November: One side, soffit&fascia, sheeeeeeeetroooooooock!

November 1: Since winter hit so early this year, we use decently warm days to work on siding, and the rest of the days (most of them) to work inside. At this point, there was no heat in the house yet.

And since the days are really getting short now, we do more work in the pole barn when it gets dark, and often after the kids are in bed.

November 2: I LIKE the siding. It's Hardie Plank (cement board) in Deep Ocean (ooh-la-la) with white trim. Obviously.

 Those long days of working in the cold fresh air really tucker everyone out!

November 5: The wood stove chimney is installed and getting some final clamps tightened around the joints by some serious helpers.

November 6: ALL the sheetrock for the whole house arrived from Menards about 9am, and we spent the whole day (minus a lunch break) until 4:30 moving it indoors. Thankfully, the truck had an off-road forklift and was able to plop the stacks right outside the south door! This was about halfway through. We had a friend and his brother help for about an hour in the morning, and my friend Marietta and her son helped with the last few in the afternoon while I gave her other kids piano lessons.

November 8: Before we can apply heat, we need to apply insulation in the attic (the walls came with insulation). Before insulation, sheetrock. Before sheetrock, plastic vapor barrier sheeting.

THEN sheetrock can be put up. Randy bought this sheetrock jack from his uncle and we are SO GLAD to have it. Those 5/8-thick 4x12' sheets are heavy!!

Also before (and after) insulating, we needed soffit and fascia on the north and south sides so the wind couldn't steal the insulation back out of the attic.

Not bad working conditions, just getting cold for bare fingers hammering little nails.

November 9: Even before we got fully insulated, a fire in the woodstove helped take the edge off the cold in the house. It's cold enough now that we're starting to worry about the main water line freezing...

We were really motivated to get the ceiling done quickly!

November 15: It's finally insulating day! We borrowed a blower from some friends and Teddy and I "fed the monster" while Randy had the hose and the controls up in the attic.

In case you've never seen the inside of an insulation blower before.

The insulation comes in 3' bags like a brick, and Teddy and I tore them into smaller chunks and the blades in the blower made them into fluff.

November 20: Starting to sheetrock the walls now!

Nov 21: Teddy can help screw if we draw on the walls where screws should go. Since it took longer to draw x's for him than for one of us to just eyeball the stud placement and put screws in, he didn't help us as much as we all thought he was going to. But it's okay; sheetrocking went fairly quickly.

Nov 22: Just working our way around the house.

Nov 23: A nice day, so soffit/fascia go on the north side now.

November 25: Dining room, LR, the pantry over the stairs, and you can just see the entry into the hall and the main bathroom doorway.

The electricians hooked up a few of the can lights to a breaker so we could have some light at night. The lights hooked up really only light up the main, open area, so we're pretty limited on what we can do in there at night. Randy (just yesterday, Dec 16) brought over a lamp from the pole barn so we can move that around and do more now.