Half Baked House

At some point during the past month, we shifted from calling our little piece of heaven "the property" to referring to it as "the house" (we'll call it "home" when we actually sleep there). It has all the main ingredients of a real life house:

Stairs - check
Walls - check
Roof - check
Furniture - Do pieces of lumber and lawn chairs count?

The house is truly half-baked at this point. It's similar to when you're baking a cake and the outside is golden brown, but the inside is still raw. What's the answer to this issue? Cook longer! In our case, about five months longer.

In the last month, Chris and Stephen (our construction crew) have made dramatic progress.They built walls on the second floor, added the staircase to the third floor, installed the third floor, constructed the walls, and enclosed the roof. Two days before Seattle had its first true rain of the season. Chris was harnessed in on the roof hammering down the final roof nails. Just in time!

The Progress: 

Most evenings, you can find us at the house enjoying our half-baked interiors. Although each room is little more than a collection of two-by-fours, it's enough for us to get a feel for the space. The neighbors can hear us starting our sentences with "What if we moved this here..." or "Wouldn't it look great if..." There's a lot of dreaming happening between those walls.

John & Chris discussing staircase location

 

"Half-baked" interior 

The next big thing is to start building out the interior with large fixtures (showers and tubs) that need to go through the windows before they are sealed with glass. In cake terms, we are starting to bake the middle.

Unlike baking though, we jump around in the sequence of events. While we are baking the middle, we are also starting to "frost" the cake. In another words, while the interior work is occurring, we are also making progress on the exterior. Albert has returned to finish the groundwork. He has been putting in long hours to prepare the backyard and areas of either side of the house for the brick retaining walls. We have also been investing some sweat equity ourselves by painting the trim boards white. When Chris and Stephen return from vacation, they will install these boards below the eves of the roof.

We stand in awe before the house each night. So much time has been spent over the past three years talking about this imaginary house. Now it's finally taking shape and it's sweeter than we could have imagined.

Next Up: "Who knew there were so many shades of blue" and other adventures in sample land.

Parting Shots: 

 Karate Kid John testing out the floor beams             

  Hosting our first "dinner" party