Steph's Reality Blend

As Randy and I were making plans for visiting family over Christmas/NewYear's, we decided to try to finish the pole barn (as originally prospected) before Christmas. We were originally planning on moving in by Christmas, but that's not the case anymore, as we have a more ideal living situation for now. But we can still finish it, and then USE the space for our wide variety of creative and not-so-creative projects for the next few months, until  we move in and start building a house this spring. We started the mudding process a couple weeks ago and after finishing all the existing walls early last week and started painting, then decided to install the dividing wall between the kids' room/powdercoating room and the utility room, which was always in the final plans but Randy was unsure of when to put it up. That wall is now UP, and we had to dig out the mudding tools again and have a second "we're-done-mudding!" celebration this week. Just the first half o...

Thankfully, we have the right kind of mud in this story. Randy put together the sheetrock jack he bought from his uncle and it helped tremendously on the ceilings. Teddy had to give it a go, too! He did it!  For those technical nerds, here's the system Randy put together for the in-floor heat. On top of a 78-gallon water heater, there's an expansion tank (green), behind which is the orange tube piping water from the floor and into the heater. On the right is a red box-looking thing; that's the circulation pump, moving hot water into the orange tube, which splits into 3 "tracks" that meander with purpose through the concrete floor. The circulation pump is plugged into a thermostat that you can see peeking on the right. There are a few other parts. But it's keeping the building much warmer than before and making work and play more enjoyable for all. It was also a fraction of the cost of a new, put-together system from a box. Yay, genius husband!!  Fro...