Clearing Space for the House

We decided to place the house at nearly the highest point of the property. The site is just to the North of the garden and, more importantly, just North of a few wild cherry trees, an elm, and some as yet unidentifiable nut trees. They may be pecans planted by the previous owner, but we aren't quite 100% sure what they are. There are a few pines in that area to the South of the house and 5 remaining pines where the house will sit. There are maybe 20 or so more pines in the area that are a little too close for comfort. The 5 pines will definitely have to come down, and at least some of the others in the area. Most of the underbrush was privet, easy to remove, but tedious. After 10 or 15 hours split over two days I cleared the privet, as shown in the next picture.

Next I tagged the trees that would need to be removed and used some lumber I removed from the old chicken coop to mark the corners. The currently expected house footprint is 35' by 45', with a 15' by 25' screened in front porch. The front porch will hopefully be where the chicken coop currently sits along the Southern wall, with the possibility of adding a second porch on the Western side of the house in the future. All of these pictures are taken from the Southeast, basically from the front porch, looking at the front of the house.

This final picture is the most recent, and from a little farther back to show the chicken coop removal fully underway. If you refer back to last weeks post, The Chicken Coop Rescue (...again), you can see the drastic difference between what the space looked like before and after this stage of the clearing process. Once big pines start coming down the area will undergo another drastic transformation, letting in much more sunlight. The larger hardwoods to the South will be kept to shade the house in the Summer, but let the sunlight in during the cooler winter months.