more exterior

because the interior is still a bit "undeveloped", we'll focus on the "exterior" for a little longer. also, it's "sunny". we've had an unusually dry winter which makes for excellent "working on the exterior time" as well as "a super scaly beth".

look at the bottom of the photo below. see the window hole? if i were down there, i'd be waving. or maybe flipping you off. but probably doing a jig. that's our new apartment. it's fancy, but we try not to get too uppity in our basement digs.

put on your imagination caps for just a moment

it's hard to see, but besides all the resting and relaxing and cedar board staining, joren's plumbed and wired the entire house. i'd take pictures, but it looks like, well, a bunch of tubes and wires. fascinating!

we'll get an inspection on both soon and with any luck we'll begin the insulating. our home will be lined with hope and optimism and maybe a smidgen of regret and hints of despair. but mostly hope. also newspapers and straw.

cedar siding, part 74

this is where the milling, sanding and staining of the seven thousand cedar boards really gets exciting. hold on!

not that i didn't love the glow of the protective yellow paint stuff. or the profile of the tyvek.

this is what i like to call "the cedar staining station", or "potentially hazardous fume central". in between all the resting and relaxing, we stained about seven thousand cedar boards for the exterior--but not before joren milled and sanded every one, bless his heart. his charming wife insisted on 2 inch, perfectly smooth boards. none of that lazy 6 inch crap for us! we like to make things as hard as we can around here.

joren's dad was here for thanksgiving. the basses love to spend their vacation working. i mean, the the real basses. not the ones that marry in. the kind that like cocktails on the beach.

it's all mele kalikimaka around the jobsite

welcome to our holiday themed construction site...

the tree joren said we didn't need, but i stole one anyhow. i managed to dig into our storage unit and pull out some goodwill, christmas spirit and old bulbs.

the fire box! ready to burn a hole in your coat OR heart!

ahhh, vacation.

we're all feeling rested and ready to get back to work after our 3 month vacation, hence no blog posts. sorry about that. anyhow, i'm sure you had much more interesting things to do than check in on the house blog. eat a giant turkey leg! celebrate the birth of baby jesus! get out the illegal fireworks at midnight and wake up the neighbors! i love the holidays. equal parts bloating, loneliness and too much family. holidays.

fire in the hole!

almost as exciting as our favorite ride at silver dollar city! almost. but definitively more exciting than dressing up in old cowboy and salloon-y type garb for an old time photo. ok. maybe equal amounts of exciting.

first, joren in the hole.

the stove, up on blocks, atop the wheely cart.

measure twice, hook the stove up once.

apparently, the instructions from denmark were less helpful than you might imagine. danes. i won't go into the details (mostly because i A. don't understand them and B. don't care) but joren spent about 100 hours researching how to hook an insanely heavy, danish stove to a NON MASONRY WALL. i am so tired of pretending to listen to things about NON MASONRY WALLS. it's exhausting!

and... we have fire.

for safety reasons, we've kicked some of the cardboard out of the way and broomed back the sawdust a foot or two.