Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, welcome to the Slowgoods podcast, brought to you by the rope company, where we love to talk about main adventure story craftsmanship and where all those things intersect. So, yeah, today, guys, I just wanted to do a quick solo podcast.
[00:00:18] It's been a long time. Thankful to be back and yeah, we. So just to update, we.
[00:00:28] So we moved offices and we had started doing this podcast and the guy that does our photo shoots, Trent Bell's studio down around Portland, Maine. And we're thankful for Trent and Tim down there and might do some other podcasts down at their studio, but it. It's a lot of travel. It's 2 hours. We're Rockport, Maine. And so we just said, man, we need to get our own setup up here to do just so it's more readily available.
[00:01:07] And since we kind of made that decision on our last podcast, there's just been a lot going on here and at home in general with my family.
[00:01:22] We had our first baby boy. That's our third child, William William Bernard Radcliffe, born in March and very exciting, very blessed. Everybody's healthy and, you know, it's August now, and it's just been a really fun ride and we're just grateful to God. And so besides that, I mean, things have just been busy at the, at the company. I think even before that, you know, leading up to that, we had trade shows and a lot of other things going on. Williams born and then, you know, it's just being even more dad and husband. And Hannah's obviously fully occupied. And so getting the podcast studio wasn't always top priority. Hopefully this is turning out all right. Hopefully it'll get better every time. But it's been a process, I'm going to tell you right now. And I mean, you're essentially, you know, this is very rookie stuff, but you're learning how to make film. If you're doing any kind of video, I don't know if you're learning how to make film. You're just doing some kind of filming that's decent. I decent lighting. You can just turn on an iPhone, hit record.
[00:02:40] But if you want to take it to the next level, I guess there's a lot to it, a lot to learn and, and so hopefully we'll keep getting better at it. And we're excited a bit about doing this. This podcast. So Goods podcast is really a big reason, not the podcast itself, but what we'll talk about on here is why we show up to work every day that to tell stories of people that really know design and main and creating authentic, quality, long lasting products and to inspire people and to help people kind of understand what they're buying and maybe ideally, what they could be buying and filling their lives with to hopefully create some more order and joy and peace. I don't think that products are going to bring the ultimate joy and peace and fulfillment into your home and lives, but there's so much out there that you could do.
[00:03:55] You could do. We all could do a lot better, certainly myself, number one. And we're just creating order in the home. And another thing going on is Hannah and I have just started building a house.
[00:04:12] Very exciting. So I'll tell you the story.
[00:04:16] Back in 2017, we bought a little piece of. We bought a beautiful piece of property in St. George, Maine, and built a house on that.
[00:04:31] And it was a really cool place. Good spot. Beautiful spot. And we even tried to do it fairly economically, but basically, long story short, was just too much to handle. I was the most stressed, I think. Maybe. Maybe not as I've ever been, but especially since I tried to start living a more orderly and faith driven life and.
[00:05:01] And be wise.
[00:05:03] It was just a lot. We had a baby on the way. I just built a new boat in the house, and just lots of payments. And the house is always also kind of in the woods by itself, where you couldn't see anybody else. It's just on our heart a lot, I think almost ever since we moved in. For me personally, that, uh, not. I wasn't sure if that's where God wanted us. So over time, we prayed about it, and so we had tests, and then two years later, we had Caroline. And I just started out. We were already talking about maybe selling the house. And, you know, we said we got a baby coming. No way. And we had Caroline, and she.
[00:05:46] She was really a pretty. She slept well. She was a pretty easier baby, let's say. And Hannah was so encouraged. She's like, hey, I think we should do it. This was before COVID Before COVID And we had Caroline right after the COVID lockdown.
[00:06:04] So, you know, the housing market, it started heating up a little bit, and we're like, wow.
[00:06:11] The condition was before in Maine, and a lot of places that you just couldn't sell anything or stuff to sell at home, so places were selling. So we said, well, let's do it. And our plan was to hopefully sell the house and then turn around and buy something. Something else.
[00:06:32] And I.
[00:06:34] So I think we put it on the market in, like, July of 2020, and immediately we have, like, three offers. Three or four offers, and I don't think people really catching on to what the market was doing yet. So I think we kind of lowball their number. And there wasn't any bidding war or anything, but we got, basically got an offer for asking price or like, wow, seems like we should sell it. And so we did.
[00:07:16] And, you know, so that was in July. We accepted an offer. I think it closed in September. August, we were looking at houses and, boy, the, you know, things just kept going up the price, and we really did not want to move again.
[00:07:37] We're more like grew up. We grew up in the same homes, same neighborhoods.
[00:07:44] We know we haven't traveled around a lot. We're kind of more homebodies around family, and, and we wanted this to be our next kind of forever home and raise our kids there. And they have memories, so we just kept looking and looking and something would come up. And I said, no way.
[00:08:08] Everything will calm down. We can't go get crazy and pay those kinds of prices.
[00:08:14] And, which is funny now, looking back for what the prices were then. And, um, this will all calm down.
[00:08:24] Anyway, so we all know the rest of the story, that over the next. Well, that was 2020.
[00:08:31] Yeah. The next three or four years, things just kept skyrocketing on the, on the housing market for the cost of everything, land, building materials. We, we really wanted to build, or at least we always did. We tried to find a place, but we're both have idealistic kind of personalities and we love to create.
[00:08:58] Even though buying places are expensive, building was even more.
[00:09:04] But even besides that, we couldn't find. We were very specific on where we wanted to be. And we wanted to be. We had found a church community.
[00:09:15] We wanted.
[00:09:17] We want to be a part of, lord willing, our whole lives. And we're connected with a lot of families there and raising kids together and our lives, and God's just blessed us with a lot of peace and joy and all kinds of things through this church family. And so we wanted to be closer to that, to be more part of it. We were about half hour a little more away, and so we're feeling that calling, but we still wanted to be fairly close to our families.
[00:09:54] So I started writing the letters. And I think over the course of, yeah, those two or three years, I wrote, I don't know, 40 letters, something like that.
[00:10:13] And we were writing to places up and down the coast. They weren't always on the water, but in those types of areas. And basically some people wrote us back. That was nice. A lot didn't.
[00:10:33] And it was just, it was just interesting, but it was, it was, it was hard fishing.
[00:10:41] And so if any of you ever want to write letters, what you need to do is make an offer. Write in the letter, and you can give a little bit of your story, but don't expect people to, you know, necessarily care about your story, or they might care, but, you know, you're asking them to part with a big thing and it's helpful, but, yeah, so, you know, just keep things short and make an offer and know the market, and don't make a cheap offer and insult. Certainly not an insulting offer. Don't try to get a deal. Don't even, I mean, special right now. I mean, maybe if things are tough, but.
[00:11:32] So, anyway, you can expect most people, most generally, people were pretty nice. One person was upset, didn't even know. Can't imagine why I was writing to them.
[00:11:46] I'm not sure if they were wondering how we got their information. It's just all public information on tax maps and things like that. But anyway, so, wrote lots of letters, got a bunch of responses. A couple of people considered for a second the types of places we're writing to is, were, um, places that usually people that have some money, you know, they're, they're going to hang on to it. They don't, they don't really need the money and, or it's more than we can afford or something like that. So. All understandable. And, and we looked a lot. So during this whole time, we, we went from, we lived in Hannah's parents camper for a while with a newborn and a two year old, and then we lived at Hannah's brother's rental home.
[00:12:50] And that was a blessing. That was very thankful for that.
[00:12:56] And then we end up finding a. A rental place that was a good deal. We almost messed up and didn't go to that, but we've been living there for over three years now, and it was close to family, which was great and great place to raise a family. So now, basically, Caroline has grown up in that. She's four now, and we've had William.
[00:13:29] So we've had this whole life in this, in our kind of temporary space, and it's really been great. We're thankful for it.
[00:13:39] So, anyway, time goes on, and still writing a few letters, and there was a piece of land that my dad always said we could have that was down near my family, and it was my grand. He just considered it my grandfather's. My grandfather's gone now. And he said, hey, anybody can always, anybody can have that land, which is very nice of him. And a great spot.
[00:14:09] And it was actually on. On the coast where I grew up. Beautiful place.
[00:14:17] It's a little challenging building wise, but my grandfather already blasted a spot, and so we had chose, like, we were just ready to kind of establish our family home and where our family was going to be. And so we were ready. So. And we had saved at this point, and we're getting better at budgeting and feeling more, or I guess just that it was the right time to start, start doing all this. So I clear out just what had grown up. I started clearing all that land out, and we hire a.
[00:15:02] He's not an official architect, but he's not just drawing plans to a house. Somebody kind of in the middle. Very nice guy, very helpful and good with his programs and great with codes and any green efforts. And his name is Eric Derbys, I think is Derbys designs. Maybe. I dont know. If everyone know, let me know. But so hes got a great sense of humor and personality, and he came down and looked over the site, and, you know, we're talking about our budget, and so he gives us our fruit. When we tell him what we want. We're thinking a cape and just simple, traditional home. I mean, and we can't afford much, so he gives us a design, and we're already nervous about the price, and we can already just tell this is. It's really great.
[00:16:08] It's just too big.
[00:16:10] And the way this was up on a high spot, we basically had to have a daylight basement.
[00:16:17] Not something Hannah's always wanted to have. And I'm good either way. But it created a lot of siding.
[00:16:27] It almost kind of looked weird without breaking things up, so.
[00:16:32] And then we just. With capes, we're having a tough time getting the space how we wanted it. With the dormers and pilot time. You get enough dormers that look good.
[00:16:42] We just figured, we really love colonials, so we just said, well, we'll shrink the house and turn this into a. And just go to two floors instead of doing the dormers. By the time we got done with the dormers we wanted, we would have probably could. We could have saved money just building colonial. So.
[00:17:02] So that's what we did. Shrunk the house to a colonial one time and did some edits.
[00:17:09] And then we're just thinking, you know, we're just talking to more people and getting more numbers and just like, you know, we just can't afford this. This is just still too much. And while we're doing this, Hannah and I are just thinking about a lot of things, talking back and forth, and we're praying about it, and.
[00:17:33] Because what was really hard for me and Hannah was that this, we were still going to be just as far away as we ever were from our church community.
[00:17:42] And if we were going to live down there, I really felt like we should have, you know, gone to a closer church, so, or being part of the community we're in and, you know, being a light to that community and getting to know our neighbors. And so we really didn't want to do that. So God just started kind of showing us different things, closing certain doors to kind of things just weren't going well while we were down there. I mean, with our. Almost everything we were doing when we were talking about building at that place.
[00:18:23] And we just did not have peace about it.
[00:18:28] So we kind of make. I kind of make a last ditch effort. And the only place I had written to that was not on the coast was a. A place inland and a special, pretty place kind of up on a hill that Hannah just remembered a tiny bit from childhood. And it's a special place. And that was the place. That was the only place she was really open to moving inland.
[00:18:55] Me too. I, you know, I love the ocean and the coast, and it's part of my identity and.
[00:19:04] But anyway, I had written a letter to a guy up on this, this hill. And at the time, I just said, I don't think he was. He got back to me and said, wow, so cool that you wrote to us. You wrote to me. Nobody ever writes letters anymore.
[00:19:21] This is really neat. And we talked back and forth a little bit, and I had offered just to buy half his lot.
[00:19:28] Didn't think. Couldn't afford the. This is probably two years ago. Couldn't afford the whole lot. So I write, I don't know, ten more letters.
[00:19:40] It's kind of last ditch effort. And I just said, hey, should we write a letter to that guy again?
[00:19:45] And that might even be the last letter I sent, I think. And Hannah said, yeah, sure, go ahead.
[00:19:53] Rick got a little desperate, and so he gets back to us and he is willing to sell now.
[00:20:05] And so we go back and forth and he gives us a number and we give him a number back, and basically we make a deal. And we couldn't believe it. And there was two or three other things. I don't know if I'm ready to share yet. That happened around that, but around that time, but it basically opened things up so we could be more. More comfortable doing this and would allow us to build there and just be able to build there, basically.
[00:20:45] And the timing was just unbelievable.
[00:20:49] So we buy this land, I don't know, it must have been in May or June.
[00:20:57] And we have our local builder lined up, a guy that we've gone to church with ever since we've been at this church.
[00:21:07] Great guy, awesome family.
[00:21:11] Super, just trustworthy. Great eye guy. Has a great crew.
[00:21:17] His son was actually stern man on my boat. Best term and I've ever had for a long time. Just, you know, they're pretty much part of our family.
[00:21:26] And we're just really excited to.
[00:21:29] For him and his team to build their house and. And show it to everybody. And so, anyway, it's just been amazing how this has all come through. Like, doors just keep. Just have kept opening since we've in our mind more. This is more of us just following God. We just keep praying, looking for peace, looking or trying to stay away from things that make us, you know, on edge or anxious or doesn't give us peace in our hearts. And so this is just where God has kept leading us. And so here we are. We're now, we bought a beautiful piece of land on a hill here in mid coast Maine. It's just a blueberry berry, and they haven't actively taken care of it for like, three seasons.
[00:22:21] And since we've had it, we've been sending everybody we know up there this summer to go pick blueberries. And everybody's had all they wanted. Just beautiful blueberries that haven't been sprayed.
[00:22:31] And it's a.
[00:22:33] We've had all these things, like, we love landscaping, and we'd love to create a property, a really neat property someday. I love to do all I can.
[00:22:43] By the time we build a house, won't be any money left over to really do too much. But we're not even sure we want to, which is great, even though we had tons of plans and ideas. But it's so beautiful there. And this blueberry bearing with all the humps and rocks laying out, and there's two or three big rocks we're going to leave and put the house right behind us. So the rocks are right in front of it, and there's a lot of exposed ledge. The whole thing is basically just ledge. I mean, that's usually what blueberries places are anyway, just some soil on top of ledge and.
[00:23:18] And, yeah, so you just, you drive in and you're looking right at a mountain. Two or three mountains. And then our eight and a half acres and the property goes straight and then it goes down. About half of it goes straight and then it drops right off. And you're just looking at mountains and you're looking at this beautiful blueberry bearing and just kind of feels like you're in the garden of Eden or something like that. And so we're just so blessed to have it and we can't wait to share it with neighbors, family, church, family. And we've already. It's been really cool how many people have gone up and picked blueberries and had picnics there. And one of the couples who spent a lot of time with that church went there with us right after we first got the driveway in.
[00:24:05] They said, let's go up there. And they got us some pizza. And that was special. And all the kids were running around picking blueberries and boy, what a great night that was.
[00:24:15] So it's just been really neat. We have been taking pictures and videos and my boy, with the newborn and everything going on, and we've just.
[00:24:24] We've made sure social media isn't a priority in our lives. Even though we want to share with everybody and inspire everybody, we're just trying to take care of family first and people here at the company. And so we hope to make a plan to share all that. And so, anyway, so here we are. We get the driveways, oh, about 300ft.
[00:24:51] We made sure it went around all the exposed ledge. We don't want to cover any of that.
[00:24:55] We're gonna have very little lawn. You drive down the driveway, right. If you're heading for the tallest mountain, you can see it heads right at it. And there's also a few rocks right there. And it heads for the main kind of center one. It's kind of cool. It all lines up the driveway. The driveway lines up right with the main big rock that is literally just this.
[00:25:16] It's a boulder that's very round. I don't know if it's almost perfectly round, but very round.
[00:25:24] Probably 5ft in diameter all the way around.
[00:25:29] And it's just sitting on top of a ledge. I don't know if somebody put it there or what, but it's there. And so the driveway lines up with that, which lines up at the top of the mountain.
[00:25:41] And then the house, that'll basically be the center of the house where that all lines up.
[00:25:46] So.
[00:25:47] But before you get to those rocks, the driveway curves around the ledge a little bit.
[00:25:53] And then where we turn around is right there. And then it's actually going to be a little bit of a walk to the house. 75ft you walk through those big, there's three big, there's two big rocks and then a smaller rock. And you walk through the two rocks, the path will go through those two rocks and right to the center of the house.
[00:26:12] The house is a colonial, it's a couple thousand square feet, and just traditional front.
[00:26:22] We're working on, we've just gone through like budget and allowances and, you know, we're here to talk about quality and finding that line of, you know, how long you save and buying quality stuff, but also, you know, just trying to purchase what you need it.
[00:26:51] It's really been neat thinking going through all this and thinking about the podcast, what we do here, and things are just so expensive and so we're trying to put anything that is, would be very expensive or time consuming or a hassle or whatever to swap out later.
[00:27:16] I mean, we plan on putting everything in and just using it for years, you know, unless it breaks or something. But especially floors, windows. Yeah. Get the, make sure we get the basement the way we wanted it. Oh, that's a cool story. So, just for storage sakes, and for easy access, we decided to have a full daylight basement again. So there's basically one spot if you don't want to just blast, or a hole. It's all ledge to put a house, and it's right about where I'd want a house anyway, which is great.
[00:27:54] But by the time we got that all figured out there, we still had, there's probably only three quarters of it was flat.
[00:28:01] The basement, you'd have a full basement, which maybe we could have dealt with. But the way the stairs came down in the house, it wasn't going to happen. So I talked to the main drilling and blasting guys, and they were pretty confident if we wanted to blast, they could get most everything in one day. And that was one cost, he said, or you could try to hammer. We, there's no guaranteeing, and that was about half the cost. Or if they were there for two days, it was the same cost as blasting.
[00:28:39] So again, prayed about it a lot and I just didn't know what. So the risk with, with hammering is if it doesn't work, then you're gonna have to pay for at least that day and then bring in the blasting crew so it could actually cost you more.
[00:28:58] And so anyway, prayed about it a lot and, and the neighbor had come over and asked about if we were gonna blast, because he had so many blast next to him, and it messed up his whale one time, and I just thought, well, there's even a chance I could make a neighbor a little bit happy. We'll just go with that.
[00:29:17] That's kind of what I felt like as I was praying and so choose that. We chose the hammer and prayed about that a lot. And they come over and hammer and by.
[00:29:33] So I went over there with some spray paint and spray painted priorities. This is the corner we have to have so the stairs can come down into the basement the right way and we can actually use it. Second priority, you know, just a little more room. So we could maybe put our second washer and dryer someday just because we like for tick stuff coming in and out, just washing dirty outdoor clothes down there.
[00:29:58] Another, you know, then another priority is basically just the most convenient, most room. And then, like the fifth priority, you know, that would have been like a dream, getting the whole thing hammered out.
[00:30:09] So, long story short, they hammer out the whole thing by 02:00 and then some. They even hammer out a little bit with the excavator wants to make room for a tank, and they're basically looking for more things to do and talking about water line, but nothing was dug out. And the builder calls me and the excavator and the drilling guy, I'm just like, I guess we're all, you know, I don't have any other plans. We never thought we'd make it this far, so that's just. It's been neat to see, you know, things go, go that way. And we're really grateful. But that's what I mean, since we've kind of followed and gone to this place, that's kind of how it's gone. And we're not sure what the siding will be yet, but we want to be as natural as we can everywhere that we can afford.
[00:31:02] And as we pick things out, we'll share more details. But basically, that was another thing. As we're going through the design process ever since the beginning, Hannah and I, especially Hannah, we just, both of us, we just wasn't quite getting.
[00:31:23] Hannah loves details and these certain visions she has, and I love her visions, too.
[00:31:28] We just couldn't quite get the house to do what we wanted it to do. I don't know how else to say it. And it was really hard. If you're ever going to build a house, like, really know your budget and if you're going to build, if you're going to start anyway, maybe make it too small, because as you shrink something, the morale is brutal. Like every. Oh, you know, jeez, these rims are getting too small to even live in, and.
[00:31:59] But if you, let's say you made a little smaller and you just figured it out, maybe 10% smaller or 15% smaller than you thought you could afford, and then.
[00:32:11] And then do all you can to make that work. And maybe if you have to increase it a little bit, would be a massive, would be much better mental exercise. And, uh. But anyway, I'm sure that's how most people have to do it, so.
[00:32:25] So I just said, man, no sense to keep going back and forth with designer. I've just got to sit down, and this is what I did over the last house. And just draw out and use everything he had done, do the best calculations I can, and just draw this thing out. A layout, two floors.
[00:32:44] So that's what I did. I took a. And I'd show it to Hannah. Some we go back and forth, but I don't know, it was a week or two. I'd take two or 3 hours every night and just graph paper and a ruler and pencil and just move things around. Try this and that.
[00:33:00] Really hard part in a colonial is that second set of stairs.
[00:33:08] You always want your stairs to wrap around, you know, the stairs below them to save space and the way that panned out there. So the stairs, when we initially started in the cape and the colonial, were right in the center of the house. Classic setup.
[00:33:23] But especially as the house shrank, the room sizes were really a struggle. And we couldn't do some cool things on the gable ends of windows that we really wanted to do, because Hannah wanted a couple, kind of like a plain gable end with a couple of statement windows.
[00:33:41] And that's it. And the only way to do that is to either have one big open room or have stairs coming up on the center of the gable end.
[00:33:52] So I moved the stairs over to the one gable end, got the windows in there and the top and bottom. But I couldn't wrap the stairs around on that second floor. It just took up. By the time I got done doing that, it took up so much room, it kind of killed. We really needed, with our children, at least two rooms and then our bedroom and a bathroom. So, boy, it just wasn't working out. So I put a straight set of stairs on the other center of the other gable end. That is not ideal, but it still was a better to me as much as I played with a better option. And so that's what we've done. And, you know, be excited to show it to you guys someday, hopefully.
[00:34:45] And, yeah, there's four bedrooms upstairs and a little bathroom nothing too fancy.
[00:34:54] And the very. Just traditional front, the.
[00:34:59] The four windows with the center door, five windows up high on the. As you come into the house, just traditional colonial and 1212 pitch and then the gable ends. And I wanted to get a little more modern clean, so we did some kind of neat things there. There's only so much you could do with the kitchen, but it's simple and it's not very big. It's medium to small. It's a couple thousand square feet.
[00:35:37] And we're really excited about it and we think it'll be a great place to host family and friends.
[00:35:46] And I can't wait to talk more about just feeling out this.
[00:35:52] What we'd love to have is like the top quality lines of everything just because we love quality and the generally the more design friendly.
[00:36:01] But, you know, we're basically a tear down on everything and maybe a tear down below that and we're just trying to decide what to sacrifice on. Like Hannah said, actually, and I agree, we'll take like a camper, a camp style stove and oven unit so she can have the nice door she wants. You know, she really wants details.
[00:36:25] And, you know, she wants to walk out of the kitchen and have a beautiful square kind of patio area someday. And the double doors going up to that.
[00:36:36] So, you know, just really doing your budget and figuring out your allowances is just so key. And so that's what we've been attacking and it's been exciting to work on it together. I feel like now a lot of it's been just hard, a little frustrating. Also exciting. You think it's all just going to be bliss and exciting, but. But ever since we've been making moves on this property, things have been going better and better and we're grateful for it and excited to share it.
[00:37:09] And yeah, blueberry land, Operation Radcliffe House commenced. And. And hopefully this podcast is commencing again and new life with our baby boy. So just a lot of good things going on. We're blessed and we're thankful and just wanted to give you an update. Share with these. Share these things with you. Thanks for listening to slow goods podcast. Keep an eye out there on our Instagram and our email list for any updates possible on the house someday. And we also have a bunch of new products. We have some out already. Our soft step mat. We're gonna have a drop on a heritage basket. This is the best basket ever. No wooden bottoms.
[00:37:50] Totally weatherproof, gorgeous.
[00:37:54] And, you know, just a lot going on. So give us a shout, check out our stuff. Instagram, email, list and anywhere you can find this part podcast and share with your friends.
[00:38:05] Thank you very much. Have a good day.
