Weather

Look at the beautiful wood grain on our door.

Wow, Wow, Wow!  Things have been so incredibly busy, it's hard to pick up where I left off.  We picked up our front door.  IT IS GORGEOUS!  It's a bit rough, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  Our house is designed and built by regular people.  I don't need perfection, I just need character.

We drove about 160 miles west to meet Ab Yoder.  He's another Amish gentleman who will be building our kitchen cabinets.  We asked him to build them from beetle kill pine, again, because the wood is gorgeous.  That's what our front door is made of.  And his price was about $3000 less that our local kitchen cabinet dealer -- which was about $5000 less than Lowes.  It's not like we have this massive, elaborate kitchen design, either.  I just want simple, decent quality, and rustic.

The new windows finally were delivered and installed the moment they got here.  The house is now, more or less, secure.  Almost all of the doors are in, but I'm waiting (2 months now) for our front door hardware.  So Chuck just nailed a piece of plywood over the opening for the front door.  All of the other doors are in and locked.  Just don't want any bears sneaking around in my new house or anything.

Windows are going in.

Once the plumbing and electric are in, then we can get it inspected and can close up the walls and the ceilings.  We also are waiting for stucco.  But since we can't get any reasonable bids for stucco, we're just going to do it ourselves.  We got one bid this morning and it ate up 1/2 of our remaining budget.  No way!  Chuck will just hire some people, hire a cement mixer, and we'll do it ourselves.  What could possibly go wrong?

Straw gets EVERYWHERE!

It's snowing today.  The house is wrapped in a blanket of black plastic.  Gotta get it in stucco ASAP.

Les "weed-wacking" the walls.

The bales are all stacked.