Playing catch-up with reporting our progress...

As you may remember my block mason was sloppy, lazy and refused to lay to a string... I should have fired the worthless "sumbitch" early on except that the block mason was ME. The result was a bow in the west wall (and to a lesser extent the east wall) that collected water in a blowing downpour which found it's way (like water does) under my top plate and down the inside of my block wall. In an effort to prevent this from happening I went on CraigsList and bought some beautiful (and expensive even at 25% under wholesale) "Nailite" siding to cover the 1 1/2" space between the gable end stick-built-wall and the top of the AAC block wall. Aaron and I finished putting this siding up last Friday and the hope is that this will cover the gap and solve my water problem. Here's a picture of the east end gable with the Nailite siding (the pipe sticking out of the wall is my sewer vent and still needs to have an "L" and a vertical 10' piece added to it to get above the roof line... presently, it STINKS over there when the wind is blowing just right!):I obviously still have to stucco the block and to save money I'm going to do it myself with "surface bonding cement." Here's a shot of my test run of stuccoing on the east front corner... I'll get better as I go:
Here are two pictures of our "almost" completed utility room/1/2 bath... this first picture is looking NE towards the dryer and counter top work area:
This picture is looking NW towards the washing machine (which I call "the magic box" because I don't have a clue how it washes the clothes without an agitator... and when you try to peek in to see what's going on, the thing INSTANTLY stops?):
And one more gratuitous shot of my incredibly beautiful grandson, Ethan:

An early morning look out our bedroom window...

We awoke this morning to find that the mountain had been dusted with snow overnight... here is a look out the bedroom window into our woods (our 3 acres is in the middle of 100+ wooded acres that will likely never be built on):And another picture of Ethan... I love that baby boy (all pictures of Ethan are available for sale in the lobby):

Long time... no see...

Forgive me for being negligent in keeping up with our house building progress. We spent our first night in the house on the 20th of December (2008)... so in effect we have been here for 60 days. As I tell people most of the major stuff is finished but there are literally 1,000s of things left to be done... from window trim to sheet rock finishing to floor stain to stuccoing the outside block, etc., etc. We do love living here though in spite of having to "camp out." Over the next few days I'll begin to update you on some of the things that we have gotten accomplished. The kitchen - with the exception of staining the floor - is pretty much finished. Here are two shots:

And here are a couple of recent pictures of my beautiful grandson Ethan:

If you would like to see the blog I'm doing for Ethan as my legacy to him, check it out here.