We spent MayDay in Belfast, having what is known as a "curb cut" done for the land we are closing on. It's simply a service where the public works department comes out, checks the spot where you are wanting to locate your potential driveway and either ok's it, or tells you where you need to relocate it so that you have proper sight availability (usually 250 feet of vision from either side). The fellow came late, so we were out tromping in the woods thinking about where to best site the house when he came by, and spraypainted his big public works OK on the road. :-) Very exciting! It was delightful to come up to the land lot and see "sale pending" on the for sale sign out front! We're less than a month away from being back in daily hard work, something we've missed deeply since selling the house months ago.
We also have found a very solid local fellow to GC for us. He will help us with the driveway, septic, well drilling and basement. The stick framing and interior work we'll do ourselves, electric we will work on ourselves, but in conjunction with a solar installer (hopefully most of the box/panel we can set up for ourselves, but barring financial disaster, we're going to go for a grid tied system utilizing at least some solar panels to start). Plumbing will be roughed in, and aside from copper work, which is just too expensive to bungle during the learning curve, we'll probably sub out as well. It's going to be a long and exciting and sometimes probably frustrating experience, we are looking forward to it!
Belfast is a lovely little town! It's on a small harbor and has a large residential area full of pretty amazing New England homes, lots of capes and lots of Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn type places. The downtown is small and tight, with many fabulous brick buildings. Belfast has been a working waterfront for many many years, and has also had mill work and chicken "farms" as major employers in the town. It's got a lovely, funky feel to it, and seems perfect (as though anything is!) There's a wonderful co-op, lots of small stores, some neat little restaurants and bakeries, a movie theatre, a great library with a lot of weekly activities going on, tons of different churches, one of which has a strong role in the Maine Council of Churches engagement with MOFGA to make local eating and CSA's a bigger part of our daily consciousness, bookstores, toystores (who can resist a good toystore?!), all kinds of neat stuff. Plus kayaking is an easy option with lots of routes to choose from. The Bay is just at the end of the downtown cluster. It's a neat town. It has a wonderful feel to it. We love all the bricks everywhere, and there are some lovely architectural details to the buildings that kept us pulling out the camera like the gawking tourists we still are in this neat little town we are adopting as home, and waiting to be adopted into! There's a lot going on in this town - it's quite amazing. I guess I didn't mention the little yarn store (and I probably won't again, till the house is built!!). Once a week there's a knit night, even! Our land is located 2.2 miles from the co-op, which is right downtown. We are still feeling a bit like this might not be happening. Who would have imagined that this research and wondering that started over a year ago has ended us here in real life, and that we are on the way to making a land purchase?!
We definitely still feel like we are learning our way around, but Belfast has a real home-like draw for us, similar to that we felt when we first saw Bellingham, and Point Roberts.
Today we met a woman at a nearby nursery who lives in Belfast and is starting her first bee hives this season - so we found a link to the bee-keepers, Jessica and Tim! She's going to email us some contact info. :-)
Off to catch up on a couple of other posts that I have failed to make in the last week or two. We've been rather busy trying to finalize house plans, and have I mentioned that dial up is REALLY slow to do anything picture related on?! :-) Miss you all!
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