Sticks on stone

I'd first like to apologize for not getting any pictures up last weekend. We did get some floor samples stained but we didn't really dig the colors that came out and most importantly, Casey's grandma had a mini stroke before we could put any poly on them. So they technically aren't done. Grandma is ok though. Came out of it all with no meds, all on her own. Scary though.

We have made some real progress now that we've been blessed with one week of lovely weather! The house is starting to take shape as the framing progresses. We've got walls people :)

Here's a picture from the edge of the garage. Madeline and Annie have already laid claim to their rooms. I'm pretty sure Annie took the master...good luck fighting Uncle Casey for that one. This is a pretty good display of the view we will have.

Here's another view from the garage but more of the house. You can see the dining room window on the front of the house and just to the left of that will be the front door.

 This is a view from the back door on the main level. Where you see saw horses will  be the living room, just to the left of that will be the stairs to the basement and left of the stairs is the dining room. The Master Suite is all along the wall directly in front of me as I'm taking this picture.

This is Casey enjoying the progress.

This is a view from our kitchen nook. The normal family dinner will be eaten here.

I realize that I didn't take any pictures of the basement and I could have taken a bunch more pictures, but when you are looking at rooms that you can see through the pictures all started to look the same. The no basement pics was an oversight though. Can't believe I left without taking any of those. Too many people showed up and distracted the photo session :) I think we'll go back this weekend and see how much of the roof they have up :)

Buh Bye Snow, Hello Mud Pit

So even though we were supposed to be starting framing LAST Monday, as many of you around the area know, Mother Nature had other plans for us. Now another two weeks behind schedule after 1-2 feet of snow over the last two weeks. But I think the plan is to start the framing on Monday. Its supposed to be beautiful weather next week, but really all that will equate to is massive amounts of mud. I don't think that will slow up any progress on the building front, but I'm really not looking forward to giving Charlie a bath every time he has to go outside to pee and wants to come back in. Looks like we will be spending some time apart ol' buddy cause I'm only willing to wash your feet once a day.

Technically, I do have some newer photos to post (new to the blog at least, they are probably three weeks old). But back when I thought we were going to be framing soon, I didn't see the point in posting pictures that showed such little change. If we go out to the house tomorrow, then I hope Casey lets me bring Charlie so I can finally introduce him to the land. He's going to love it. If we make a family trip, I'll take pictures of it. Otherwise, I'm going to hold out on posting anything until the framing starts.

As far as decisions about the house go, we've made probably no progress on that. Flooring has been the topic of discussion for the past 2-3 weeks and we've wavered between engineered floors and unfinished floors. We saw some really cool unfinished floors that are pretty cheap called blue hickory. I'm not sure what makes it blue, but it's something that they pull from the sets of normal mills of hickory. It's pretty neat looking, and cheaper which is good. Don't worry, it won't be blue after the medium to dark stain we put on. It wouldn't work for a natural or light finish, but using this means we'll have a good quality wood for cheap. All it will cost us is some extra labor. I'm really looking forward to doing some of the work in this house ourselves though. It will make it feel more like "ours" if we put a little sweat equity into it I think. We picked up some sample pieces of it today and this weekend we are going to try different stains to see how it turns out and which one we like best. Maybe I'll take some pictures of that so I'll have SOMETHING visual to post :)

Regardless, things are coming along. I love snow and I'm glad we finally got some here; it's been a long time since we got some quality inches. But I'm going to be equally glad when spring and summer roll in!