Finishing Touches!!!

The house is starting to look a little more finished. We hired a couple different crews to get some of the finishing touches complete. The basement is being framed in, and drywall put up just around the utility room, to keep "little helpers" out of that area. The garage is being insulated and drywalled, so that Todd can make good use of the space, and get it organized how he likes---the only place in the house that he claims belongs to him!!! We should have someone coming in to install stairs on the front and back decks in the next little bit as well. I think Todd and I are going to attempt to install deck railing.....

We finally have the rounded windows on the back wall finished. As well, as the baseboards are installed. We will have a painter in on Aug 28-30 to get them all painted up. It is looking good!

We still need to buy the door hardware, but other than that, they are finished--okay,I guess they still need to be painted as well, but that will happen soon enough (Aug 28th).

The baseboards in the closets---they look so nice completed!!!!

And finally, the boys' birthday present for the year!!! We are hoping to have it completed by Friday, just in time for Jacob's birthday! The gravel should be delivered either this afternoon, or tomorrow morning. So far, we have spent 10 hours on the set. We had to put up the post wall (30 ft x 30 ft), and raise the playground structure itself. We will be laying down vapour barrier before the gravel is dropped off, and the gravel will be 12" deep (the recommended depth to prevent injuries from falls at 8 ft).

I will put up a few more pictures in the upcoming weeks as we finish things off. Stay tuned........

43 New Trees

Here are our new trees. There are 43 Blue Spruce. Most of them are around 15 ft tall, with a few being closer to 20 +ft. The are estimated to be about 15 years old. We put 10 trees around the back deck, as we are planning on putting in stairs (off the deck), down to a patio area, with a retaining wall. The spruce would be just outside the retaining wall.

Our smaller spruce have also budded!!! We lost a few over the winter, but most are doing pretty good.

Even our poplar tree that we grabbed from my parent's place has finally budded.

View from the Northwest side of our property.

We still have 2 trees that are filling in the gap in front. The trees look great out front, from inside the house, and out by the road!!!!

Off to the east side of the property!

Another picture from the road!

The trees right in front of the house (west side of the driveway).

All the trees still need to be straightened, but we will wait a week or so, until after they have settled.

Hopefully in the fall we will get in some poplar trees, and fill in a few more of the gaps, and add a little variety!!!

New Trees

I know, it has been forever since I last posted, but we have a few new things going on!!! Our grass is coming in not too bad this spring, but would do much better if we could ever get some nice weather.
We have planted our garden, so hopefully we will get some good stuff out of it this year. The boys planted potatoes, carrots, onions, lettuce, beans, peas, 3 strawberry plants, and pickles!!!!!
Todd also went to a tree nursery that was having an auction, and bought 43 10-20 ft blue spruce. Those are being delivered late next week, or early the week after. We will have to stake all of those down, especially with the winds we have been getting.
We are looking at getting our deck railings done, and finally some stairs up to the front door. We had some quotes done to get our driveway paved, but we are going to wait on that for maybe another year.
I will get some pictures up once we get the new trees in, and once the garden has started to grow.

Outside Rock

Finally, pictures of the exterior rock!!! We also had them do the parging while here. It is not quite complete. We will probably have them back in the spring to put rock on the posts of the deck (once we get it framed in!!!).

Almost done the fire place!!!

Just a reminder that if you want to see a larger image, just click on the picture, and it will open it full screen.

Fireplace Finished

Here is the finished product!!! As you can see, the boys love the new TV!!! We are very satisfied with how it turned out. I will get some pictures up of the outside rock in the next day or two. The front of the garage still needs to be completed, and they are about halfway done the outside wall of the fireplace. Todd is very happy that he chose not to do this project!!!
We are going to be putting a sealing coat on the hearth stones, so that if anything gets spilled on them, it won't stain. It takes 48 hours to dry though, so we are waiting for a time when we are going out of town for the weekend.

Rock!!!

The hearth stone still need to be put down, but that should be happening today.

We will have to put the TV back in place once all the dust is cleaned up.

Mantle

Here are a few pictures of the mantle, now stained and in place. There will be rock all around the fireplace, the mantle, and the TV--alot of rock. The mason was here today, and dropped off some of his tools, so he should be starting first thing tomorrow morning. He will still need to put up the metal lathe outside, as well as inside, and then put on a scratch coat. Needless to say, it will be a few days before we actually have any rock on the house. He will need to do about 500 sq ft. This is on the outside, front of the house/garage, as well as the fireplace wall, inside and out.

The guy who did the woodworking on the log, figures it to be from a 100 year old tree. It was in my grandma's house for 100 years, so we are looking at a very old piece of wood!! The staining turned out real nice--just as we were hoping it would!!!

We originally had hardwood on the hearth, but ripped that out this weekend, as we decided to put some stones down instead. They are 20" x 20", and are of the same type as our rock for the rest of the house.

A close up of the "worm holes".