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 :-)