A thought to carry into the New Year

Peace on Earth will come to stay-when we live Christmas everyday.

Some of my favorite things

The Christmas mouse



A Christmas tree for upstairs

A touch of green for the bathroom

Where did December go?

Gosh!  I can not believe how long it has been since I last sat down to post here.  Christmas has come and gone and the new year is almost upon us.  I do hope each and everyone of you had a Christmas full of Love and Laughter with family and friends.  Some of you were able to come to our open house, and I did so enjoy this time spent with all of you.  For those of you who could not make it I would love to share some pictures with you as I dooooooo love decorating for Christmas.

          

These are a few of the the pictures I have taken and I will post more tomorrow.  I will also be posting some pictures of the inside of our home without all the Christmas decorations maybe in the beginning of January.

Until tomorrow Hugs Carol 

A house without built in closets and cabinets!

I have to go way back to the time of our new home plans being drawn up.  We had agreed that there would be no built in closets, no built in kitchen cabinets and no built in linen closets or vanities in bathrooms, so a soon as the house plans were approved we started to build our own free standing versions of all of these things.  These are a few of the things we made:
Our wardrobe which serves as our closet:

Our dressers have doors and shelves instead of drawers.

My kitchen cupboard houses my microwave, coffee pot, spices, in the top portion and kettles, toaster and misc. in the bottom. The drawers are used for cooking/ baking utensils and dish cloths and towels.

We have a open shelving unit to hold canisters, bread loaf pans, pie pans and some of my bowls.

Eating utensils are kept in this little bin unit next to the fridge. Some of you may recognize this as one of the pieces that I used to sell in the store. 

We designed and built our kitchen island, incorporating the look of a farmhouse table with a bottom shelf to hold our redware bowls and also to house our kitchen sink.  Here is where we have our meals, play board games, roll out dough and all manner of things. I couldn't be more pleased with how this design turned out.   Lyle and I truly enjoy creating things that look like they belong in a different era, are functional and our own designs.  For both Lyle and I there is so much pleasure in creating something unique using the talents that God has given each of us.

Now that the floors are finished we started the window and door trim.

Colin and Katherine did the pre-cutting and staining of most of the window and door trim which saved a lot of time.  When Lyle and I were ready to start applying the trim all we had to do was cut the pieces to the exact lenght we needed and nail it into place. In some of these pictures you can see that the lighting is being installed as we work.  Yippee!  My old time gas stove had to be put off for a while but I was able to find a old looking wall mount exhaust fan to place above the gas range we did purchase.  I am actually happy with the way it turned out, until some day when we are able to buy the old gas stove.  I do hate having to be practical but find I am pretty good at it.  Arrrgh!

                            We then started making our interior doors.

These are my pantry room doors and also hide my washer and dryer.

I hope that you can see the door pull we made on this door.  All of our interior doors have this same look in door pulls.  This is one of the things along with the old looking rusty hinges that make me think of a much earlier time in our history.

Since we have no traditional door knobs with locks, these are the bathroom door hooks which give us the privacy of having the bathroom all to ourselves. 
I believe it was the 14th or 16th of January that the stove and refrigerator were delivered and then we were ready to move in.

Fresh Evergreen Boughs

     Decorating our home with evergreen boughs is one of the oldest winter holiday traditions and represents everlasting life and hope for the return of spring.  Used in festivals since ancient times this tradition was first introduced to the northern states in the 1800s and has become ever more popular. 
    I love the simplicity of using evergreen boughs or cuttings  from leaf bearing bushes, puting them in a container or just making a bundle and  adding a fabric bow.  Just a walk around your backyard might give you the things you need for these very simple decorations.
    Above all don't be afraid to try!  Nothing in nature is perfect and is not meant to be, so just play with the things you find and add this to one of the fun things you do for the holidays.

With most of the walls in place we were able to start the greatroom floor.

As areas were finished lighting was installed.



Perimeter lighting is added downstairs and the washer and dryer were delivered at the end of December.





We finished the cedar above the shower and the plumbers were then able to finish their work in the bathroom.



We started laying the greatroom floor in the Kitchen area and here Lyle is placing the last few boards by the front door.

When I had finished staining the floor we built the railing around the basement stairwell.  The builber then carried out this same look for the upstairs walkway railing.  The railings are all made out of very old 2x4's which I was able to find through a company in Michigan.



Basement stairwell railing.



And here the builder was finally able to return and start the upper railing.





I do love how these railings turned out.
Gosh!  It is fun going through these pictures and seeing again how things came together.



And now our work really began!

With the painting finished our two ceiling fans could be put up.  They are super energy efficient and have greater pitch to the blades which helps a great deal with air flow throughout the house.

Except for the pantry all of our walls up to the 8 foot level are either pine boards or hand hewn cedar with plaster in between the boards.  We first put up all of the walls and then started laying the floors which are also pine boards.  We are now in December and we moved in January 28th so we were out here working 7 days a week from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m. But it was so worthwhile seeing each wall go up and then standing back to view our work.
And of course having to tell each other that we do great work.  LOL
Oh yes and that other saying?  Gosh I'm tired-but it's a good tired.

What can I say you use whatever you can to keep going.  This is the area leading to the pantry.

The downstairs bedroom and the wall next to the frond door.

The tile under the fireplace is in and our chimney is also in place but not completely hooked up yet.

Here is Hubby cutting boards for the kitchen walls.  We both measured, he did the cutting I stained and then we both screwed the boards in place.   It actually worked very well doing it this way.  When all the boards were screwed in place we were finished with the wall.  No going back to stain.

This is just so you all know I actually did work with Hubby on our new home.  And yes those actually are  flannel lined work pants-yup-Mens Carhartt-a bit of a change from the skirts I always wore in the store don't you think?

The Beams

Gosh it seems that we waited forever to be far enough along with the inside work to be able to see the beams put in place.

These beams all came in with ultra perfect edges-oh!  not a good look for a primitive house.  Sooooo I pulled out that hand hewing tool again.  Oh! I do love that tool.

As I think I said before Colin came up with the design for the star window and the offset side beams on the center beam was Lyles idea.  I love the idea of creating something unique.

So the beams are in and now we need a painter.  This poor man worked so hard to get the look I wanted and he did come pretty close.  Not quite the color I had in mind but he tried so hard and kept coming back that I told his it was fine and actually gave him a $150 dollar bonus just for his effort.

With the cost of this paint job I keep wondering if Lyle regretted his decision not to let me do it myself.  LOL

Oh!  What a mess it always was in here.  Each day we would try to clean up when everyone had finished work for the day, just to have it semi clean the next morning when we returned.

The Furnace is in and offering a little heat

As soon as the furnace was operateing the drywall contractor was able to tape out the drywall sand it down and get it ready for the primer coat of paint.  We were now laying the ceramic tile in the pantry and the two bathrooms.  That finished we started work on the wall which would be directly behind the wood burning stove.  We assembled all the specs on the fireplace and the double wall chimney.  We showed this to the builder and the heating company and the builder called the inspector, who said follow the specs of the wood burning stove and pipe specs.  Okay I know this seems like a lot of steps to take  to make sure we had enough clearence to a non conbustible wall, but we didn't want to have to do this wall over again if it wasn't right.   All was well!  Or so we thought.
  Over the 2x4 in the wall we attached 1/2" dura-rock concrete board and over that we applied some old metal barn tin roofing that one of our dear customers gave to us.  Thank you so much Sarah.  We finished the wall and called the inspector.  All was not well and this is what we had to do after we took everything off the wall.
Install 1/2" dura-rock from the floor to the second floor -then cut 2'' strips of dura-rock in essence framing out the original sheets of dura-rock.  We had to put a second strip over the first one creating a 1" deep frame.

Here you can see the back piece the framing and now we added full sheets of dura-rock over the frame which then created the 1" air space that code required.  This made the inspector very happy.  And yes it was a pain to redo all our work but the wall is safer and it turned out looking better with this 1" build out.

If you like rustic we really hit that mark here.
Now we were finally able to start working on the walls.  We started in the downstairs bedroom trying to stay out of the way of the contractors.

This room has two walls  done in hand hewn cedar and two in pine boards.  I did love doing the hand hewing.  I know it sounds like a lot of work but being able to hand hew as it was done in a earlier time was very special to me.  This picture also shows that we almost have this floor complete.  A bit premature as none of the flooring went in until all the walls were in place. 
     From here we then started working on the main floor bathroom which is all done in tounge and groove cedar.

I did spend a whole lot of time on the internet looking for sinks and faucets and lighting that I couldn't live without.  LOL

It is now just about the same time of year as last year that we started working on the inside, without a furnace or our wood burning stove hooked up. We indeed dressed in multiple layers.

As you have been able to see from my last post and also this one there was a lot of insulating and drywalling to be done.  This stairway goes up to a six foot walkway which leads to Lyles and my loft bedroom.

This is looking up into the loft from the kitchen area.  It is pretty high to the top of the ceiling which is probably why Lyle wouldn't let me rent staging to paint it myself.

And here I am up on the walkway taking a picture of my two buddies in the kitchen area.

Okay here we are again up on the walkway looking into the loft bedroom which will have its' own bathroom.  Are you getting tired yet from running up and down?

  Lyle and I this summer insulated the garage and then put up 3/8 inch plywood because 1/2 to 3/4 inch drywall was too heavy for me to lift and hold in position while it was being screwed in place.  When I look around and up at the great room ceiling I shudder thinking of two quys up on staging putting 4 by 8 sheets of drywall in place.  We let the workers finish the insulating and drywalling and only came once or twice a week to check progress.  I used days away from working to "encourage"  the heating company to get the furnace hooked up.
As I said we don't have any duct work except for a little in the basement but even heat in the basement would help warm the area the  work was being done in.
Not only did we want warmer conditions to work in we needed that heat to seal the drywall.  I did lots and lots of encouraging to get heat. LOL
 Actually I couldn't have been to bad since most of the contractors said we were very easy to work with.  Thank You Lord for giving us a huge helping of patience.
    

Have you ever thought about all the stuff behind your drywall?

There are pipes and wires running everywhere.  And we opted for no ductwork in our walls so we have less of a maze in those walls than most houses have.    I just laughed as for a while when you managed to traverse the make shift stairs to the basement it looked liked the underside of a octopus with all its' tentacles hanging down.  This is just a small sampling.

If you wanted to sweep down here you acutally had to carry everything to one side of the basement clean and then repeat the process for the other side.  Sure am glad that is over really really don't enjoy concrete dust.

When all those things that make your lights go on when you flip a switch, or water come out of the faucet when you turn it on,  and your washing machine

actually empties into a drain instead of running out onto your floor are in place, then they start hiding all that stuff with insulation.  Okay maybe that isn't really what insulation is for, but that certainly is what drywall is used for.  LOL