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.

Crazy Summer

As Joey and my crazy summer winds down we have a number of successes to boast...
4 summits of Denali
Running water in our house
Siding the house
A few successful family visits to Alaska

Please enjoy the photos below of some of the progress on our house.

Long Time No Post

Joey and I have had a lot of successes in the past few weeks.....


We finished plumbing the house.....

We finished dry walling the bathroom and laundry room....


Our friends Seth and Chris helped us finish installing the second floor ceiling and attic door...


I finished tiling the bathroom.....


In not too long we will be finished with the second floor, showering and doing laundry in our own home... you cannot imagine our excitement.

Joe the Plumber and More...

Joey and I are finally back together and in Alaska. We have been quite the flurry of activity working on the house. Some might say we are at the fun part- I think Joey and I would agree there are still many ups and downs. In the last 48-hours we have completed the first stage of plumbing. Joey has created a waste drain and vent stack for all of the fixtures and I have plumbed the water line up to our pressure tank and tied in an outside spigot to run and rejuvenate our well water. It was pure joy when I discovered that all of the copper joints I sweat held...Joey had faith in me but I had a towel and bucket ready when we turned on the pump for the first time. We have now had the well pump running for over 24 hours and have a small pond in our front yard. If we are lucky maybe some swans will find it.


Also...today we sanded the floor of the entire second story. It was high comedy watching Joey and I wrestle the beastly sander. We have primed the floor with a post sanding solvent and have applied three coats of verethane to the bathroom floor. We will put on several more before we go to bed tonight. It is so exciting starting to see some of the finished product of our home. Check out the video of Joey sanding below, needless to say his legs are exhausted.


Our highlight today....seeing each other completely covered in saw dust. Joey had to laugh when he looked at me and said, "At least I now know what you will look like as an old woman." The dust made deep wrinkles on my face and made my hair look gray. Hopefully we will be finished with this house by then.

By the way...Have you seen our bedroom- just a little more trim and verethane and it will be done.

Back to work

Joey just made it back to Alaska. After a few days of shoveling he should be nose back to the grindstone on the house! I will be back in two weeks to join him. Can't wait to move in!

Procrastinating

Awwwww- we are still escaping the harsh Alaska winter. Joey and I are currently in Texas visiting family. We celebrated a terrific New Year's in NYC with my sister.



We depart tomorrow for eastern Idaho where we will live with friends at the base of the Teton mountains and ski and climb for a month before returning home to Alaska.

Happy New Year!

Joey just flew from Alaska down to Wyoming. He has been working on the house solo for the last three weeks. His greatest accomplishment... the stairs. We have been hauling materials and supplies up a ladder for the last 6 months. You can only imagine my excitement about them. We will be taking a break from house building for the next two months to visit friends and family. We have a number of projects waiting for us when we get back, including plumbing. Yikes.

Enjoy a virtual tour by Joey of our new stairs by clicking play.

Compromised

Well... Joey and I caved in.  After a week of temperatures well below zero (read 20-below) we purchased a Toyo oil stove. I hit my limit when at one point I was sleeping in front of our woodstove in two sleeping bags feeding the stove every three hours and I couldn't keep the house much above freezing. The problem is two fold. Since the house is under construction it is not very tight yet- so we have quite a few air leaks. The second, more concerning problem is that our fancy dancey wood stove is broken and it will take us a while to get it fixed.

Solution: we purchased a oil stove and jerry-rigged a fuel system with some old oil drums, which saved us over a $1,000. We had a few fuel leaks as of last night because of some poorly made copper flares but our good friend Danial helped us fix them and showed us some good tricks for making perfect flares. So our ideals feel slightly compromised but it is pretty nice to set a thermostat and be done. Hopefully we will get our wood stove up and running again so we do not have to rely so heavily on oil.

I leave for Jackson, Wyoming today and won't see Joey for a month- so it is nice to know he will be warm while I am gone.

The Fun Stuff

Suprisingly enough Joey and I are staying warm. Winter is finally here. With snow on the ground and several days now with sub-zero temperatures we are now slaves to our woodstove. Because the house isn't entirely sealed up yet we have to take shifts in the middle of the night re-stoking our stove. But believe it or not we are  now at the fun stuff. 

 

We have been hanging drywall and learning how to perfect the art of concealing our screw holes and seams with varying types of plaster and mud. Many of the materials we use are highly sensitive to temperatures as they dry so it has been a real challenge to monitor the drying process. We are holding ourselves to high standards. Ordinarily people texture their walls to cover flaws in the taping process and we have decided to forgo that step for cleaner look.

  

The finishing details of the house have been fun. We just spent the last couple of days completing our bedroom. It is an exciting stage where we get to be creative and the results are immediately very satisfying. We completed the tongue and groove ceiling and I wired in a ceiling fan to control the light from a switch and the fan from a pull chain. I think we are finally getting the hang of wiring. Now we get to choose wall paints and start cutting our trim. I think we are going to whitewash pine trim to match our white vinyl windows.

Tomorrow we dive into the plumbing. Wish us luck, thanks for your support and enjoy our photos.

The Power!

You'll notice in this photo- we have light which means we have power. Joey and I just finished wiring the house and escaped without a single zap or buzz.

Our first anniversary came and went- our gifts to each other- a new house! We celebrated with friends in our home in front of a raging wood stove fire. It was lots of fun and we have so many good memories from our first year as husband and wife.

Since then we have had a busy couple of weeks. Highlights include:
-Insulated our top floor
-Installed our gray water system
-Finished wiring
-Started plumbing (learned to sweat pipe)
-Purchased our bathroom appliances
-Transferred power and phone to our new house while keeping it at our little cabin.

More stories to come- we are tired and heading in for the night.