Woodshed!

With much help from Dave and some from Gabe as well, we now have a woodshed! We still need to get a few more boards to finish the siding slats on the remaining narrow end, but that won't be too much trouble. The cats love it... they've been going in and out underneath the floor all week, checking it out. Today we moved all the wood from the porch into the woodshed. It sure feels great to have all this firewood! Slightly over half of it is green new wood from this summer (mostly from the cemetary, you'd really be surprised how much wood you can fit in the back of an '84 rabbit), but we have a nice supply of seasoned wood left from last year as well. It sure seems strange not to have all that firewood on the front porch, it'd been stacked there ever since we moved in. It's so... open... now. But I'll get used to it. :)

Topsoil, Lovely Clay-free Topsoil

Yesterday we had dry weather, so Dad was able to get a LOT more work done on our lawn-creation project. He brought in 5 loads of topsoil to dress the ground right around the house. This brought the level of the soil up to just a few inches below the top of the porch slab, and then he smootly graded it into a gentle slope back away from the house. It looks amazing.
He also topped the driveway and parking area off with a load and a half of crushed gravel, which is just super. We need to do a fair bit of hand raking still but then we'll be ready to seed the grass, at least in the area right around the house. We also need to get some stepping stones or something to make a path from the driveway to the house.
I can't get over how much better it looks with the lower, rough part of the slab covered up by the soil! This is how it was intended to be, but I just kind of got used to seeing the rough edge, not to mention parts of the gutter drain system. Of course, we still need to clean up the porch to really see how nice the house can look, but we'll get to that... someday.
In the back of the house is where most of the hand raking needs to be done, as dad couldn't work too close to the septic, and the sun-eves made it tough to get too close to the foundation. I'm pretty motivated to get out there with the rake though and then to get the grass seed down asap!
Back away from the house, the larger part of the eventual lawn area still needs to be worked over, so we'll have another work weekend soon. All that area, although it is large, will be much easier to work with, because there's no house or other structure that has to be carefully worked around.

Thanks so much Dad, Dave, Jack & Cary... I'm really pleased with what we acomplished this weekend, despite the heaviest rain we've had in 4 weeks on Sunday. I'm just so ecxited - we're going to have a lawn! There's no burn pile! Yay!

Much Progress

The end of last week (been a while since I posted, huh? oh well...) I mentioned that due to the warm dry weather the painters had gotten out and primered the exterior trim. Well, not only that, but they came back over the weekend and put on the finish coat as well. Boy, does it look SHARP:
Here's a close-up of the porch rafters, you can see the subtle details like the corner blocking/column toppers. Not to mention the clean lines. I had gotten so used to the overspray from when the siding was painted that I stopped really seeing the separations.
Inside, more trim & doors were done. Here is the office door (left) and the bathroom door (right) off the main living space, all trimmed out and with the cork flooring completed as well. The trim isn't painted yet, but doesn't the wall color look nice with the floor? So warm.
And what's this? Steve is using the tile saw... which can only mean...
He's started laying the entryway slate! Pretty nifty.
He expected to finish cutting and laying the rest of the tiles today, so I expect to see a big "don't use this door" sign on the front door when I get out there tonight. I can hardly wait...

Also today, Robin was going to meet with the closet shelving people and measure all the closets & the pantry. We're using the coated wire shelving systems in all the closets, which are nice and utilitarian.

Robin also pointed out that Cary and I need to go pick out & buy our bathroom fixtures, things like TP holders and towel racks and the like. They aren't in the budget for the Schramer's to buy but if we get them they'll install them for us. Which is definately worth making the effort to get out to a hardware store and pick something up later this week.

We're so close to moving in now I can just about taste it!

Inside & Outside

More Progress on various fronts yesterday. Outside, the soffits were finished, with a neat little ventilating strip running all the way around the porch roof. It's a little metal grill, like a miniture register, set in a few inches from the outside edge of the eave. It looks good and is also very funtional.

Also, someone (probably Steve) started primering the fascia boards white. Obviously still a work in progress, but off to a good start.

Inside, the cabinet installation continues! The cabinet in the far right of this picture (the one with one door on) is the one that will support the kitchen sink. Out of the picture to the left is where the refridgerator will go.
These are the drawers that will go in the middle unit in the above pictures, among other places. They are currently stacked in the pantry. I think they are really striking, all stacked together like that, and you can really see how beautifully the paint color compliments the wood.
In other news, the fifth coast of porcelain/epoxy on the bathtub turned out beautifully. It's glossy, smooth and uniformly white - everything I wanted in a bathtub! It's still possible to see some spots where I didn't do a perfect job fixing some of the chips, but I can live with that. Considering what we started with and what we went through to get it back into shape, I think it's actually good that it doesn't look precicely perfect. I'd hate for anyone to mistakenly think I just toodled out to the store and bought a NEW tub like some kind of wuss. Nope, this tub's got character, and history, and no amount of restoration can cover that up. And it's a good thing, too!

Siding Finished

On Friday the siding was finished, and it's just beautiful.
They also started putting the hardypanel stuff up on the underside of the porch roof. Looks like there'll be a day or so more of that, and finishing the soffits. There's a bit more exterior trim work to be done, and some more shingles to put up, but feels really good to be so close to being finished. Fingers crossed that the weather will remain good, and we'll get the painting done too!