Cedar Stained Siding

To all my followers: Cookout on August 1st, 2009 6:30 pm....come and join us for some food and good times, plus you can check out the house in person!
We wanted the color of cedar and I think we got it. Eric and I are happy with the color. What do you guys think?

This looks dangerous, doesn't it?

This side litterally took about 15 minutes to stain...even with two coats.

This "high side" was the first side that they attempted. It was the hardest and took the longest to do.

This is my cousin, Tiny, he graciously helped us apply the stain to the log siding. With this fancy spayer, it made for a pretty easy job. I can say that b/c I was only gophering and taking pics....but, I'm sure it was a lot easier than brushing or rolling the stain on.

We have absolutely had so much help on our house. My cousin Butch helped us out tremondously on getting the stain.

Sunny House

There is a dug well behind the house, it's probably been there since before the 1950's. We didn't have any idea if we could use it for water or not but, my dad had Dale Grose to bring his well drilling rig out and clean out the well. He pulled a bunch of trash out of it & FOUND WATER. So, we are really excited and think that we may be able to run our house on this well. This is a picture of some the metal dad pulled out with a magnet. The well is 88 feet deep and there's about 15 feet of water. Dale told us that it will pump about 8 gallons a minute.

I called today and ordered a water testing kit just to make sure the water is safe for drinking. I'm going to pay to have the water tested for arsenic, fluoride, lead, and nitrates. I also have to call another lab to have it tested for bacteria. It never hurts to be safe! Eric thinks I'm crazy and am wasting the money but, I don't care. If there is something bad in it, he'll be apologizing to me.

Dad went out on the farm this morning and took this picture. It is really the best picture of the house, yet. You can actually see the color of the roof. Eric said that it looked like a picture out of a magazine.

Check out our siding!

Our house looks really tall here!

Eric and I both love our burgundy door & think it goes great with the siding, hopefully it will go great with the color of the stain! We are getting a cedar color and hopefully by next weekend.

This picture was taken from inside & it was raining.

We've had outlet boxes in for a while, I just forgot to get a picture of them.

Everything is still messy outside but, that will change soon! The outside of the house is pretty much finished, we just need to get gutters and build the porch and deck.

Eric's Uncle Clinton & his crew are doing a wonderful job, especially considering this is the first time that they've installed this type.

The corners make it look like real logs....they were the corners alone cost almost as much as all the siding!

June 19, 2009

We've had the trim up around the windows and doors for a couple of weeks now but, I'm just getting the picture up. We hope to get the siding installed sometime within the next two weeks. We love our garage door. I plan to paint the side door the same color brown.

I absolutely love our front door after mom and I painted it. It matches our roof perfectly.

The focus of this weekends work was getting our water line installed. Dad rented this bobcat/ditch witch. We have over 3,000 feet of water line to run and therefore lots of digging. Well, dad and Eric didn't exactly know what they were doing but, they did try their best. They got about 120 feet of the line in, in 7 and 1/2 hours. They ran into a lot of rock, which makes for extremely hard digging. We have called several "professional ditch diggers" to get estimates and no one has called us back. So, we're not exactly sure what's going to happen with the water line. But, dad and Eric did get in our power line and now we're just waiting on the power company to do their job!

Windows...June 6, 2009

Awwwhh...8 beautiful windows. We love them!

Eric on the Kubota Tractor, he loves getting his picture taken!

Here is a great foundation for our stairs that lead to the kitchen.

Teddy, Brantie, and Eric sawing out the stairs.

This is the brainstorming session on "how to do the stairs."

Here is the view of the windows from inside.

Here is the first window that was installed and I have quite a funny story to share. The 2nd window to be installed was opened from the cardboard and the plastic was taken off. Just as they were getting ready to install......I noticed it was BROKEN. OMG....we couldn't believe the window was broken. We (dad, Teddy, Eric, and Brantie) opened another one, it was broken too. Then we opened up another one....It was BROKEN too! We couldn't believe it, 3 out of 4 windows were broken. I frantically tried to get ahold of the distributer, no one was in the office and I left a message on the reps house phone! Eric was worried to death that they wouldn't replace the broken windows b/c we had them in our possession for 2 months. I assured him that I would have everything taken care of. Well, we decided not to open anymore windows until we heard from the distributor and knew how they were going to deal with our HUGE problem. So, in the mean time, Teddy & Brantie worked on building our stairs, Eric, Dad, and I worked on filling gravel around our drains and prepping for the backfill. So, we worked for several hours and then after lunch we were upstairs checking out the 1 window that was able to be installed. THERE WAS A CRACK IN IT AS WELL! It was very small but, sure enough a crack.......Well, after a few more minutes of panic, my dad decided to feel the crack with his finger nail and it was glue that looked so much like a crack, it fooled us all. We proceeded to check the rest of the "cracks" and they were glue, very deceiving glue. WHAT A RELIEF! Our windows are fine, we still had the afternoon to get them installed and so now we have windows! Crazy & Funny day!

Mom and I gathered some scrap material and made this wonderful dining table.

This is our shower in the master bath.

This is the shower/tub in the guest bathroom.

It's a Wrap

Exactly 1 year prior to when this picture was taken, Eric and I were standing very close to this exact spot, exchanging our wedding vowels. We spent our anniversary working on our house but, it was still a good day.

Mom and I swept out the whole basement. It's still not very clean but, way better than before. Eric helped a little but, him and dad worked really hard putting the house wrap on the outside of the house.

May 31, 2009

Lowes should be paying us for this advertisement!