Ouch!

We had a busy day (as usual)!  Our friend Jeff (who, along with his wife Kate at Smoky Mountain Cast Stone, made all of our stone on the house) came by to move some of the boxes of stone off to the side of the yard so we can start to clean up the driveway.

On top of that, the propane tank is arriving tomorrow, weather permitting, so in order to get the side of the garage ready we made big piles of rock into little piles...  We have so much rock and we are also trying to keep the erosion down to a minimum, so we are "rock wrapping" everything. 

See that huge pile off in the distance...we are moving that pile all around the house, one stone at a time...ouch!!  Ok, not entirely, we do have Stu's cute little tractor to help, but still...

This is the side of the garage where the propane tank will sit.

When we couldn't take anymore rock moving, Stu moved on to grooming the driveway.

And I dug the ditch for the drain pipe along the garage.

There's that stupid pile of rocks again...  But the driveway is looking better!

It Must Be Monday...

Activity at the house is slowing down, mainly just one person/profession at a time now.  We checked out another place to get our interior doors this morning and picked up the stain for the posts on the front and guest porches and the staining continues...

The blocks for the apartment deck pillars went in today.

Stevie Wonder (the masons) strikes again!!  Note the bottom of the column as the end of the block alignment "drifts" to the right---the next craft to arrive on scene will be the stone setters to exacerbate this sloppy mess.  In any case I'm sure there's a good excuse, like maybe, 'a person running for their life would never notice!' 

Tomorrow we stack rocks and dig ditches...we feel like we should be wearing striped pants and shirts...

Friday The 13th...

It is definitely Friday the 13th!  The good news is...all of our interior doors are in!  The bad news is... we had to return them all!  We ordered all knotty alder doors, and it seems that even though we wanted alder for the doors, they though it would be ok to use an oak veneer for the frame, which our cabinet maker told us would not stain the same.  Arrrrgggh!  So now we need to find a company that has alder doors and frames!   

On a good note, we were able to pick up our posts that will support the front and guest porches. 

Here they come!

They just need to be stained and they are ready to be put up.

Break Time!

We got a much needed break today!  A friend of ours, one of Stu's ex-coworkers from Naples, Richard, stopped by to visit us today on his way back to Bella Napoli.  As you can see another aficionato of fine beer and a rocking chair!

We gave him a tour of the house...

And the staining continues...however, since our humidity has been soooo high, our stain master is going to try working at night to see if it's any better then.

We are expecting rain for the next week or so and it's been raining almost every night so Mike and Stu installed the drains for the gutters to keep the water away from the house, to be buried in the near future.

Mike built the frame for the access to the crawlspace this morning.

Unfortunately Richard only stopped by for a couple of hours, but it was sure nice to see him!

Garage Doors!!

Our garage doors are on, and they look great!  We were worried about the white, since we don't have any white anywhere else on the house.  We can paint it, but actually, we kind of like it!

We will paint the small door though.

Today, just like the past few weeks, was soooo hot with humidity to match!  Perfect weather to kick back on the front porch with a cold one!  (I think the weather and the work is taking a toll on us, we look beat!)

In the next town down from us (Hartford) is where a lot of the white water rafting trips start...and they end right down the road from our house.  How convenient is that!!??

Let The Staining Begin!

Today is the day...It took a while to get started, but so far the color of stain we picked out looks great!

The one on the ground hasn't been done yet...

We were told that it would take about a week/week and a half to finish all the doors, windows and trim.  We have some people coming to give us an estimate to install our tile and our garage doors go in tomorrow morning!

Field Day...

For you non-military types, a field day isn't necessarily a good/fun thing...  In Navy terms it means to do a thorough cleaning, and that's what we did today (and probably to be continued tomorrow).

Stu took these two this morning, much better in the morning sunlight!

Stu scrubbed the side of the house, stones, siding, doors and windows and I washed the deck...  As you can see it will take a lot of washing to get it clean, but with the amount of dirt we have around the house, it's going to be a while!

Stu filled in around the guest porch to try to keep the gray dust down, that's going to be a while too!

The front of the house is looking better, we still have a long way to go though.