Plumbing

Friday, July
   Plumbing for the master bathroom goes in today!  Bill is bringing his backhoe to dig the septic leach lines.  We can bury the lines and  septic tank and have some plumbing in the house.  The  toilet and shower walls went up yesterday.  All the internal framing is finished!
  Joe's friend, Ken, flew in from CA to visit and help with construction before he and his wife leave for TWO years in Russia.  Great guy and a big help to us.  The guys got the very heavy outside breaker box mounted  yesterday.  I am plodding along with  my part of the electrical and love being able to at least run the Romax to the boxes, switches, lights and fans.  Nice to be part of building our house.
    I returned the tub to Home Depot when I found a slipper tub on Craigslist.   Tub should be plumbed today .  Picture is from the tub ad.

Joe and Ken discussing the house

July 18

July 18

     Absolutely beautiful weather this week with highs in the upper 70's and mid to low 60's at night. I haven't noticed any humidity this week which is really nice.
     Joe framed in part of our first addition wall and it is up! He will finish the other half of the wall tomorrow.  It is wonderful to finally see an addition wall go up!  We are having to decide where to put the three large front room windows since they were to look out over the pasture .  Now they might be in the dining room to keep the view.  Decisions, decisions.  This isn't like picking a paint color where you can just repaint if you need to.  Once the doors and windows go in, that's it.
   Tiffany's boyfriend, Coy, has been cutting down some small trees crowding the driveway.  He has also cleared a bunch of small underbrush and we can actually see the trunks of two huge trees along the drive.  Now we will be able to see more of the upper property from the yard with some of the underbrush gone.

   

New wall.                                                                 Cut tree

 

Cuttings blocking the road.                                   Joe clearing the road

25 th Anniversary kayaking

 July 15
    Joe and I had so much fun on our 25 th anniversary. I feel so refreshed after our 9 mile kayak trip down part of the Buffalo River.  Only took us 4 hours to float and paddle.  We are hooked on kayaking.  We wound up at Rush, which is supposedly the only ghost town between the Mississippi River and the Rockies.  We drove through Rush and there are several old buildings from the mining days when 5000 people lived in Rush.  The mines sent the zinc out on the Buffalo River to the White River and on down the Mississippi.  Very hard to imagine 5000 people that far out in the boonies.

 



             Joe by the bluffs

 

 

Last old wall is down!

July 17

  Big progress on the house today.  The last old wall came down and the new 10 foot wall for the addition will go up in its place.  All the light fixtures are in, one side of the house is wired and insulated, and the flex pipe for the water lines arrived this week.  The house is taking shape and I see light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. Open rooms show master closet on the left, hall, and guest room on the right.  Addition will be open kitchen, dining, and family room.

 
 

Addition Subfloor

Sunday, July 12

       Yeah!  The subfloor for the addition is laid.  Lumber for the addition walls was delivered Friday
and is stacked on the floor.  We are watching the weather and hoping for two days without rain to get the walls framed.  We seem to be getting rain every few days so we work around it.
       Joe has started on the plumbing and I finished the insulation on the front exterior wall.  Because of the uneven spacing of the studs on the one wall, I have had to special cut each piece of insulation so this one wall has been time consuming.  The other walls have studs that are pretty much the same spacing so the insulation should go in much quicker.
       It seems like there are several projects going on simultaneously .  Thank goodness Joe is so organized.
      

  

4th of July weekend

Hope everyone had a great Fourth.  We enjoyed the holiday and didn't work on the house.  We watched the Diamond City fireworks from our pontoon boat with family and friends.  Most of the weekend was spent at the park in Lead Hill enjoying 3 days of festivities.  Friday and Saturday evenings, I took my miniature horse to the park for a few hours to be part of the petting zoo.  Tempest   behaved nicely for her first outings and seemed to love all the  petting and attention.  I took a brush and lots of the kids wanted to brush her.

Leslie had a booth and cooked succotash over an open fire.  We hung out at her booth when we weren't wandering around looking at other booths.

 

July 3

Wednesday, July 3
     The lumber arrived today for the floor joists and the subfloor.  Suddenly a house is taking form.
Today was such a beautiful day with the temperature being down and little humidity.  It was enjoyable to work outside in the garden and I harvested out first yellow squash today.  There is one little watermelon growing and about golf ball size.  I am so looking forward to having homegrown watermelons and vegetables.
    We have heard from the team leader from Kilimanjaro .  She said the kids are all well and hiking to villages to do their mission work and put on puppet shows about Jesus .  They seem to be surviving the primitive conditions and hardships and probably enjoying it.
    The Fourth of July fireworks are tomorrow night at the lake .  Other fireworks will be the next two nights in surrounding areas.  We are taking the pontoon boat out on the lake with Leslie's family to watch the Diamond City fireworks.

Footings

    Foundation on the footings

July 1, 2014

       I didn't get much done at home today.  I spent most of the day in the computer lab at the school working on online courses for the final requirement for my AR teaching credential.  Only one more course to take!  The streaming videos that are part of each course take too long to stream at home.  I sure appreciate the school letting me into their lab during the summer!
      Joe  got quite a bit done today.   He had the well man out and now I have water out to the barn.  That will sure make watering the minis easier. No more carrying gallons of water to the minis.
      Joe has the floor beams ready to install .  He also got the roof ridge caps put up along the roof top.