Week 6

By far the most changes this week - it's giving us house-fever!!!! Walls went up everywhere and we faced a lot of decisions. We have finally decided on unfinished, engineered Brazilian Tigerwood which will be site-finished with a penetrating oil finish - phew!!!! It's fabulously hard, the oil finish is VOC-free and makes scratches and dents fixable on an individual basis and not nearly as visible as a polyurethane finish. This particular brand (Real Wood) is warrantied to go over radiant, has a wear-layer as thick as hardwood, and is more stable. FINALLY!!!!! Monday we got the news that when Dell had gone to the city to discuss our basement plans he figured out we were not engineered for GypCrete. Since this is the material that the radiant was to be in and the dimensions of the floor were set to - problem. Resolved by doing a different form of radiant (actually the same kind as Erika and Mark - installed below the subfloor, from under the floor) and sloping the landing slightly at the top of our current stairs. The county also put some huge restrictions on our crawl space. Since pouring concrete under any wood floor will cause it to warp (which we didn't realize until last weekend), we need to get the concrete poured before. And since the radiant has to go in under the concrete, the county considers the heated space a finished space, so indeed we must finish the basement. That includes electrical, plumbing, AND dry wall - ugh! We're not finishing the bathroom or painting at this point. Now we are really overbudget! Thank goodness we paid less in taxes so we're still covered with our savings. Now that we're past that bump, we are getting really excited about having the extra space the basement offers. It will be great to get the exercise equipment out again and have a large, heated space for the kiddos to play when it's nasty outside (feels like all the time recently!). More house news... we have decided based on how the room looks that we will not put the tv over the fireplace. The funny thing is that Dean was the one to talk me into it (it took a lot of convincing and the whole mirror idea to do it), but then when we started to walk around our living room, he was the one too convince me otherwise! The fireplace will look so much better without the tv - really allow the stone to show and especially excited about our mantle - a huge chunk of beautiful cedar from the property. The wood just got out of the kiln and now is to undergo some finishing steps before being ready. After walking around the house with the walls in place, we've also opted to move a couple walls - make the office smaller and living room larger, no door on the laundry area of the mudroom, and put the door on the otherside of the powder room. Next week, it appears that our stairs and 3rd floor will be going in! The radiant in the basement and concrete will be poured at the end of next week. Dean, Dell, and I are headed to Georgetown (Seattle) on Tuesday to look at granite/quartz countertops, tile flooring, and carpeting. No decisions to be made yet, just need to start looking so we can make decisions and also get local bids for the work (not that any of those have panned out so far - pretty flaky really.). On the family front, Dean & I were both struck down with the cold from the kiddos. Neither of us were as sick as they were (maybe Airborne does help?) but it still made for a long week. Dean has scheduled his recertification test and a week-long class to prepare for it, all in August. We'll go as a family to Portland for the weekend before the class and then Dean will stay on by himself. Spring soccer started last week with a great win against long-time rival Bella Italia, however, some controversy over "stolen players" put a damper on it for Dean. Gotta love the small town politics! Ainsley's definately showing signs of being three - sweet and talkative and compliant one moment and stubborn and screaming the next. Only a couple of melt downs this week and mainly due to hunger or fatigue, however, when they happen - wow! Funny things with her this week - she's getting really excited whenever Ian babbles telling us how he's talking to her. She was coloring a princess and I asked which one it was and she told me it was "Sleeping Booty"!!! Ian's starting to use his legs to crawl instead of just dragging himself by his arms (not that he doesn't cruise that way!). He's able to pull himself to standing now and is walking using our furniture and walls. He's learned how to hit the floor with his bum versus his head, although has nailed his head often not paying attention to where he's going when crawling. He ate pasta for the first time this week and loved it. Not much going on with me - work is always busy. I started a monthly "health" competition between employees with prizes of healthy food, gym membership, or massage (what everyone will choose I'm sure!). Our river otter project is on hold until after the breeding season - will resume for July/August. And we've added a cougar project for the Skokomish tribe - although less likely to be intimately involved in that one due to the distance. Here's a few pics from the week... Basement Rec Room /Monday progress

Tuesday

Wednesday

Dancing in the fireplace

Thursday - yes, snow again! In fact, the framers showed up at 7am (no, we get no privacy in the mornings!) and then disappeared for a little while. Dean ran across them coming back when he was leaving for work and they told them that they had driven up the hill to see how pretty the snow looked in the trees!!!!

Friday

Laundry room/Mud room and where the connection to the current house will be

Pantry

Kitchen and breakfast nook

Dining room

Office off living room

Living room - fireplace between windows

Powder room (with door on wrong side)

Stairs (well, soon...)

Plumbing for basement bath (3/4 bath)

Lulled to sleep by the stroller

Girl on a mission

Spaghetti then blue jello makes a big mess!

"Helping" with dishes

Shoving pasta in as fast as I can make it!

On to the next burn pile

Watering a tree

Ainsley's new haircut (by me)

Week 5

Busy week and LOTS of house changes... we have walls!!! Framing started Monday and the basement level is nearly complete. It was so fun on Thursday climbing up to the platform where our main floor will be and looking out. Our next delivery of wood came in on Friday so we should have main floor work starting this coming week. We ordered our fireplace this week and they started to frame in the box for it. It won't go in until after framing is complete but it was fun to picture it. We are STILL deciding about flooring (UGH!) and met with the company that will work out a security system plan. Today (if we can drag Ainsley away from her train set) we're headed to Dell's (our builder - Ainsley sings "Dell the Builder Yes He Can!" whenever we see him - a takeoff of Bob the Builder) to look at 6 pallets of stone. He had it leftover from a previous job and it was the most expensive stone at the store. He's offered to sell it to us for cheap so we can use it for our fireplace and stonework outside AND he can get it off his property! Good deal for us both provided we like it (which we think we do based on the few pieces we've seen). The kiddos have been sick with a nasty cold bug all week - continuous low grade fevers of 100, snotty nose, and a bone-rattling cough. Dean & I have been downing the Airborne but yesterday he started to feel a little puny and after 2 1/2 hours up with Ian last night, I'm feeling a little under the weather today too. Thursday & Friday had such beautiful weather it really made me yearn for summer - hopefully it will be a nice one this year. Dean starts soccer today with their games to be played on the brand new turf field at the Peninsula Community College. Ainsley's been asked to join a soccer team in the fall - AYSO U-6 - coached by a friend of ours. She's very excited to play soccer like Daddy. I'm sure we'll be practicing a lot this summer. They're only 8 minute quarters so not a long time to stay focused. We're hoping gymnastics will start again soon and Ian may start into Kindermusik in the fall since there will be enough kids. We're looking at dance classes since A loves to dance, but we'll see how that goes. Pics from the week... Last Sunday's burn...

What was left after the burn - yay!

Tuesday

Wednesday... yes, that's snow! Luckily, it melted Thursday.

Thursday

Today

Week 4

It was a slow week of work on the house as we waited for the foundation to dry (through numerous rainy days) and prepped the site for this coming week. Framing starts tomorrow!!!! 2-3 weeks for the basement & middle floor and then another 2 weeks for the upstairs. We had a little set back and are back to discussing the pros and cons of radiant heating thanks to the manufacturer's warranty on different wood products. It looks like if we do radiant, african tigerwood flooring will not be able to be warrantied (we're still researching that). Which means we need to pick a different flooring type or a different type of wood - and so far having a difficult time finding a company that will warranty a wood product over radiant. So back to the drawing board - ahhhh!!!!

We did have good news concerning our taxes this week - be barely owe at all!!!! We LOVE our accountant!!!! Last year we owed quite a bit and we had been assuming we would be owing more this year since we made more. So we'd been stocking away some money for that and dreading the meeting with the accountant. However, he had increased my withholding on a monthly basis since last year and that made ALL the difference!!! So now we have more money towards the build and hopefully furniture when we're done!!!! It would be nice to actually have furniture for our house!

Ainsley had a rough start to the week - very naughty. She threw countless tantrums and we couldn't figure out quite what was going on (besides the fact she's nearly 3!). She started eating a TON - like 2 dinners a night and taking extra long naps with full nights of sleep and she seems to have grown an inch! So growing pains refer to much more! Her pants are all getting short but her 3T pants are too long - the life of a "Short"!!!!! After we figured that out, she's been much better behaved and actually quite funny. Her vocabulary continues to amaze us and she's counting to 20 (almost right every time). We've been talking about capital and lowercase letters ("That is NOT a Q Mommy!") and working on recognizing letters better. She's been singing the ABC's for so long, but I think more from memory than actually understanding all the letters.

Ian's still sleeping well - thank goodness!!!! I was about to the point where I couldn't stand it anymore. He's only up once a night and only up long enough to eat. If we weren't all sleeping in a 12 x 12 box, we'd probably just let him cry it out and he could easily make it through the night, but I try to not let it disturb Dean and Ainsley's sleep too much. He's trying to use his legs to crawl more, but he's moving around pretty good using the army crawl. He really wants to stand and walk everywhere - you have to physically bend him at the waist to get him to sit. He's been saying "ma ma" (though not just about me) and growling a lot and his new trick is waving! He discovered the child gate and REALLY wants through it so we are having to be careful about keeping it closed. His little dimple is starting to show in his right cheek, maybe he's thinning out - his weight fell into the 55% last visit, the lowest it has been in his entire life! It's hard to believe he'll be NINE months next week, the time has flown! Even more amazing is that Ainsley will be THREE in a month! Craziness!

Ian pics...

The Williamson's came over on Tuesday for dinner and A & P had a fab time playing in the mud and getting to look at the excavator up close!

The kids weren't the only ones having fun!