Soffits and fascia

The outside of the house now has a finished look with the new soffits and fascia.

All we have left to do on the outside is the gutters and the ceilings on the porches.

4 down and 6

We finished drywalling the guest room upstairs. We'll be putting a special woodwork above and below the windows to give it a log cabin look. Tomorrow we should finish up the drywall for the library.

Since we'll be using our house for entertaining young people, we invited the young women of the ward to a sanding party as a mutual activity so they will identify with the place and be ready to come back to activities at Camp Thompson Ranch. The refreshments included Sandies, of course, (not pictured here.) The youth said it was their favorite activity and are anxious to help out some more. (I think the food helped convince them.)

We had a nice north wind blow all day so the workers had chilly (for Florida) 72 degree weather.

3 down and 7

We're still having fun drywalling. Since we have an open floorplan, room 3 is actually three rooms as seen below--the kitchen, the dining room, and the mudroom.

The bulls must think we are spending too much time fixing up the house instead of feeding them so one of them decided to play "fruit basket turnover" with the feeding trough.

We also got someone to come replace the two windows that were broken in the delivery. Anderson sent 8 pages of "simple" instructions to tell me how to do it. They were too complicated for me so I hired someone else with Anderson experience to do it for us. He was done in 20 minutes so I guess it really was "simple." (He didn't even look at the instructions. He said that 8 pages with all its warnings and details would make the process too complicated.)

We watched him closely in case I have to do it in the future. He also showed us how to install the screens.

2 down and 8 to go!

We have finished the basic dry walling for two of the 10 rooms we'll be doing--the master bedroom and the music room. Here is grandma sanding the log walls in the master bedroom and the drywall ready for mudding.

This is the music room when you enter the house with a view through the stairs to the great room. Grandpa is putting in some final drywall screws.

Tomorrow we start the ceilings for the diningroom/kitchen/mudroom area. That should take a couple of days.

Drywalling started!!

We are starting the drywalling--beginning with the ceilings. Here you can see me using the drywall lifter to fill in the last gap in the master bedroom ceiling.

It took two days to translate the You-Tube instructions into actual skills, but we hope to have all the ceilings done this coming week and the walls the following week just in time to install the new kitchen in October. It may take longer doing everything our selves, but it is much less expensive. (Wendy, we will have someone else to the 20 foot cathedral ceiling.)

New Watch Dogs

Everyone says that if you live in the country, you need a good watch dog. Sage and Troy's new neighbor complained to the police their dogs were barking too much at night, so they became our new watch dogs on the 30 acres. Don't they look ferocious?

Everyone said that my version of a dog house was an eyesore...

so the crews spent three days creating the taj mahal of dog runs.

The dogs love it!

In fact, when we turned them loose from the place I had built for them, they ran across the field to the new place and insisted on moving right in.

Grandma and the birds

What was grandma doing while the insulation was going in? She was tending the Savannah birds while their parents were in Hawaii for the week!

Here's the happy family back together again. Of course, the grandchildren hated to see grandma return to Florida.

More insulation

After they insulate the rooms, they look like they have been hit by a blizzard--or a good coating of whipped cream.

So they shave it with a long knife so you can find the studs for installing the wallboard.

It was especially fun to watch them do the ceiling in the great room and the loft. Be sure to watch the magic of the foam expanding to fill the spaces in the walls and the ceiling. It now looks like a completely different place.

They also sprayed under the upstairs floors to deaden the sounds of 32 enthusiastic grandchildren having fun.

We're ready to start finishing up on the inside. The drywall is next.