Thanks to our nephew, sheetrocking rolls onward!

Plumbing is well under way... and sheetrock...

Spent the afternoon up the house. Rich is working on dry fitting the plumbing.

It's so exciting to see those pipes in the ceilings and walls! But still lots to do...

The boys-- my older son corralled by my nephew-- are putting up ceiling board and wall board on the outer walls where the plumbing stuff won't go...

Wow... ceilings and walls... still no toilet... but getting closer...

Plumbing!

Well, we'll be back at it tonight working on Plumbing.

Last week we realized that we didn't have nearly enough Piping stuff.

So now for some dry fitting...

Can't wait to have a toilet!

Here it is with the siding up!

The color is called Country Red. It's a beautiful, deep, rich color.

sheetrock is going up!

We have some sheetrock up on the ceilings on the 2nd floor!

Geothermal heat and cooling.

We're looking into using ground source (geothermal) for heating and cooling our home. This will take our heating and cooling costs way down!

My understanding is the most of the cost is upfront and that the system pays for itself in a short time... while we enjoy low heating/cooling bills for years and years and years!

This site talks about how it all works: http://www.geothermal.org/what.html

We had a gentleman come to our "work in progress" last week. Should get the estimate soon.

Been too cold!

Been to cold to work further on the roof. We're been in a deep freeze for the past few weeks with temps below zero.

Going to warm up to 30 soon though!

Got to get the roof up!!!!

Moving along...

No more dirt hills out front!

A 2nd floor porch!

1st Floor Porch

Sunrise!
Almost ready for 2nd floor porch floor joists!
Ready for floor joists!
The first 2 posts are set!

We've been back to work on the house the past couple Saturdays. We've hired our carpenter/neighbor to help us! Wow... is he great!!!

In the pictures above (not quite in order!), you can see the posts up and the beginnings of floor joists for the 2nd floor porch.

Porch

We're working on the front porch floor joists for the 1st floor porch. We got a good start on it today.

Back to Work!

We're working on the porch now.

We'll have a two story porch which will tie into the roof line.

I'm way over due to post a photo. Try to get to that soon.

House all enclosed...

We worked for about a week and a half to put up all the remaining sheathing on the outside of the house. It's all enclosed done now.

We've switched gears to getting taxes done and also to create about 600 pillows for our breastfeeding pillow business.

Attic floor is done!

We've been working on putting up the sheathing. It is definitely a 2 person job!

The north side of the house is all closed in. The front is just about done. We're going to work on the West side next.

Almost done with the attic floor!

10 boards left!

Only 10 more boards to put down for the attic floor. Just the south side edge left!

Attic Floor...

This next week looks to be mild with temps in the 30's or higher. Rich was back to work today on the house.

The attic floor is now 2/3rds done!

Subflooring begins on attic floor...

We had a nice weather day recently and Rich was able able to put up one row of subflooring for the attic.

We've gotten as far getting the floor joists up for the attic floor but haven't been able to get the subflooring up. Also the chip board is not put up on the 2nd floor.

It's been cold... or too windy to make any more progress.

Luckily, the winter usually breaks in about Feb or so...

Winter chill...

Snow and temps below zero have prevented further progress on our house. When we do get back to work, we will first have to shovel snow out of the 1st and 2nd floors...