1.34 years later... House/building work

 Yes indeed.

My last post was July 25, 2020. Whooops!

I've simply had little or nothing to do around here. 😁

As usual, the most fun and painless way to have a post is with pictures and captions. So, you're welcome.

ANDREW is a little worker bee! He has some stick-to-it-ive-ness many 4 (now 5) -year-olds lack. AND he's detail-oriented, so he actually does good work with a little help and enough time. Vacuuming drywall mud dust before painting, and then getting to paint (in the basement!).

Mom, Dad, and Carrie F. visited us in September '20 for some hiking, mountain biking, and project-working. Mom is showing off her foot as we sit at the island to discuss the list of potential jobs for the next few days.

One (needed) task to complete was painting some siding for the gable ends of house and garage. Being painted in September and then installed ~10 months later, the 2 coats of paint had lots of time to cure FULLYYYY!

Those chicks we got last summer grew fast and before long we needed a "real" coop that could be kinda-sorta-insulated and heated for winter. So in October we built a little lean-to coop and a small run for them against the pole barn.

We regularly visit our Habitat for Humanity Restore, and I saw 2 matching, long, low dressers for sale from an updated local resort room. Yes, they became ~1/2 of our bed frame, with storage. The center and end parts we built from scraps leftover from other jobs, and the posts AND headboard were toss-outs from Tim's work. After having our mattress directly on the floor for >1year, we put the mattress on this and went WHOA! 😲 It was strange to be so much closer to that 9' ceiling and felt like we were going to hit the chandelier! To date, we haven't. (Since then, I've installed doors on the end of it too, that match the posts.)

A bigger chicken coop being built, this time inside the pole barn garage. We ended up with more chickens. And they get nasty-mean when they're crammed into small spaces.

April arrived, the ground thawed, and we began prepping the garage for concrete. First, we shoveled out around 6 inches of sand to lower the floor a bit so there will be head-room on the LOFT that is to be built above the bay. The loft is my future pottery studio. It's the next *major* house project on the list.

Prepping that floor for future heat! Randy wrestling the orange snake.

We had a GREAT turnout of GREAT guys. So many showed up, we had some that did more donut-eating than concrete-moving! That's a good thing!

Our most faithful and experienced builder-friends, Mark and Chas. 💗

Same day we poured the garage floor, the PATIO was finished....

 ....complete with kid and doggie prints....

There she be!

....AND there was enough concrete left over to pour a stoop for the pole barn side entrance....

....and a.... thingy.... for the yard hydrant....

AND fill in some gaps around the concrete at the other end of the pole barn...

And fortify a recently-installed ginormous sign post...

AND the last half-yard (~14 cubic ft) of concrete was put in the ditch to direct runoff and strengthen the driveway that crosses the culvert. 😬

MAY came along and we had a goal of opening the bike rental portion of Randy's business by Memorial Day weekend. So.... signs first.

Okay, the bike was fun. And a lot of people have noticed it.

It's a tractor moving dirt. But really, this is a monumental occasion. The "trench" that has been showing off giant electrical wire and a gas pipe is being filled in. That means no more kids or animals will walk through it/in it, the chicken run can be expanded to what is more "proper" for the space chickens "need," and it's one more step toward completing earth-moving in the long-term house-building venture.

Remember that orange siding! Up it goes!

Sometimes we back-track.

Andrew HAPPENED to be in the rec room beneath the upstairs bathrooms while I was taking a shower, and noticed water dripping at the window. Randy found a small puddle forming on the ceiling. He also found a faulty rubber gasket in one of the connecting pieces of pipe, and HAPPENED to have a spare with which to replace it. He took the opportunity to argue against ever throwing anything useful away. In a light-hearted manner, of course.

Soffit. And Fascia. Are DONE. As of this summer.

TIM and LAURA and family joined us in early August for a week, and we had a blast! (More pictures in other posts, but this is the house one.) Tim did a lot of garage siding!!

Here, Randy's finishing up the east garage wall that he and Tim started.

The good ol' Habitat Restore had a decent insulated garage door, so we installed THAT....

Lumber prices went not only very high, but swooped very low for a bit, as the high demand and then lower demand resulted in HUGE quantities of certain boards at Menards, which were then put on great sales. So, what we didn't think we were going to afford to do for a couple more years, we afforded this summer. The deck (for the "official front door" that actually just gets you into the garage)!

Randy picked this up for a buck-or-so on his way home from a job. It's fun to have a fire on the new deck!

In June, I bought a front door. I gave it 4 coats of that orange siding paint that OMA and Carrie F. used, and we went to install it the day we finished the deck and whoooops! It's a 32". We needed a 36". Sooooo, I sold it on Fb marketplace, after the buyer dropped of her paint and I painted it the color she wanted. And Randy and I checked HomeDepot one day for the correct size door but found THIS ONE on sale instead, and I really like it! It was finished already for me, and a more expensive door on sale for less than the one we intended. Win, win, win.

The next thing (before cold weather really set in) was to install these patio doors we've been collecting. One pair we had used when we lived in the pole barn, one pair we got for free on craigslist, and FIVE more triple-pane, aluminum-and-vinyl framed white-on-the-outside doors were handed off from a friend, whose wife's dad didn't want them anymore. We sketched a few plans, and Randy figured out the puzzle and started making some frames for the ones that needed them. The south wall is now mostly glass, for passively heating the garage with the sun (and hopefully it will work well as a greenhouse for baby garden plants in the spring).

I spent some birthday money (thank you OMI!) on 3 whole yards of black dirt! Around here, black dirt is precious. I mixed it with alpaca poo and put a bunch in the retaining wall for flowers and garden veggies next year. Bridget helped me plant 135 bulbs in there (crocus, daffodil, and tulip) and we brought a few small plants from Mom's garden this fall. The rest of the black dirt was distributed as needed, including into the raised beds of the existing garden.

And last but not least, Randy and I had fort-building day, using the parts and pieces of our neighbor's wooden playground that we helped them tear down. We didn't actually build a fort, although it kind of looks like the beginnings of a nativity scene. It's just a shelter for firewood. I won't go into detail on how many ways the building process was.... sketchy.