Long overdue update

Craig's been working super hard and I've finally posted some pictures to prove it. We've had a lot of calls over the past few weeks checking to make sure we survived all the storms out here in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, we've survived nearly unscathed. Luckily, most of the locations of the holes in our roof correspond to holes in our floor so the water flowed right through :)

Heat is still an issue for the house as a whole. An issue in that we don't have any except in the new guest bedroom where we essentially live. Venturing down to the bathroom in the morning entails bundling up and seeing your breath while brushing your teeth. We haven't been cooking much (without a working stove top or oven it's kinda hard) but I did happen to pick up the olive oil yesterday to find it frozen over...


The big highlight is our guest bedroom. Not quite adequately named yet, (we're not expecting guests anytime soon...) this room is actually livable and absolutely lovely. The walls are up, drywalled, painted and Craig even installed the closet so I can safely keep my clothes (more or less) out of the dust storm.

What we've been doing since our last post...

Yes, we've been slacking again when it comes to the blog. But, we've been keeping busy. For instance, it was Halloween recently so we had to dedicate time to making and, of course, showing off our costumes.

That's our friend Chris in the gold, playing Wii tennis v. He-man himself.


And there's me with my co-workers at our work party.
(Frontline Photography)

The past two weekends, I've been training for my SCUBA diving certification (awesome birthday present from Craig). Here are some pics from our dive site yesterday:

(That's a baby seal napping on the beach)

So, now back to the house. The project recently has been framing in the second bedroom, laundry room and closets upstairs. We're hoping to be able to start the dry wall in the bedroom next weekend and then soon we'll have an actual room that's walled off from the rest of the house and totally livable (heater installed and all).

New Stairs

Last weekend we undertook a pretty large project. When I say 'we' I mostly mean Craig with the help of my moral support and occasional assistance:) Anyway, we took Friday off (since it was my birthday and all) and then got to work early Saturday. It only took about 20 min to get the old stairs down. Putting up the new ones took a bit longer. After the first day of work, Craig had everything prepped but we weren't ready to start building the new stairs yet. That meant going to Home Depot and investing in a taller ladder so that we could access the upstairs. I have a slight fear of heights and freaked out a little every time I needed to go downstairs via the ladder. Craig on the other hand could to a complete ballet routine on the top rung.




Sunday, the new stairs went up. I was really impressed that, at the end of just one weekend, we had brand new stairs. They look great. It's really cool to see some major progress on the inside of the house.

old stairs

new stairs

And were back...

It's been so long since I've posted that the blog address doesn't even auto-populate in my browser anymore. Not to fear, we've been steadily making progress on the house. We've now lived here almost a month and a half which is hard to believe. I made the mistake of storing our winter clothes when we moved out of the apartment in August because we could have used them starting about two weeks ago. Yes, fall has arrived here in the Pacific Northwest which means rain and winds. I've always defended Seattle weather, but when you don't have heat and have some lingering holes in your exterior walls, the weather becomes quite the foe. Craig closed and insulated most of the holes this weekend which has helped but sweats have definitely become the standard dress around the mansion.

Craig has been doing a lot of work in our "Great Room." We needed to replace the support beams which hold up the second story floor because they weren't up to code and just didn't look good because they weren't uniform size. In order to do that, Craig needed to build temporary walls, remove the hold beams and then we put up the new ones.

No new pictures (yet) but some exciting news... we passed our FINAL foundation inspection today! This means that we successfully completed an entire foundation -by hand- correctly. Very exciting. Only a couple small things left to do to finish it off - seal up the vents and put down a vapor barrier (looks like a big garbage bag). Craig has made a ton of other progress with the house since we moved in 3 weeks ago. All our pipes are insulated now, the new grounding rod is in place (so no more worrying about being electrocuted while I'm drying my hair) and the entire house is actually bolted down to the foundation. I'm sure this is the most stable this house has been in the past 50 years or so. I'll upload pictures soon. We leave tomorrow for Toledo for my cousin's wedding (congrats, Ellissa!) so we'll have some time away from the mansion. I haven't been to Toledo for 9 months so I'm actually pretty excited (in addition to just being excited to have carpet under my feet:)

House Fund

This is not really related to the house, but I won $40 at lunch today when a co-worker bet me I couldn't eat all the broccoli on the salad bar in under 10min. I think I accomplished it in around 8min. This should buy us a couple shades for the house which we desperately need so that the neighbors don't have to watch me brush my teeth. This also helped me stick to my diet as I'm officially stuffed. Win-Win really, expect maybe for my co-workers in about an hour. I hear broccoli is a rich source of fiber...

No longer just a "project"

We officially moved in on Saturday after multiple trips back and forth from the apartment to the house to the storage unit to the apartment and on and on. Moving in makes this whole thing a lot more 'real' that's for sure. It's much different when you can't go home at night because you are at home! Moving out of the apartment meant that we also needed to move our boat trailer which was parked behind our building. We figured now that we have a nice big backyard, we'd just wheel it back there until we store the boat for the season. Only one minor detail stood in the way - it wouldn't fit between our house and our neighbor's via our shared driveway. I suggested we just leave the thing in our front yard, I mean our house is pretty ghetto already and it would only be for a couple weeks, but Craig was determined. He ended up cutting the bolts that connect the axle to the trailer (essentially removing the wheels that stuck out on both sides). Then, in total MacGyver fashion, he jimmied a plank under the base of the trailer and we used a hand truck to drag the tailer body into the backyard. The wheels/axle are temporarily laying on the side of the house.

Saturday night was the first night in the house. I didn't sleep much because I constantly thought I was hearing things (mice?, bats?, ghosts?). But in the next couple nights I found solutions for that (wine and/or a loud fan).

Half of the upstairs is really our 'living area' complete with area rugs, a zip-up covered clothes rack and our TV (minus cable). The kitchen is half kitchen half working space and the kitchen sink functions as both our kitchen sink and our bathroom sink - at least for now. The good news is the shower isn't bad at all -- plenty of hot water. Keeping your feet clean after you get out of the shower is another story:)