Window trim gets stuccoed

Well, today Ben got the first coat of stucco on the windows and finished the west wall stucco/texture so it's ready to be painted Saturday (the blue tape in the window pictures is masking tape). We got a bad batch of "Quikwall" so Ben recommended that he use plain stucco to finish the remaining 50 square feet (see gray stucco in picture, below, with Boone-Hoone, the mountain goat dog, lying on the top of the remaining AAC blocks).Picture of kitchen window last summer:Picture of kitchen window today:With this eventual look:
While Ben stuccoed I bored a 4" hole in the utility room wall for the dryer exhaust (look closely in this picture for dryer-flappy-thingy under the scaffold board).I purchased masonry paint for the stucco with the refund Quikcrete gave me for the bad bags of Quikwall that I bought at Home Depot... it all worked out and we'll try to paint Saturday.

Stucco gets textured

Today Ben continued to stucco and I kept him in mud. We had a problem with a bad batch of the stucco ("Quikwall") and were stopped until Alexis could run to South Pittsburgh and get some more to finish. While she was gone Ben textured the front of the house. Here's a picture of the front that has just been textured... and ready to be painted tomorrow:
This is our storage building that features a classic "Tennessee trailer park look"... complete with an inoperative upright freezer (it will eventually go on the front porch... NOT), shower enclosure and mountain cur dog (named Mosby aka Mose-Bose... "nobody knows where Mose-Bose goes"):

More progress today with stucco

Ben and I were back at it again with the stucco. Except for the trim around the windows/door, we got the front of the house stuccoed today. The gray speckles on the east wall are the texture that Ben applied this afternoon. The texture hides a multitude of sins and will eventually be painted a uniform color... probably gray to go with the blue roof, light gray siding on the gable ends and the red door:
This is a front view of the house where Alexis will plant her climbing roses:
This picture is of a tree that my DEAR (and helpful!) friend Jerry Hawkins felled this afternoon (Jerry and I went to St. Andrew's together back in 1961... Jerry was from South Pittsburgh, Tennessee which is down the mountain towards Chattanooga... we nicknamed him "Tennessee Hawkins"). The root system of this tree had been comprised during the original bulldozing of our land and the tree was leaning towards the house and more SPECIFICALLY towards MY side of the bed. In a word... if the tree had fallen during the night, I would have been DEAD. Anyway, Jerry has every tool known to man including 5 chainsaws, nylon wedges, industrial come-a-longs, cables and mega-chains. Last week - to ease my sissy mind - he secured the tree with his chains/cable and come-a-long to keep it from falling until the wind died down (today) and he could fell the tree. He was like a brain surgeon making the tree fall EXACTLY where he intended (it was 3 feet in diameter and at least 75' tall)... watching him work was a beautiful thing... THANK YOU, JERRY!

We made some progress today

Aaron, my helper, referred me to a fellow named Ben Williams who is a 25-year stuccoer from Florida. He's been living here in Tennessee for 7 or 8 months and needed some work in the worst sort of way. He helped me start the stuccoing today and hopefully we'll be finished in two more days. Here's what it looks like:
East end of house...NE corner of house...Front of house looking SE...
Eventually we'll get 'er done.

Alexis here: I was just re-reading the blog. We got started a year ago this month - around the 22nd of March, 2008. It's just amazing (and humbling) to see how much we really have done this past year.

I am so proud of Dave and all his hard work. I could never have imagined someone "hand building" a house, but he did it. I can look at every block in this house and know that he put it there. We've had some wonderful helpers, too, especially Howell, Aaron, Jerry and David (and now Ben) and we're really thankful for their expertise and hard work.

The house is still a way from being 'finished', but when you stop to look at this time last year - Wow! I'm happy. Next week is spring break for me and I'm hoping the weather will cooperate so I can get the garden going. And it's Holy Week, as well. Lots to be thankful for and one of the things I hope to accomplish next week is to begin the little spot that will be dedicated to the Blessed Virgin and to my long ago kinsman, Brigid. And the spot will be expanded to include little memorials for several family members, including Martha (Dave's mom) and my grandmother, Lucy, and aunts Norral, Gladys, Lena, Lucy and Dorothy.

Oh yeah, I picked out the color for the bathroom. Quite tropical in feel (a vacation in Tahiti every time we shower!) It's Behr's "Sweet Midori". Seriously tropical tiki green!

Stay tuned!

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.