Chevy-man or Ford-man?

As finished; you wouldn’t be able to duplicate this now. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Our house was built on an abandoned cornfield (above).
We designed the house. It’s super-insulated with foot-thick insulated exterior walls.
The ceilings are all eight-feet, with 22 inches of blown fiberglass on top.
I.e. No cathedral-ceilings, which accumulate wasted heat.
The house is surrounded with 10-mil vapor-barrier; usually it’s 3-mil.
We had to jump through hoops to get it.
10-mil is much thicker and less likely to tear.
That same vapor-barrier is under our concrete cellar-slab atop crushed stone.
That cellar has never leaked, even though the giant slab cracked.
Our foundations also have an extensive drainage system.
I think our builder was impressed by all this stuff.
We were doing things right, which he wanted to do.
The exterior shell has Tyvek® on it.
Building this house was somewhat a hairball. It was the last house he ever built.
I don’t think our builder took a drubbing — I saw him afterward driving a new pickup truck.
But he was over his head managing a crew; a bunch of lazy layabouts.
I used a builder I could work with.
We also were doing things a little differently.
We owned what was built, not the builder.
We were paying him as he went along.
We have over four-and-a-half acres.
It’s part of what was once a large farm-field east of State Route 65.
The field was first destined for development.
It was to be subdivided and perhaps 8-10 homes built.
But the Town of West Bloomfield wanted a frontage-road. They didn’t want all those driveways emptying on State Route 65.
The prospective developer backed out.
The field was then subdivided into three large lots and put back on the market.
Our lot was the highest, at the crest of a small rise on State Route 65.
Our driveway would empty right into the highest spot, for good sight-lines.
I remember being shown the lot by a young real-estate salesman we later backed away from.
He was a viper, and I had to do a grandstand.
We researched the lot directly with the listing real-estate company.
We bought it, although the previous owner carried our mortgage.
We eventually paid him off.
I began designing our house.
Input came from my wife to solve various problems our old house in Rochester had; particularly room-locations and walking paths.
E.g. No more tracking mud through the living-room — and that includes dogs.
Other things factored in; e.g. the kitchen had to be right next to the garage, and not having the laundry in the cellar or garage.
The garage also had to be big enough to swallow our van, and not hang up the mirrors driving in.
And keeping all water-lines inside the shell so they wouldn’t freeze.
We had to hire an architect to draw our plans, and spec various construction techniques. —He was getting input from us.
Behind all this was our builder, who had to implement our plans.
I liked his taste — they were my tastes.
He had already built at least two houses, one for himself, and one for his parents.
They looked great, with roof overhangs finished how I would do them.
We bid the house-project.
Our eventual builder drove a Ford pickup truck.
Another bidder drove a Chevrolet pickup.
Who do I want to build my house, a Chevy-man or a Ford-man?
We chose the Ford-man. I thought a Chevy-man might be too conservative.
Our builder carted his huge family in an E-250 Ford window-van.
I had a Ford E250 van of my own at that time.
Both our vans were gigantic 460 cubic-inch V8s.
I remember pulling out of his driveway once, and he was behind me.
He put the hammer down as he exited his driveway, wife and kids all akimbo.
TILT! Somebody like that has my business.
We have since let the cornfield reforest. We mowed paths into it.
When we first moved in, you could still find corn-stubble.
We didn’t reforest all of it, perhaps two+ acres.
The rest gets mowed.
When we first moved in, an outdoor sodium-vapor light on an old school-building, now an American Legion-Hall, far up the road, illuminated an inside north wall of our bedroom.
It shown through the entire length of our house, kitchen to bedroom.
It no longer does.
The reforested parts of our property now have trees 20-40 feet high.
We also installed a garden-shed that probably obstructs that light.

• “We” is me and my wife of almost 43 years, “Linda.”
• “Tyvek” is a one-way paper house-wrap made by DuPont. It breathes water-vapor out, but not in.
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield on State Route 65 in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. State Route 65 is a north-south rural two-lane toward Rochester, but a main highway.