Today I’m playing a little catch up. Again. Neither of us has touched this blog since May. I can’t believe it’s been that long! I’m not even going to try to get us caught up to current today, but I’ll get us a bit closer.

Before I get started, I’m going to answer this burning question that I’m sure is racing through your mind right now: No, we have not been able to move into our house yet. We celebrated the one year anniversary of buying our forever home on September 24, by drinking some lovely Prosecco at the rental house. Sigh.

Anyway, let’s talk about a couple things that have happened.

Windows

Back in November last year we ordered some windows for our house. I don’t know if you’ll recall, but the front windows in the living and dining rooms were a mess, all scratched up, one of two panes missing, wouldn’t open, or all three. These are the view windows across the front of the house, looking out across the balcony and to the stunning view beyond. We went all out for these four. We also ordered windows for my office, the kitchen, and the breakfast nook. Two of these projects, my some-day office and the breakfast nook, have to be postponed. We could certainly store all these windows for some unknown period of time. As it turns out, we were able to use the windows I’d ordered for my office downstairs. I’ll get more into that in a bit.

On window install day, I got to our house pretty much exactly when the window guys did. In fact, I followed them up the driveway. It was slow going. Their truck did not like the combined weight of the trailer with all the windows in it and our hill. We all made it, however. Right away they set up a spot on the driveway to work, and started unloading glass.

They started with the hardest-to-install windows first: the living and dining rooms. Naturally we begin by removing the old glass and frames.

Then put the new windows in. Ooh, they’re so very pretty! And they actually open. What a concept.

In their “spare” time, they also replaced the little window in the TV room. I’d originally ordered this little square window for the kitchen, to replace a fixed window over what will eventually be the coffee bar. However, we discovered that the square window wouldn’t fit, and ordered a window of the correct size for the kitchen. That left this square one to go somewhere else. Luckily, there are two other square windows of exactly the same size, one upstairs in the living room overlooking the barn, and one downstairs in the TV room. We are planning on eventually replacing the little window in the living room with a door to lead out to a deck we haven’t built yet. That means that the only place left for this one is the TV room. Okay. The TV room it is! I’m so very glad I had the forethought to match the size of this new window to those a couple of existing windows.

They replaced the living room, dining room, and TV room windows on Friday. They returned on Monday to finish up. On Monday this old thing that looked horrible was scratched all up, and was difficult to open…

was replaced by a new beauty that is the opposite in every regard.

The windows I ordered for my office were, once again, the same size as a number of windows that are already in the house. For symmetry. I don’t know about you, but having a bunch of windows leaning against walls and in the way seems like a recipe for disaster. Instead of saving these three windows for my some-day office, we used them to replace horrible original windows downstairs across the front of the house. Ta da!

We do still have one large window, and one sliding glass door that we have to store somewhere out of the way, but that’s only two windows, which is much better than storing a total of six of the things. Whew.

Driveway to the barn

We had originally planned on pretty much ignoring the driveway shooting off to the barn for some time. We were talking to the gravel guys about the gravel we’d need for under the propane tank (this is a different story, and not one I’m going into today). He couldn’t help but notice the disaster of our barn driveway. He happened to mention (cough) that having gravel work done costs less if you have multiple jobs done at one time; instead of doing one this year, and another next year, it’s far cheaper to do them all this year. We had the guy bid for just the gravel under the propane tank, and also to patch the scar in asphalt left from repairing the line to the septic tank from the house, and graveling that secondary driveway. In the end, we did the obvious thing, and saved ourselves some cash by spending more now, and getting all three projects done at one time. This is how it looked earlier in the day before the work started.

The day before all this work was to happen Dave and Grant, our guest from SoCal, moved everything out of the carport to behind the barn where it wouldn’t be in the way. I cannot tell you how glad I am that Grant was here at that time. Not only did he love to help do this, as well as a bunch of other things, but we had so much fun while he was here. Bonus: Grant got to see the gravel work done. The two of them took a bunch of videos on Gravel Day, but the editing that was supposed to happen to them hasn’t yet, so those videos are not included here. Not yet. Hopefully one day they will be.

Anyway… Dave went out to the house early, before Grant was fully mobile (he’s 18, so he sleeps a lot), so I took Grant over a tiny bit later. Turns out Grant and I arrived just in time to not be able to go up the driveway in the car. It was blocked by the big stuff getting staged down below. Grant gleefully walked the ¼ mile up the road, and I ran errands.

Now we start clearing the driveway of pretty much everything.

This last driveway destruction picture shows them cutting a wider opening to this driveway. Dave’s intention was to make it wide enough that he could turn onto this secondary driveway when going between the house and barn. Well… turns out that my little car is the only one that can make this turn. We do have some extra gravel, though, and Dave hopes to use it at some point to widen this curve a little more.

Gravel delivery…

Spreading the gravel…

It still amazes me, after a lifetime of watching roadwork being done, how much can actually be accomplished in a single day. The finished driveway to the barn is a thing of beauty. Apparently, for now, you’re simply going to have to believe me. I don’t seem to have a photo of it all done! LOL Egads.

Beams

We’ve told so many people about the three beams in the kitchen that I don’t remember if we’ve written about it here or not. The ceiling over the living room, dining room (I almost typed “diving” room; wouldn’t that be fun!), and kitchen is vaulted. Like everything else, it’s covered with cedar, finished with big open beams that hide the seams. Gorgeous! It’s really lovely. The one thing about it, though, is that the way the house was built all of those beams start at the peak, and run to the outside walls… except for three of them in the kitchen. These final three beams, instead of being supported by the exterior studs, were held up by… egads. I can hardly say it. Well, here’s a picture. The three beams did not extend all the way to the exterior studs, but instead were supported by the soffit over the kitchen cupboards, which in turn was held up by the cupboards. Who thinks up these things? Why would you do this? Why was this considered to be a good idea? The mind reels.

We bought three 20-foot, kiln-dried beams. Dave cut a sample of the old stain off of one of the beams to be replaced. Grant and I took it over to Sherwin Williams, and had them match the color. They did an amazing job of it, too. I put several coats on all sides of all the beams before Beam Replacement Day. The contractor brought over a bit of portable scaffolding, took down the first beam, replaced it with the new one, and so on.

And ta da! They’re gorgeous. Don’t look too closely, as the old beams are all rough-cut timber, and the new ones are not, but other than that they look like they were always there. It’s so nice to not have to worry about one of them falling on my head.

Closing

There’s more, a lot more, but this is all I have for you today. The sun is coming around the corner of the house, and is now shining in the window, which means it’s time for me to quit my desk until tomorrow.