner of a forestry company to see if they have any interest in clearing the lot.  A friend of mine recently used this company to clear his land and he ended up making a little bit of money off of the trees on his land. David and I went out on Sunday and threw markers up around our property lines. There seem to be some nice big trees on there so hopefully the forestry company will like what they see.  Please keep your fingers crossed.

Summer fun

Hello!  I haven't written a blog in quite a while.  I didn't forget about the blog but as you know, life takes over.  I think that's a good thing.

We've had a busy summer so far.  Steve and I have both been busy with work (blah!) but more importantly we've been trying to enjoy the nice weather as a family (which is tough when you have different work schedules).

At the end of May, beginning of June we took a trip to Cape Cod.  Thanks to my awesome family we were able to stay at their house (and thanks to my friend, April, and family for watching the critters while we were gone).  In memory of my dad (who wanted to do a "Duck Ride" years ago in Philadelphia years ago but was denied by Steve) we went on a Duck Ride.

We went to the Cape Cod Chip factory, ate lots of seafood.  I guess you can say...

My cousins, aunt, and their cute but crazy dog Emme joined us.  We took a trip to P-Town and the highlight of the trip was when Andrew took the name of the town seriously.  He peed all over one of my cousins, lol.  Here's Andrew wearing his new pants he got after our visit to "Pee-Town":

Last thing about the Cape... most people who know me know I have an obsession with ice cream.  My cousins brought us to our name sake ice cream shop.

Update on our house:

We've been working hard to improve on our house.  We just had our 5 year anniversary of living here.  I can't believe how much work we've done to it in just 5 years.  To list a few we got a new sub-floor and wood floor in two rooms, a remodeled family room, some new windows & roofing, new garage doors & openers, the chicken mc-mansion, and many improvements to the yard.  Our soil is pretty much all sandy so it's taken us a long time to grow in grass (the last owners had ATV paths all over the lawn).  I'm pretty bummed because CL&P came out to remove some trees from our new lot (behind our current lot).  I offered for them to go a little off of their right-of-way for safety reason.  The first two days of tree removal were fine.  I came home on the third day and most of my grass was killed and my lawn looked like a sand pit!  Not to mention, they cut down trees and raspberry bushes on MY property (NOT on the right of way).  They also broke my Invisible Fence we had installed for the dogs.  I've left a couple of messages asking them to re-seed my lawn and haven't heard back yet.  Does anyone out there own a property that has a utility right of way?  If so, have you had similar problems? Anyone have suggestions as to how I can get them to fix what they've destroyed?

(it's worse in the back behind their machine)

Before I finish my blog, I wanted to share a video.  Please excuse me talking and Steve goofing around with Andrew in the background.  This is one of the two chicks that we raised in the house.