Just catching up............

Finally.  We drove to Seattle late on a Friday afternoon to sign the construction loan papers.

 

 Our Picnic Bench

Sometimes we like to go on a picnic.  Where better to go but to Deer Haven!

We not the only one watching the progress!

Mama Mia!
We are not just building a house, we are also learning how to make pizza.  This journey started last year.  Michele searched the internet for recipes.  She learned a lot about flours, doughs and sauces.  And we began to experiment.  We bought a pizza stone and a pizza paddle.  With that we were in business.  We got pretty good.  It helps to have an ex Material Science and a Process Engineer; we discussed everything but we thought we aren't experts so maybe learning from a professional pizza maker up our game.  There is a pizza restaurant in Seattle that offer classes on the weekends a few times a year.  Space is limited to about a dozen and they fill up very quickly but we scored.  We learned a few technical things but for the most part we were pretty close for a couple of novices.

So remember Paul and I met with the contractor to decide on where to place to house. We decided on the location but all weekend long it didn't feel right to me. On Monday our contractor called me and wanted to meet on the site..He said he had been thinking about where we had the house placed all weekend long..and even though they had the footings framed ready to pour he felt like we needed to move it 8ft to the East..that was funny because I thought it needed to be moved 8 ft to the South. So we agreed to move it both 8 ft to the East and 8 ft to the South. Now it feels perfect.

Framing for the footings

 Poured Footing (next step is the foundation walls)

I hope these are not my new front steps...

  Poured Footings...this is the breakfast nook.

We've looked everywhere for a fireplace front that we loved, this is important so it had to be more than just an average fireplace surround. We thought we wanted a concrete one but then I found this antique one. It was on a website showing how to refinish wood. So I drew up some plans and sent them to our cabinet maker to see if he could make us one. He feels that he can so here we go, we've found our fireplace. We will put a 70" Big Screen TV above this...my hope is to run a PowerPoint presentation of family pictures on it when it isn't being used as a TV...sort of like electronic art.

Lake Wilcoxson

After conference this morning we went for a ride.  Guess where we went; to Lake Wilcoxson

Lake Wilcoxson or so it was dubbed by the contractor.  The rain started to come heavy after the hole for the foundation was dug.  It filled with so much water that Ron had to pump it out (notice the white pipes at the back of the hole).  Below is the power pole with an extension chord going all the way back to the well pump house.