Sanding, deck posts and barn kit

As Labor Day weekend approaches, Brent and I are excited to see significant progress towards finishing up the house.

The sheetrock has had it's finishing coat of mud, ceiling texture and was sanded. Here's how it looked when the crew finished sanding yesterday.

Finished sheetrock, Southeast corner from front door.

Finished sheetrock, North wall of kitchen.

While the sheetrock crews were doing their work inside, Rick and Dave were working outside. On the day that seemed to be the hottest of the whole year (not officially, just my opinion!), they were continuing their work setting the large cedar posts for the deck. And, of course, to make matters worse the deck is on the south side of the house. Here's a picture of their work yesterday.

Cedar posts for the deck.

And finally, I took the day off from work yesterday to accept a huge delivery…my barn kit! It came on a big blue truck :-)

Truck delivering the alpaca barn to the pasture.

John, the driver, didn't have any trouble pulling the truck into the driveway and had plenty of space to turn the truck around in the pasture. Unfortunately, the lift that he uses to unload the materials malfunctioned before he could get everything off the truck. So, with the help of Rick and Dave, we unloaded the poles and concrete "cookie" footings by hand. The little forklift is sitting in the pasture until a repairman can be scheduled to fix it.

Meanwhile, I am still working to get the barn building site staked out. I have a lot to learn about how to do that efficiently. Getting everything square is incredibly challenging. It has taken me about 5 hours! But I'm close. So, with a little more work, I will be ready to rent an augur to dig the post holes next weekend. It's pretty discouraging how little visible progress all that time and effort produces. Here's a picture:

Leveled and staked building site for the barn.

I'm sure it will look more barn-like next week :-)

Retaining walls are done

Last weekend our hard-working "rock guy" finished placing all the rocks for the retaining walls. They look beautiful and I will love creating gardens around them.

We've taken photos along the way, but here are some of the areas that were finished this weekend.

Steps leading up to the Summer Kitchen on the east side of the house

Short retaining walls on the west side

Last weekend also saw a new crew that worked on completing another step in the sheetrock installation. They applied the tape and corners. Here's how it looked when they were done.

Shelves near west window in Master Bedroom

Corner and top of the Coat Closet near the entry

This week should see finishing of the sheetrock. And, while that is happening other outdoor work can start now that the retaining walls are done. Brent and I will have 2 palettes of smaller stones delivered to finish off the retaining wall around the maple tree near the front porch. That needs to happen before the final grade can be started.

In addition, I am prepping for the delivery of the pole barn kit we purchased to house our little herd of alpacas. The posts for the fence near the draw were delivered on Saturday and I got word that the kit for the barn will arrive at the property on Monday the 25th. That's a week or two earlier than I thought!

Greg Wheeler, the "rock guy," will be focused on leveling the building site for our barn now. It will, hopefully, be a small job for him before he takes his much-needed and deserved vacation in September.

Things are progressing very quickly now. We are excited and exhausted...and happy :-) 

Insulation, sheetrock, a birthday and a new school

The first 2 weeks of August have been action-packed. So much so, that it's hard to know how to start to explain. Everything is a process and the multitude of processes in motion at the same time has us jumping from one thing to the next before we can take a breath.

I will start with our new home which continues to take shape in spite of the oddly rainy weather. The HVAC work was completed, so insulation work was done. And even that wasn't a one-step thing…

First the batts and, in other places, sheets of insulation
for the roof and ceilings.

Next a layer of plastic sheeting to form an infiltration barrier.

Then caulk (white substance in the plastic and orange around the wires and tubes)
 to really make sure it's sealed.

 After the insulation, any soffits or build-outs for securing the sheet rock were added.

Soffits were built to conceal the HVAC units in the lower level.

On Tuesday, the sheetrock was delivered. And Wednesday the crew began hanging.

Wednesday sheetrock starts.

 And by end of day on Thursday they have everything covered and things suddenly look much cleaner!

Sheetrock is hung.

While the sheetrock was in the works on Wednesday and Thursday our son Jeremy also started his sophomore year at his new school, Basehor-Linwood High School. Until we move into our new home, we will drive him up to school in the mornings. After school he takes a bus to the farm and waits until we leave work to pick him up. Rick, our builder, jokes that the sheetrock crew that does the mudding will be moving so fast that we won't need to worry about Jeremy getting in the way. They will just mud right over him :-)

And, to top it all off, Brent turned 50 last weekend. My plan was to have a big celebration that would also be an open house. But, plans are known for changing. Rather than a big celebration, we had a small one with all of the boys and Kristin. I did manage to have the party it at the house, though.

Brent's 50th birthday dinner in the garage at the farm.

It poured down rain nearly all afternoon. So we took shelter in the garage most of the day. I cooked steaks on a little charcoal grill in the rain with help from Skylr, Jeremy and Blaine while Kristin and Brent finished insulating the Summer Kitchen. Doogle was even on hand to clean up any messes. It was good to have everyone together.

Of course, that isn't all that's happened in the last 2 weeks. There was STAGES camp at the Lyric Opera for Jeremy, multiple Shawnee house showings occurred, Skylr flew to California for a visit with his dad, tile for the bathrooms was selected, bathroom cabinets were purchased, a new roof for the Shawnee house was scheduled, and Brent and I worked our day-jobs to name just a few of the other things.

Whew! Like I said, there has been very little time to take a breath. 

But we are thrilled to see things moving again. It's gradually looking more like a house and less like a construction site. And seeing these pictures makes me smile because I know it won't be long before we can finally call Happy Apple's Farm our home :-)