Our New Home Pt 1

OK, some of you have been asking to see our place here in Wasilla, Alaska. First of all Sarah lives just down the street. Well, about 5 miles down the street and across the lake. Actually Wasilla is about 50 miles north of Anchorage. Wasilla is a town of about 6000. It is located in the 25,000 sq mile Matanuska-Susitna Borough. A Borough is similar to a county. We are about 20 miles from Palmer with a population of 4500 people. There are many housing projects and subdivisions that are close by that are not within either of the city limits. So I would guess the area has a population between 15,000-20,000.

We are 6 miles out of town and shopping which includes Home Depot, Lowe's, Fred Meyers, Target, Sportsman's Warehouse, Sears and Wal Mart. Of course there are numerous support businesses including some with unusual names.








We bought a simple 3 bedroom, one bath ranch, on a slab so no basement and no storage. We are still working on that issue. When we were looking, Jude took three steps into the house and that was the end of the looking process. The open kitchen/living room arrangement were the clinching items, especially for Jude.















I was please with the outside in the sense that we have never had this much property, 1.35 acres, and the neighbors are a good distance away. All of the lots in the neighborhood are at least an acre. We will never have anyone build in between us. But as with everything there are always surprises. We first looked at the house in March with a foot of snow on the ground. What I thought was 2-3 foot snow drifts turned out to be a yard that needed proper grading!

Jude and I had a sauna when we were in Canada but decided to switch to a hot tub here in Alaska. Since installing, we have used it every night at Happy Hour time. However we needed a place to put it. So the first project was to build a proper deck (12x32) off the back of the house. This turned into more than I had bargained for. First, it was actually to be 14 feet, but they do not sell 14 foot timber up here, so okay, we will go with 12 ft. Then I discovered that this deck could not simply be placed on blocks on the ground because of frost heaves. That meant footings that went down at least 4 feet.
But, becausee the hot tub was to sit on the deck that some of the footings would need a two foot diameter, one foot high base. Oh, did I mention that the "soil"






around here is a medium quality gravel, meaning sand and rocks that seem to be cemented together. Bring in the heavy equipment.















This post is giving me fits! I will publish and finish all later.