Somewhat finished

Construction on our house is somewhat finished.  The windows and doors are all installed.  These two doors and the bay window just need the trim boards on the inside.  I will have to stain and seal them first.  The electricians will come back and hook up the new outside lights and outlets.

The above picture was taken with me standing a little to the north of the kitchen sink.  It might give you a better idea of what the kitchen now looks like with those two walls gone. 

I spent our vacation from school working in here.  One day Daniel and I took all the shelving off the kitchen walls.  I now have room on my basement shelving for the different things I had in the kitchen.  I filled in the holes and the cracks.  The next day I put texture paint on the new walls.  Another day I put a fresh coat of paint on my ceilings and walls.  The new walls needed two coats.  It looks good.

Tim took all the kitchen base boards off for me.  After we get the new flooring installed he will put them back on.  The walls look a little bare but I will leave them like this for awhile.

This wall needs to be textured and painted.  But we have to take out the ceiling first.  We had some water damage in the one corner from the upstairs bathroom which has caused some of the plaster to loosen.  We will remove the plaster and put up dry wall.

Have I said that I love the patio door?  I do as it lets in more light and I can see outside from the living room.  I like sitting at my dining room table in the sun.

As you might have noticed we got a little snow last night.  It rained first.  Then it turned to snow.  We didn't get much, just enough to make the roads very slippery.

In the near future I am hoping to have time to work down in my basement.  I have a couple shelving units I want to put together, start to get some of my boxes of books unpacked, and move the three bookshelves in my living room, the computer desk, and Tim's desk all down there.  I am liking the decluttering that is happening. 

Woody and Wilma

The other day I noticed a hairy woodpecker in the tree in front of the house.  As I asked the children to come and see I heard a pecking noise on the front of my house.  When I opened the door to look another woodpecker flew to the tree.

Daniel said it was "Woody".  He has a little red spot on his head.  Since it was a male/female pair the children wanted to name the female.  She does not have a red spot on her head.  We came up with the name Wilma.

We never did get a picture of Woody.

They were there eating from the suet feeder for about 15 minutes.  We got a great view from our new windows and doors.  What a treat it was to watch these two woodpeckers.

22

My baby is twenty-two.  He was the baby of the family until he was almost twelve.  We celebrated Brandon's birthday on Sabbath.  I made his favorite meal of knipfle. 

Tim got him a new mailbox.


 

Leah made him a nice card and painted a ceramic airplane for him.

He always did like to savor the gift opening experience.

Tim also got him a 4 1/2 inch grinder. Brandon is planning to make a go-cart out of the old 4-wheeler.

He liked the card I gave him,

as well as his new down winter coat.

At least I think he does.

 

Brandon brought his XBox along with the Connex.

He needed a new bomber hat as he still has the one we got when he was about 12.  The clasp was broken.  After I looked in vain for new clasps Tim just bought him a new hat.

I guess he was happy with his gifts

and his Pineapple Yummy Cake.

We enjoyed our day with him.



Patio Door Is In

This morning I took some pictures of the new patio door and found this sweet one of Daniel and Mario.  Mario is not a cuddly cat.  But he does seem to like boys and men and will sit with them when he wants to.

Yay!  My patio door is installed!

During the final stages of the basement project almost every wall in our house got cracks.  Some are worse than others.  I have much repair to do.  The wall that now has the patio door was particularly bad.  After they got done installing the door there were big chunks of plaster gone.  Instead of having them patch in those spots with sheet rock I decided to just take all the plaster off that wall.  The installer agreed with me and said that we could then insulate that wall.

This old insulation gives me the creeps.  My good little helper, Daniel,  took off all the plaster and remarked that he really liked doing it, while I tore off the laths.  I have so many slivers in my fingers.  I should have worn gloves, I guess.  I hope to get the old insulation out today.

It has been my dream to have a patio door there since we moved into this place.  Now I can be in either my living room or dining room and see the beauty of the outdoors and get more light in my house.

Here is what our front entry looks like without the wall between the entry and basement.  You can tell it isn't finished yet.  Even in its unfinished state it is such an improvement.

As soon as they installed the new door we found we have a problem.  It is hard to stand on the landing and open or close the door as there isn't enough room.  Yesterday the salesman came out to see if there was anything else we could do.  We can't make the landing bigger as we would not have enough head room further down the stairs.  Tim would have to duck every time he went down.  The best solution he came up with was to eliminate the storm door and make the main door a swing out door.  He was going to check into that to see if it would work with this door. 

That wall between the entry and the kitchen will be coming out, too.  Today the electrician is coming to help us plan where we need to move the switches and outlets and lights.

The window men will be here as well.  We still have a window in the kitchen that needs to be installed.  I'm hoping they do that today as it is probably going to be warmer than any day in the near future.  It got so cold in here yesterday when they did the patio door as there was a pretty strong breeze out of the SW.

I had best get my boy up so we can start school on time.  And I need to find those extra shingles so the guys can use them on the top of the bay window.

Thanksgiving

Maybe because I haven't posted much lately I had trouble loading pictures today.  The first group of pictures is actually the last I took so they are a little out of order and I don't like that.  But I am thankful that they did load onto Blogger.

I had the most wonderful day. 

The above picture is of some Thanksgiving crafts.  Whitney, Leah, and I made the turkey nut cups.  Whitney's mother-in-law, Janice made the cookie candy turkeys.

After our meal we all went outside.  Our son-in-law, Ryan, had brought their tractor for us to use this winter if we have snow.  He and Tim worked on getting it in the Quonset and hooking the snow blower up to the back of it while the rest of us played outside ball games.  Then we took some family pictures.

We have a family tradition that everyone who wants to names one thing they are thankful for.  I said that I was thankful to have my whole family home and for better health than last Thanksgiving.

You might notice that our older sons are all a little beardy.  They said that it was No Shave November.

I think that I have a good looking family.

These two are a good looking couple.  We are so happy to have Ryan as a son-in-law.  And who would have thought we could all be outside in our shirt sleeves on Thanksgiving?  Enjoy it we did.

After pictures the men and Whitney helped Tim get some heavy things into the basement.   They got the freezer, the furnace, and some shelving moved down there.  One commented that he hoped this isn't going to become a new Thanksgiving tradition in our family.

Finally we could play bingo, another Thanksgiving family tradition.

Since we had not had our pie and coffee we did that as well.  You should have seen the prize table.  Never before did we have so many great prizes.

As the matriarch of my family I get to call the numbers.  I played, too, and won three prizes.

This is a before Thanksgiving picture.  Since we did no regular school this week I told the children we would just do fun stuff.  Leah loves to make crafts.  This is a cat we made one day.

Leah took a picture of her beloved Elly.

Another one of Leah's crafts is this hand sewn bag.

I am happy to report on the progress of construction this past week.  All the windows upstairs have been replaced as well as one in our bedroom and the one at the bottom of the stairs.  This is the biggest project right now.  Here's before...

...and during pictures. 

You will have to wait for the after photos as this is as far as they got on Wednesday.  I am thankful to be able to get into the front of my house and to go from my kitchen to my basement without having to go out my back door, go around to the front door, and crawl over or remove the foam insulation before going downstairs.

Our table before we ate

The kids all got here early so we had time for fun before dinner.  Since we now have a Wii we bowled for prizes. 

We had two groups of 4 players for each round.  Brandon won our game.  Dustin the next though Dustin's and my scores were the same.

Leah's score was only 4 points lower than Dustin's.

That's all the pictures I have.  I can think of many other reasons to be thankful.  I will say that I am thankful to have the new basement and windows.  I am enjoying putting things together and am going to go work down there right now.

Pictures

This morning I went outside to take some pictures of our new basement.  When I loaded them onto my computer I found some I had taken of Leah about a month ago.  This was taken before church.  I like it so much I think I will have it made into "school" pictures.  Certainly I will have an 8 x 10 made for my wall.

And I found some pictures of our dog, Elly, and Whitney's puppy, Jade, chewing on their bones.  Jade is now as big as Elly and stockier.  They both are half black lab.  Elly's other half is boxer, Jade's is red heeler.

That white stuff on the ground is snow.  It snowed briefly this morning and melted almost immediately.  This is the west side of our house with our new steps.  Right now this is our main entry.

This is one of our new basement windows.  We have eight.  Tim and Whitney worked last Friday and got four window wells installed.  Whitney dug all the holes so Tim was able to install three more wells before he had to leave for work today.  He only has one more to do as well as fill the holes of the ones he did today with rock.

This is the south side.  It needs the most work yet.  When the workers come they will put a ground level entry door on the left side of the entry.  It will be somewhat like a split level in that we will either be able to go down into the basement or go up into the entry.  Where the door is on the right we will have a bay window.  Then that little section will get new siding.  The picture window on the far left will become a patio door.  Once the ground has settled in a few years we will put in a patio.  It's a work in progress.

This is what it looks like going down from the landing.  The wall on the right will be taken out as well as the one between the kitchen and entry.  That will make the kitchen bigger.  We plan to add cabinets on the east wall of the entry, too.  As you can see we will have to do some wall repair on the left of the stairs and forward as well.

These are the new steps.  The area to the left is where the old cistern used to be.  If you scroll down on older posts you can see what an improvement these stairs are!

This is the west wall.  Our old basement only went up to the red pole.  I am pleased with all the extra space I have now.

This last picture is the north east corner where I will have my "fruit room."  I had an aunt who called her room where she kept her canned goods a fruit room.  I like to call it that too.

Yesterday I spent part of my day organizing my canned goods, that I had had boxed for months, onto my shelves.  It was an enjoyable activity for me.  In the future we will make walls to keep out the light as well as add a few more shelves .  Then it will really be a room.

Leah looked at these pictures and commented that the ceiling looked so ugly.  Tim and I feel the same way.    We plan to put up a dropped ceiling to hide all those wires and pipes.  But it probably won't be this year.

As you can see from the pictures there is still much work to be done.  The yard around the house is all clay.  Next spring it will need to be filled in with black dirt and planted with grass seed or landscaped in another way.  The installers need to put in the new windows in the upstairs and main floor that we ordered.  The back entry needs to be cleaned out of all its stuff so we can make it into a second bathroom.  I could go on and on but I'm sure you get the picture. 

I am feeling the stress of it all and would appreciate any prayers you feel led to pray for us.