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.