Post Christmas Post

Well, a lot has happened in life in the interim between posts. We have had a lot of bad weather...pouring rain, temps in the single digits, ice and iced mud...makes me all the more anxious to get this house under roof so work can continue in the weather, both good and bad!

J went up to the garage yesterday to return the Christmas ornaments and to find life preservers for the girls. I know it seems seems soon to pack up the Christmas things, but we really don't have the room to spare for a Christmas tree in our 600 sq. feet...can't get out the back door (luckily we don't need to do it often). So, we are not too sad to see them go. Even the girls helped to pack things up, and talked about our BIG Christmas tree next year! The life preservers were for our "vacation" to Pittsburgh and swimming in the Hotel pool.

J took this picture, which he speculates is of the footers for weight bearing walls. From left to right: girls rooms, stairs, "exercise room".



The driveway has a new layer of gravel on it. I was hesitant to drive up there last week because I nearly slid down the hill in the mud the week before, so now I can make more regular visits. We have a wedding to travel to in Goshen, IN for New Years, and then the Holiday craziness should be over for good.

Snow on Poplar Ridge

We had our first good snow fall of the season last night, about 3 inches or so. The whole family drove up the hill to see the sights and search through the garage for the Christmas decorations. It is lovely up there, and oh-so-quiet. (We are having problems sleeping in our little apartment due to being located one block north of the train tracks and right on the main street through our small town.) We were able to find most of the decorations, although one of the cardboard boxes had been infiltrated by mice back at the other house.

Here are some lovely icicles on the garage...

and the first floor walls covered with snow.

Apparently our builder came down with the same awful GI bug that plagued our family for the past 2 weeks. Another one of us fell victim to it every 3-4 days! (This follows the week they needed at the last house, Thanksgiving week, and the first week of deer hunting.) Maybe by next week some more progress will be made!

Jam Packed...

I'm finally back from my extended moving break. The move ended up being possibly the worst EVER...rivaled the one where the moving van wrecked. It rained, sleeted or snowed EVERY day, and we kept finding random STUFF in the backs of closets that had to be taken SOMEWHERE. It ended up taking every bit of a week to get out of the house! Now we are squeezed into our 600 square feet here in town, and quite comfy, actually. I realized that I have way TOO much food, so we've been eating a lot of beans and things with tomato sauce in order to get everything to fit in the cupboards.

These are the moving men. They were AWESOME...thanks so much!

Today is the first I've been up to the building site since taking the last load to the garage around the 19th. I haven't missed anything.

The garage is finished except for windows, but they are boarded up, so we are able to store our MOUNTAINS of stuff there. (Hope nothing important freezes!)

They finally got the power lines up our hill...you can barely see them if you look closely at this picture.

Good News & Bad News

The Good News:

-The garage floor is poured

-3 Allegheny power utility trucks up on the hill today with cables...lots of workers, there's a chance we might get the electricity connected finally!

The Bad News:

-Still no doors or windows on the garage and the concrete still looks a bit wet...hmmmm....we wanted to start storing things there YESTERDAY!

-Muddy, muddy, muddy up on the hill...so nice for slogging through while unloading moving vans!!!

I will not be assured of internet access for awhile, which coincides with the week off the builders will need to complete their last project.

Signing off for now...

74* in November!

It's another lovely day! I could get used to this awesome weather in November...I'm hoping it will allow the crew to get the house under roof more quickly!

The garage is now under roof, and they are hoping the pour the concrete for the floor on Monday or Tuesday. We need it to be usable by Wednesday or Thursday for storage, I hope it will be!

You can now see the roof rising up above the 1st floor of the house as you come up the drive. The door you can see will attach to the house via a small breezeway/coat room.

The Garage is Growing!

After voting today, we made a trip up to the building site. The trusses are up on the garage. We are hoping it is finished by the end of the week, because we plan to start filling it up next week!

The parts of the first floor of the house that will be below grade have been wrapped with some sort of waterproof adhesive to help protect it.

Here is a shot of some of the forms used for the poured concrete wall. You can see the spacers from this angle, and also the braces (for lack of a better word) that the siding and drywall can be attached to.

These Walls Ain't Goin Nowhere!

Pardon the vernacular, but we were pretty impressed by the poured concrete walls for the 1st floor of the house. They are SOLID! The foam forms will remain on to provide 2 1/2" of insulation inside and out. The siding and drywall can be attached right to the foam. I will try to get a picture at some point, of the anchors they will secure to.

We took a tape measure along to prove to ourselves today that the house and garage are indeed as big as we had planned (I know, I know, we really do trust our contractor, it just doesn't LOOK big enough!). Guess what? Everything is fine!

The extra block has been moved out of the garage in order to pour the floor soon. We will be needing to use it in about 2 weeks to store our stuff that won't fit in an apartment, so hopefully it will be ready!

We have a temporary power pole and transformer now, if only the Power Company would bring lines up the hill. The construction crew is having to use a generator, since it is now 5 months and counting since Allegheny Power has been paid for the job!

I'm adding this picture just because it's cute. L has been fascinated by all the "diggers", and took the opportunity to play on our neighbor's tractor that is at the building site right now.