sunday sept 21

here's the front of the house- the deck is in, no steps, needs to be treated. the sun/moon we bought at hyde park street fair is gracing the front of the house-looks good!




















wiring is done, plumbing & hvac inspections done. waiting on the electrical inspection.


















the framing was moved, so now we have a small closet in the bedroom, and the bathroom door moved over.

















steve and john took sheetrock for the upstairs ceiling today, so they can get the ceiling up & the insulation shot. they had a great time hauling it upstairs, and can't wait to do the same for the wall sheetrock (not!) steve brought back the shower stall that wouldn't meet code (tho for some reason he was able to buy it at home depot) to return.

we'll be in austin next weekend, be a few weeks before we have another update.

9.13.08

tracy came along for the ride today, you can see steve has been busy painting. looks good.
















the plumbing was run last week. having never built a house, i am clueless as to the things that need to be spelled out, instead of seeming like common sense. i didn't understand why we would have to walk through every room and point out the seemingly obvious places for outlets & light switches. then i saw that we have one hose bib outdoors on the frontish right hand corner of the house. this will involve getting really long hoses and doing lots of hose hauling if anything needs hand watered in back or on the other side of the house. now i understand a bit better. (we may be able to add a hose bib off of the sprinkler system on the left side to make things a bit easier).

i still don't understand why we will have a utility sink in our downstairs bathroom, which guests will presumably use rather than going upstairs, instead of in the utility room or on the back porch, but that's what steve wants, it's important to him, so that's what we'll have. in the long run, not that big of a deal, and another guy will probably think it's really handy.

i wish we had inventoried the fixtures steve bought, and either had them there or taken some dimensions. i also wish i had understood how long it would take to mark things out. seems like an easy thing to decide where the switches, outlets & light are going, but not really. one good thing is that we actually thought about a charging station, and will have a spot on the back porch for all of those darn chargers......

the door to the master bath didn't get moved over, and the closet opening didn't get changed to coming from the bedroom. i'm sure we can get fixed easily. this would be lots easier if we could just pop over in the evenings, but all in all it's going pretty smoothly so far.

more next week (or maybe even from steve when he gets home on sunday).

Sept 6-7

steve was on his own this weekend since i had dog commitments. as you can see, he made lots of progress painting:






















good, especially considering the wind was blowing the whole time ( did we mention the wind blows there?) the color looks better, now that it's covering more of the house.

plumber tomorrow.......

labor day

steve made lots of painting progress this weekend- lots of the trim done, put a bit of the green on the siding to see how it looks.













these are the colors we're supposed to have...... most of the house will be the green, most trim off white and the doors and maybe some accents red. we're trying to figure out why the color on the house doesn't look like the sample we painted in the back yard (which looks like the paint chip above). as you can see below, it seems to have more blue in it. it's ok, but different... maybe because the primer on the siding is brown, not white.



















steve slaved away for much of saturday- with help from his mom, who did a great job of collecting nails- while i did the market & some stuff around the house. i went up around 1 on sunday. it really is a pleasant, easy drive.

steve painted some more, dogs & i took a nap. we met the neighbors, who are very nice people with 2 yellow labs. they're renting the house next door while building their house outside of town. then we took a short hike at the ski area- steve was pleased to see it looks a little larger & has more black runs than he'd thought previously.

we had dinner at the iron mountain inn- chicken fried steak for me (it has been YEARS since i've had one- and it was REALLY good!) and pasta for steve. back to the trailer- it was a windy ole night. the stars were beautiful, even if it was a bit nippy.



















lots of reeds & sedge in the field behind the house, leading us to believe it's a bit marshy in the spring. we've been told it's where lots of the snowmelt comes through. it is platted out. some neighbors say it can't be built on due to runoff. we think it more likely that it won't be built until the economy improves, but if someone wants to build there & can sell the houses we'll be glad we went 2 stories high.

speaking of which, here we are- 2 stories tall & set back farther than the neighbors....



















here's the guard dog


















and here are the dogs having a bit of a frolic. i suspect the cooler air and having room to dash about will suit both of them just fine. they're really good- don't wander, just hang around....















that's it for now, unless steve wants to add anything!