Progress in 2012

 Reluctantly we are heading into our fourth year of building our house. Friends often say "You can never truly be done." That fact is disheartening but Joey and I are shooting for "done enough."

 This summer Joey made a ton of progress on the outside of the house skirting, siding, and trimming. Somehow he snuck in a 12x20 two-story shed into our backyard too. It is really nice having an area to store and organize our tools.

We have added a bit too...in our last post I described our suspiciously large beefy deck. My suspicions were confirmed with the arrival this fall of a arctic entry/mudroom on the south wall of our house marking our home's new entrance, which leads me to the REALLY BIG news.

Judy has her own bedroom. Joey and his mother Jo Anne walled in our from porch this summer and have made a 8x10 room for our daughter Judy who will be turning 2 years old in March 2013. The room is insulated, dry walled, and taped. We have one of hopefully only 3 coats of mud down and plan to have her moved in by her second birthday. More photos to come.

Happy holidays to all of our friends and family.

Beefy Deck

Joey spent last week installing the world's largest and sturdiest deck. It has 2x12 floor joist that appear suspiciously strong for just a deck...I have a sneaky feeling Joey is laying the groundwork for our future addition (read:Judy's room). The deck wood is several different colors because we used different aged wood and the remainder of a couple of different deck stains we owned. Joey blended the colors well and we joke that our deck is just in time for Halloween because it looks like candy corns.

Joey is also fast at work doing the trim work for the house. He has finished almost all of the interior windows, half the exterior windows and started in on the door frames.

I have been little help of late..mostly being a new mom. Although I did a little cabinet wrestling with Joey yesterday when we painted the kitchen the same color as the living room and lowered the cabinets. Also I promised to wire lights into the closets.

Stay tuned..coming up- sanding and painting the stairs- oh-boy.

90% and still going

Joey and I would say the house is 90% complete- certainly done by Alaska standards but we are determined to hit 100%. I have been terrible at keeping up with posts- the new addition to the family is impatient at watching my play on the internet.

Our big successes since late March include...muding, taping and painting the entryway, framing-in several closets, tiling the mudroom, siding one more side of the house, and installing a septic system. It is exciting to retire our outhouse and enjoy the full benefits of indoor plumbing. We both did well with our gray water system but it was annoying policing visitors to make sure no solids went down the drain. Now we happily flush away! Also a big benefit of our new septic system is a big back yard and we extended our driveway. We sold and moved our old shed. It is nice not to have our vehicles parked in the road. The only down side is friends drive by and think we are not home because our vehicles are not visible now from the main road.

Coming up...Joey is pouring the foundation for our back deck, Melis is doing some light landscaping. We need to trim all of the downstairs windows, side the back of the house, and lower the cabinets in the kitchen. We are in the home stretch!

Sweet time

Well- we are taking full advantage of the baby's late arrival.

More and more house projects are getting checked off the list.

We have started to tackle the entryway/mudroom.

In addition to the nasty task of more drywall and painting, Joey has been designing and building a railing for our stairs to make them safe for impending grandmas. Joey is also excited to start building some closets.

Last week also marked Joey's 31st birthday. Hopefully soon we will be ceelbrating little Judy Greene's...

Cramming

In a rush to finish a few projects before the baby comes...
Joey hit the ground running after being in Antarctica for 3-months.

We are determined to finish the first floor of the house.

In the past two weeks we have:
Finished mudding and taping the living room.
Primed and painted the living room.
Installed light fixtures.
Expanded the hearth for the wood stove.
Sanded exposed beams.
Began installing our finished flooring.

The days are getting longer and warmer her in Alaska.
It is nice to be together again and get a sense that we might actually finish this house.

On the docket for next week is to update our plumbing system. We have dissolved iron in our water and need to install a water softener. We will take advantage of the opportunity to protect the floor of our utility closet with floor paint and install a water filter too.

It is fun to be back in action.
-M&J

New Year's Resolution

Joey and I want to finish the house in 2011.

Judy and Margaret gave the project a big boost during their Christmas visit. They meticulously measured all of the final pieces needed to finish dry walling the downstairs living room, including a few dozen little pieces to accent the exposed beams of the ceiling. Margaret learned how to wire outlets, snap gypsum board, and find studs.


Judy was in charge of marking openings to be routered, holding heavy pieces of board until they were all screwed in, and the most inglorious job of all- prep and clean-up.



All three of us were outfitted in Joey's work clothes. We joked that I looked like a real Alaskan handy man with my big belly and rainbow suspenders.

Although Judy and Margaret did their lion's share of household chores this "vacation" shoveling walking paths and driveways, splitting and stacking wood, and other Alaskan winter necessities- we were able to take advantage of the short days and get out and have some fun.

We helped a freind Heather rig up her dog-team, went skiing, snowshoeing, ice skating, snow machining, and helped Sandra and Loomis process their roadkill moose meat for donation to the local food bank.



All in all...just another typical vacation in Talkeetna.

Happy New Year!

Getting so much nicer all the time

Pat and Laurie Coady hard at work staining siding. They had a great visit to Alaska including hiking, wildlife viewing, and walking on a glacier.



The big event last week: The kitchen is in! It is wild to go from no running water to having a dishwasher- now Joey and I fight over doing dishes.