Thankful in 2014

This year there are so many things to be thankful for that finding the "important" ones to fit into a blog post would diminish them all. So I will only take this space to discuss those in the last 2 weeks.

Brent (probably my all-time favorite person to be thankful for) has finished all of the interior plumbing (which is probably the necessity I am most thankful for). Most significantly, he completed the plumbing in the kitchen. The kitchen even has a dishwasher - just need to move one of our refrigerators in and we're set. Of course, this time of year outside is, pretty much, all the refrigerator we need.

Our kitchen sink!

Our brand new dishwasher.

I'm glad Brent could figure out this plumbing.
The black valve allows us to divert the water for irrigation use in the summer.

Those diverter valves are placed only on the kitchen sink and the master bath sinks and shower. As our summers here get pretty dry, having these valves will allow me to use this "grey" water to develop some gardens with edibles and natives that require more moisture around the east and west sides of the house.

I am also thankful for our boys. Every parent dreams of seeing their children become contributors - and when they give back to you, well, that's really special.

Blaine installing our new locks.

Logan and Jeremy painting the last bedroom.

You can see from these photos that everyone (even Skylr who isn't in the photos) has been helping.

Since Rick (our builder) is about done with the final fixes to the trim, he has also installed our front door. Previously, we only had the final sidelight installed since the "real" door is full glass and might have been broken by the construction.

Our front door. We even have a door mat :-)

Brent and I spent so many days dreaming of the view from that door - and now it's a reality. And, yes, it brings to mind how fortunate I am to experience dreams come true. And this is just one of many.

And how can I end my Thanksgiving post without acknowledging these guys? They are so obviously thankful everyday for their feed. Of course, I pretend like it's me that they are so happy to see - so I get daily gratitude and alpaca smiles.

Mr. T eating his feed. He eats with his mouth open; they all do :-)

Okay, so these are a few events from our recent weeks that I thought to record with visuals. There are so many more and I could go on and on.

In short, life is good - amazing, in fact - and I am sincerely thankful.

Plywood flooring and our first hot meal

Last weekend our floor was finished. Brent has been working, pretty much, non-stop since Friday morning to apply the finish. And it is beautiful!

Flooring on the main level

This project began with the discovery of a plywood waste product. Brent discovered that the waste from a manufacturing process contained a regular dimension of lumber that could make a beautiful flooring. One of the things I admire about Brent is the ability to see possibilities like this and not be discouraged at the insane amount of work it will require. He milled, cut 12-ish slots for joiners in each plank, joined and glued, filled, sanded, sanded again, stained, and applied the finish. It was "only" 130+ planks :-) Wow!

Most of this floor finishing occurred during a super-cold November that has unveiled the fabulous ability of our house to stay warm - even with windows open and fans running to exhaust the fumes. The radiant heat in the floors is unbelievable. Even though the surface of the floor doesn't feel warm, the heat can be felt on the bottoms of your feed through your shoes. With temperates outside in the teens and twenties, the house never got below 68 degrees. I can't wait to see how nice it will be when all the door knobs are installed and the windows are closed.

Brent will apply the finish on the stairs and landings next.  

A few minor fixes were made to our kitchen cabinets last week and we were able to enjoy our first hot meal at the house. It was only leftovers heated in the microwave, but still! It was nice to have something  homemade (not Sonic, Subway, or McDonalds).

Brent warming our lunch in the microwave.

We are almost home!

Front porch, closets and floor (that's a lot!)

What a big weekend!

Brent's brother Bryan came to help again this weekend. This time, rather than painting, he shared another of his wonderful skills - carpentry. He finished out one of the closets in the downstairs bedrooms.

Bryan and Brent with the closet in Skylr's room-to-be. Dang, they're a good-looking couple of men :-)

Meanwhile, another something really wonderful happened; the front porch appeared and we can now use our front door! After all those pictures of this spot, we can finally walk up to the door. And the view from the door is incredible - just like we dreamed.

The front porch

And, even better, we got to uncover Brent's salvaged plywood floor and see how our stain pick ties in with everything.

Uncovered, sanded floor.

Brent applying stain. What a big job!

Here's a look at the beautiful grain in the plywood.

Brent spent his entire day working on the stain prep and application. We had windows and doors open but the fumes were pretty intense. We were thrilled, though. The color of the floor really ties in with the dark lighting fixtures and sets off the warm brown of the kitchen cabinets. The mass walls will be a very dark brown that will coordinate with the floor color. It's pretty wonderful to see an idea come to life. Brent made this bunch of manufacturing scrap into a floor that anyone would love - and there isn't another one like it anywhere!

The next step is the urethane. That should intensify the grain and deep brown tones and protect the floor from damage. It will take 2 days.

Unfortunately, we were unaware of the scheduled return of the cabinet maker to repair the gap in the island countertop and the microwave cabinet tomorrow. So we will be covering the floor back up in the morning. We will do everything we can with RamBoard to protect it. Then we will cross our fingers and hope that nothing gets scraped or scuffed too badly as they work.

The urethane seal will happen as soon as they are done. We will repair any damage that happens tomorrow then seal this beautiful finish for good.

Wow! Nice job mio marito :-)

Finally…electricity and indoor plumbing

This may only be incredibly exciting to me - but we have a toilet! We don't have the faucets connected for the sinks in the bathroom yet. But, still, a toilet that flushes? What person wouldn't love that after more than a year of a Porta-Potty?

It's beautiful :-)

We also have all of the lights installed now (thanks to Jeff with Teague Electric). I was so happy to see last night that the kitchen is well lit. Our stove is also in place and we discovered that the countertop for the island needs to be rebuilt because the opening for the slide-in range is a little too deep. Other than that it looks great.

All lights are installed.

Brent and I did a lot of work shopping at ReStore and on Craigslist to get most of the light fixtures. We even got our ceiling fans - and they are really cool! It feels good to re-use these things - and in almost all cases it saved us a ton of money.

Even the bathroom cabinets, countertops and faucets came from Craigslist. Yesterday we did some shopping and found more things at ReStore. Our "new" toilets are a matching, pristine set from the 87th Street store. They were complete with working flush mechanisms and cost us $25 each. That's an incredible deal! And they look brand new. All that made it easy to get over the idea of a used toilet. And what is there to be squeamish about after a year of using a Porta-potty?

Brent will focus on getting the bathrooms totally functional this weekend. Then he will shift his attention to the monumental task of staining and finishing the main level flooring. This will include an intensive cleaning job for the upstairs to eliminate all of the construction dust.

The rest of us will continue to "chip" away at the painting job. That job gets closer everyday to being finished. We will finish up the downstairs and start on the master bedroom. Logan painted the entire half-bath side of the master bathroom yesterday. We are very lucky to have such a hard-working son :-)