I'm baaaccckkkk! Sorry for such a long delay - time has slipped away. We have been "nose down" in projects and getting things finished up with the house (but are we ever "finished"?) A number of you have been asking when I'm going to update our blog, so here goes!
Moon shadows on a snowy February night. The house is just to the left of the trees in the middle of the picture.
The gas fireplace is in! Corner of the living room, will have stacked stone around it from the hearth to the ceiling. That will be a winter project this year, as much to get done outside while the weather is good.
Starting to lay the engineered hardwood floors. We had the house delivered with linoleum everywhere, then put an underlayment over that, then the flooring. Started with one of the guest bedrooms.
Baxter hired on as supervisor and comfort checker.
Laying the floor. Edges are glued and then pressed together, so the floor floats. The blue tape is to hold the edges together until the glue dries. Tedious process, but turning out nice. This flooring is eucalytus.
The new cooktop is in, just waiting for connection to gas. Mike does good work!
We have fire! Will be really nice next winter. We put in a propane "whole house" generator, and our furnace and hot water are propane rather than electric, so we will always have power, water and heat, even when power is out. That happens frequently here!
New gas furnace. We had the electric one changed out.
Demand gas hot water heater. No need to heat a tank full of water when not using hot water.
Mike putting up the light in the entry way.
Starting on flooring in the living room. Guest bedroom is done at this point.
Living room flooring in progress. We laid 1600 square feet of hardwood, and we now know why babies have fat knees! Ouch!
Baxter doing a quality check. The flooring in the den and living room is koa, which has a lot of color variation. Lots of work to make sure colors and seam patterns are random.
Baxter helping collect tape after it was removed from the floor.
Meanwhile, the snow continues. It was so beautiful - glistened like diamonds in the sun and moon light. Mike got good at plowing, which became a social event as he plowed out and visited with neighbors!
This is "Buck The Truck", all warmed up and ready to plow. 1989 Ford F250 Super Cab, 4 wheel drive, chains on all 4 wheels, 800 pounds of sand in the back, and a great Ford heater! A total tank that goes anywhere!
Taking a break. This is the dining area, den is in the background
Looking from the den to the living room
Baxter likes to help!
Path from the shop to the house. Note the "gangplank" up to the house.
Putting up the solar shades in the kitchen. It faces east, so gets lot of early morning sun.
Shades are up!
Results of Baxter's first effort at driving. Glennis left the Kioti running and in gear to grab something off the roadway. Baxter chose that moment to sit on the gas pedal. Glennis couldn't get into the
driver seat, so grabbed the wheel and steered it into the ditch. The trees in the background are on the edge of a big bank, about 60 feet high. His learner's permit has been revoked!
There is NO joy in Mudville! Snow is melting out, and the bare ground has turned to gooey, ooey, sticky MUD! Note the raised gang plank from the house to the shop....
Starting to lay the floor in our bedroom.
Making progress. Big push to get it finished, as furniture is coming soon!
View from the front porch to the shop. Gangplank is visible.
First meal in our new home! Oriental chicken salad - yum!
A wonderful surprise came with the UPS man today. Thank you, Jane and Jerry! We love it!!!
Mike using his head while installing the range hood. We had the manufacturer of the house build a custom box to be able to use a free-standing hood over the island.
Putting up the range hood. It weighed 75 pounds, and Glennis couldn't hold it up, so we "cribbed" it up with a moving box and flooring until Mike could get the supports fastened.
All installed - it turned out beautiful!
The kitchen from the dining room door
The entry way from the living room
The den from the living room
The 2nd guest bedroom from the small hallway outside the guest bedrooms/bath
The 1st guest bedroom
The 2nd guest bedroom
The kitchen from the den area. We have an amazing view of the quaking aspen and upper meadow from the kitchen. Almost no overhead cabinets, but we had pull-out drawers installed in all of the lower cabinets, which works really well. There is also a big walk-in pantry just to the right of this picture. I LOVE MY KITCHEN!!!
The living room from the french doors to the deck
The dining area, looking towards the den. Living room is to the left, kitchen is to the right, french doors to deck are just behind me.
Entry way
Den from dining area
Hallway for the bedrooms and guest bath
Gues bath -- simple but functional
guest bedroom
Den from guest bedroom hallway, looking towards kitchen and living/dining room
Our bedroom. There are french doors on the right out to the yard.
Our bathroom
Our bathroom and jetted tub. Nice when it is cold outside! There is a separate, large shower that is also really nice.
Farmer Mike with our peach tree. Note the deer fence. He cleverly took a 16 foot livestock panel and bent it every 4 feet to make a square, clipped the two edges together, and we have a very light, easily moved deer fence. What a guy!
Glennis with the new cherry tree and deer fence. The bags on the tree are water bags that help keep it moist.
Look what Mike bought me for our 45th wedding anniversary! Bucket, brush hog, box scraper, 58 horse, hydrostatic transmission, love it! Note my pink Kubota hat!
Mike loves it too! No fair - he got 3 hats!!!!
Our new bar stools.
Our baby being delivered. With 33 acres to maintain, will be really handy!
Mike brush hogging on the upper meadow. The property hasn't been worked for about 8-10 years, and we had quite a bit of snow berry coming in. So we sprayed and killed it last fall, and then mowed it down this spring. We now know where every rock in the field is located!
Brush hogging snow berry
Nikka supervising the placement of skirting for the house. She is our new Black Russian Terrier that we rescued in April. She is 4 years old, and was completely shaved when we got her. She is a character, and completely without manners. We are working on that and she is making good progress. She has EPI (exocrin pancreatic insufficiency) and does not manufacture digestive enzymes. Her food has to be treated with artificial enzymes prior to feeding. She was not well cared for, and is about 20-25 pounds underweight, but we are working on fattening her up. She gets along fine with Baxter.
Making progress on the skirting. This is the back of the house. Our bedroom is on the left, then our bathroom, and the 2nd guest bedroom on the right. So exciting to getting close to finished!
Starting down the front side of the house with the skirting. Guest bedrooms, entry way, and living room.
Skirting on the kitchen side of the house. French doors for our bedroom are on the right.
Snuck this one in! We were in Montesano at Friends Landing for our traditional Memorial Day campout, and Mike went sturgeon fishing with his brother Korey and one of Korey's neighbors. They left Monte at 3:30 AM, drove down to the Columbia River near the bridge to Astoria, and each caught a fish! Each fish yielded about 20 pounds of meat, and were each about 4 feet long! They had a great day!
Back to our house. Kitchen door, laundry room door and our bedroom french doors. There will be a deck outside the kitchen and laundry doors that extends to the front of the house and meets up with the front deck. We will have "wedding cake" stairs from our bedroom and from the kitchen deck to the yard.
Turning the corner at the front deck. Getting close now!
The front deck. Kitchen is on the right, living room on the left.
Starting to backfill against the house. It is "pit set" 3 feet into the ground, to keep the foundation below the frost line. They then backfill around the house.
Backfilling...
Move backfilling...
Pushing the fill against the house. This is the back. Double window is our bath, small windows are our bedroom and the 2nd guest bedroom. We added these two narrow windows so that we could see who was at the back of the house. They work really well!
Delicate cat work....
Our contractor is a master with the cat!
Waiting to backfill the kitchen side. Note the gangplank is still in place, but it is about to go away!
Backfilling the front of the house
Mike collecting rocks from the fill that is being placed. We will use them for landscaping. We have lots of rocks!!!! Our theory is that the little ones grow into big ones!
The front deck, waiting for the backfill to be spread.
Our porch swing on the front deck. There will be stairs to the yard from the center two spaces on the deck. We have a beautiful view of the mountains from the deck, and really enjoy sitting there in the evenings.
Placing the fill against the skirting...
Placing posts for the landing for the front door....
Carefully placing backfill around the posts. Chris (the contractor) is a magician with the equipment.
The front side of the house, facing west and overlooking the valley and our lower field. Left to right, 2nd guest bedroom, 1st guest bedroom, front door, and living room
Our new power recliners. We LOVE THEM - so comfy. These are in the den, waiting for those long, snowy winter nights and good movie/TV viewing., or reading....
Finishing up the backfill on the kitchen, laundry room, master bedroom side. The shop is to my left as I am taking the picture.
Hooray, AC unit is in just in time. It was 93 degrees today, which is unusually warm for this early in the year. The guys are placing posts for the stairs from our bedroom french doors.
Purple vetch lining the driveway. It is so beautiful.....
Everything is all greened up and so beautiful. This is along the driveway at the upper meadow. We are enjoying the green at every opportunity, because it will start turning brown as the summer heats up!
Looking up the upper part of the driveway to the shop. The house is to the right, but not visible in this picture.
Well, that catches you up. We are waiting on the contractor to do the final grading for the yard area, and then place gravel and landscape rock. We will have a small bit of grass, but most will be landscape rock and raised beds. We don't have a lot of extra water, so are being conservative this first year with plantings until we see how the well does. We also are keeping a defensible perimeter in case of wild fire. We will slowly add landscaping and plants - anxious to get that started! We have lots to do with rehabbing the fields, getting our driveway entry area fenced with nice fencing, installing our big flagpole, removing a few dead quaking aspen from the aspen grove in the upper meadow, and then starting to get ready for winter.
We love our Glory Ridge, and are so blessed to be here. We have put in a parking pad for an RV and a dump station, so hope to have lots of visitors. Of course, the bedrooms are available too! We have had Diane and Aliyah at spring break, our Greek Geek group joined us for a Greek Cruise reunion, some good friends from New York (state, not city) came for a visit, and we hope to see lots more of you coming our way!
As my North Carolina relatives would say, come on up on the porch and sit a spell!
