Hey Friends! I thought it was time to share some information about our past and future construction plans here at the Thermaland Oaks Homestead.

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It all started with a dream for Trevor & I to design our own home and develop a piece of land to live off of. We found the place to build our forever home tucked away in the quiet foothills overlooking the Sacramento Valley. The dream that seemed out of reach and intangible has turned out to be the adventure of our lifetimes. Throughout this process, we have both discovered talents and learned from our mistakes. We have developed experiences full of successes as well as tribulations which we now want to share with those set on similar courses.

I have discovered that dreaming big doesn’t have to be unrealistic and that any of your wildest dreams is only out of reach if you never try. I’ve discovered that when God puts a dream in your heart, you should chase it. Our dream home is coming true right in front of our eyes and that has only encouraged us to dream bigger.

Here are some pictures from framing Phase 1 in the heat of summer of 2017. Trevor and I want to be an inspiration to others who are thinking about building their own home. There is so much sacrifice involved we want to be transparent with that as well. So much of our time the last two years have been spent building and developing our land with pouring every ounce of money into our dream home. Trevor & I have a dream to live simple and to have everything paid off one day. We were able to build Phase 1 mostly in cash. Our journey will be building each phase of construction with striving to be debt free.

We have been very fortunate along this path. In order to launch this entire process we had Trevor’s Dad who is an Architect in Placer County help us design our home. Filled with high ceilings and a house full of windows to look out on our view on a hill we are very lucky to have his support. Also, my Dad is a General Contractor located in the Bay Area. With my Dad, my two brothers and a few friends were able to frame our home in 5 weekends. We could not be more thankful to have the most amazing family and friends help up with this huge project. The amount of laughs, scrapes, bruises, and near heat stroke experiences will always be memories that will last a lifetime. With these two resources were had an amazing kick start to building our dream home.

This date: June 23, 2017 is the date of our first lumber drop when were were framing our home in 110 degree heat. This beam is still exposed today in our home! When you go up our spiral staircase this is the view you see looking down on our dining room table. A very special experience framing our home and to be able to have this date stamp in plane view shows us just how far we have come in 2 years..

The Phase 1 Construction ended up being 901 sq feet total. This is the perfect amount of space for us right now and we are living on our dream property. The outpour of support on my Instagram account has been amazing through this homesteading process. I wish I would have started this journey with you all previously, but the great news is that we are going to be adding on Phase 2 in the near future. My plan is to blog and video the whole journey with you all. When you are building your home you are involved in each and every step. Every Home Depot run, every lumber drop, and every dirty phase of do-it-yourself construction.

So thank you to each and everyone of you for following,

Christina

I’ve discovered that when God puts a dream in your heart, you should chase it. Our dream home is coming true right in front of our eyes and that has only encouraged us to dream bigger.

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