Sorry for the lag in posts- in fact Joey and I have been busy little beavers. We returned from our last trip in the mountains Sept 18th and since then have completely weathered-in our house. All doors, windows and roofs are in. All of our siding, insulation, and sheetrock arrived on Monday so we will continue working on the house for the next three weeks.
Recent successes include installing a waterline from our well to our house, attaching the service panel for electricity, and buying and installing a wood stove.
We had to custom order our doors because we wanted our porch door to swing outwards and our rear door to include a large clear window. Shortly after they arrived I painted them brick red. It is fairly cold right now in Alaska (dropping into the 20's at night) so it has been difficult for the paint to dry. I had to stand above the wet paint with a blow dryer to get it to stick.
Installing our waterline was stressful. Because frost line is 10-feet deep we had to hire an excavator to dig an enormous trench for us so the walls would not cave in on us during installation. We drilled a hole into our well casing and attached a 1" water line that we installed heat tape and insulation around so hopefully there will be no chance of our pipes freezing during the chilly Alaskan winters.
The electric company is going to install the power and phone lines to our new house in just under three weeks so we are a bit under the wire to install all of our wiring- ha ha ha. We used a gift card from John and Marisa to buy most of our electrical tools and wire at Home Depot. Yipee.
We were happy to finally have purchased a wood stove. I can only relate the process to buying a car. The sales staff have similar strategies and the sticker shock is comparable. After comparing efficiencies and aesthetics we reached a comfortable middle ground by purchasing a DutchWest stove. It is technically a non-catalytic stove, but it has a ceramic chamber to re-combust smoke for high efficiency and low emmissions. The stove pipe installation was confusing. We had to calculate distances of our stove pipes from combustibles (like floor and ceiling joists, and walls) while still trying to have our pipe exit our roof near it's peak so that heavy snow loads will not shear the piping off our roof. We also wanted to install our pipe without any bends because every turn is a potential creosote trap and has the potential for chimney fires down the road.
Joey has been busily collecting firewood and squirreling it away. Hopefully we can season it properly for use mid-winter.
So Joey and I will celebrate our first anniversary this Sunday by firelight in our new house!
Enjoy the photos!
