A Few Meandering Thoughts...

This whole building process has sure been an adventure for our family! Normally people hire people to build a house for them, or they at least build the house full time. We, on the other hand, did neither. We knew that if we built the house full time (and Ray was off work) that it would cost us a fortune that we don't have and likewise, if we had hired someone to do the work it would also have been very expensive.

We were so fortunate this year because we moved to the neighbourhood that we were going to build in. Then Ray got lots of work right in the same neighbourhood. He was able to keep working full time, plus take a few days off here and there, plus a solid couple weeks off in the summer. This enabled us to have the house framed without costing huge amounts. Our family has been the only crew. The foundation and framing was done by all of the boys. The younger ones have been great labourers and the oldest has been invaluable. He is now ready for a break!

The days have been long and I have likened this whole project to that of a family from the old farm days - when the harvest has to come in, all hands are on deck. I am very proud of our children because they have been so supportive. It has been a long year! When we put our house up for sale last December we had no idea how fast everything would move. I am so thankful that we sold within two months! Then after we came home from our trip to Tennessee we had to begin packing and move to our new area. And then from there it was building the house in all spare moments. They sacrificed a summer of fun and instead spent it clearing the land, hauling stumps, and leaves and years of mess.

They all are grateful for what they are going to receive at the end of this process, but when you are in the middle of it and it has been a year it is very hard to keep going. Yet they keep on plodding. It is because of their wonderful efforts that I am having fun doing theme rooms for them!

In the last little while we have had the trades start coming in.

Exciting Day At the House

The only thing that we subbed out were the electrical and the plumbing, plus of course the cabinets, the carpeting and the lino.

Laying the Carpet with a Little Helper

Laundry Room

Testing Out the Flooring Sample

Installing the Toilet

Our son did the laminate flooring and we all did the drywall, insulating, framing, foundation, painting.

Rather Dusty Boy's Room

One day I was painting a room and the electrician was having a bit of a panic because he said he thought he had forgotten to tie in a section of a room, to the electrical panel. I just looked at him and said, "I am done drywalling and painting." Oh, boy! There may be some wall ripping going to happen. Let me tell you. I am not doing any repair work! *sick smile* He may have to hire himself a crew to fix his mistake! We are just praying he solves the problem without having to cut through any drywall!

Learning How to Be an Electrician

Our cabinets are beginning to come in. They are beautiful. They are alder with a black glaze on them. They are pretty much the same layout as they were in the house we just left. I knew what I liked and what worked there, so we just brought them with us.


I wonder who that might be lying on the floor? The Eating Bar will eventually have river rock mounted on this side of it.

In addition to the cabinets I have a large 4x5 pantry, which wraps around three walls.

The Pantry

plus a utility cupboard that is 2x6. They are both conveniently located just near the stove and fridge. Here is a picture hubby just beginning construction of the utility closet.

Utility Cupboard

This cupboard is an easy access to all my pans and baking ware, plus there is a broom closet right near it.

As you can see I still have lots of boxes and the compressor as part of my kitchen! (even in January, while we are still building shelves and doing trim!)

The hours have been getting longer and longer. In the beginning when I was working I would go to the house and put in a few hours in the afternoon. Then time got tighter. We only had two weeks left and I could see that if I didn't get involved in some of the labour end of it - not just painting etc, that we would not get done.

I mudded a first coat on two rooms and thought, "Good. I've done my share." Now I can go back to painting. But then Ray needed me to sand a room. Oh, boy!! By the time I had sanded that room I was covered with dust, had inhaled so much dust, eaten dust and I had no fingerprints left!! *laugh* cause I had been rubbing the wall with one hand while sanding the wall with the other.

Little Drywall Sander

You can see a picture of me eating lunch with one of the little boys in my last post - Hubby said to me, "Is that what you will look like when you are old? And I said, "I already know what you will look like!" *grin* Cause he is already grey. I always tease him about how young I am and how old he is. *laugh* There is only three years between us, but God has been merciful and I have only had to pluck a few grey hairs!

This last two months have been so hairy (excuse the pun!) that Ray has not had time for a haircut. He is very shaggy and very bearded!!! *laugh* He will look like a new man after Christmas!!

Over worked and Underpaid!

I said to Ray just yesterday, "I will mud a second coat if I have to. But no more sanding!" Call me a petty kid. But I always end up doing it anyway! *laugh* And Ray is so good to me. He just says, "okay". Which makes me want to help him more!! So then last night I ended up sanding a room again! *grin* I had also said I wouldn't mud a second coat cause now we had to be pickier than the first coat. Oh well. Time constraints. I ended up mudding the master bath last night!!

Master Bath

Master Bedroom

So as I was saying, the days were about four hours long for me and then they started getting longer. Now they are starting about 10:00 am and last night I didn't get home til about 9:30 pm!

Drywalling, Painting, Flooring - It's all happening!!

Goodness me! It has been three weeks since I have written and so much has gone on! We decided three weeks ago that we would give our notice at our rental house at the end of December. This meant that we had about four weeks to drywall and mud over 3100 square feet, paint it, have the electrician and plumber and flooring guys come in!! Near to impossible. But not so when you know how Ray and I operate *grin*.

I wrote a schedule of rooms to do so that Ray would be a step ahead of me. It has been working like a charm! Three weeks ago he began the drywalling.

The First Room

He worked long days, then came home for dinner and then went back to work. His nights have been finishing between 11:00 pm and 3:00 am!!

While Ray was drywalling in the day and mudding at night I have been painting right behind him.

Little Boy's Room

Our whole family has been hugely involved in this process. They have all been invaluable!! Colt has been Ray's right hand - doing anything Ray needed doing. He is very proficient in framing, drywalling and flooring. He has now taken on the complete laminate flooring project for our house.

Dane has been home with Austin running the house. They have been a wonderful team. They clean the house and then do schoolwork. I can leave in the morning with all the other children and leave the house a disaster after breakfast. I will come home at the end of a long day, just to find the house tidy and dishes done. I am then able to make dinner and move onto the next day
smoothly!

Cassidy has been our main babysitter of Briton. We set up a rug in one of the bedrooms, threw in a few toys and that has been their playroom. Briton has been very content and easy to look after. Towards the end of the day when he is getting restless he comes out and hangs with me while I finish painting.

The 'Playroom'

Hiding From the Dust

Cooper is my main man. There is nothing to play with at the house, but even if there was he would rather just hang with me. You would think by looking at him that he was the main painter! His coat is covered in paint and this is just from being in the vicinity of my painting! *smile* Cooper keeps himself busy all day long. He is a regular little chatter-box and oh, so happy!

He insisted on shoveling the driveway during our last big snow!!

Vacuuming Before I Paint

He likes to vaccuum, but isn't always that productive. *smile* He is more interested in the noise and playing with the vacuum, than actually sucking up any of the drywall dust! *laugh*

Look Mum!! I'm mudding.

Silly me! I thought that I would paint and that would be it. But as it turned out I got the pleasure of mudding as well! Here is Cooper having fun playing with the mud. He is actually cleaning his daddy's tools. Notice the painted coat!! He is a magnet for paint!

Hiding Out

The things that keep little boys occupied!! Here he is lying in the tub underneath the protective drywall. I am painting the room and he is 'hanging out' in his own funny little way. *smile*

While I was mudding the master bedroom my little helper was 'having a bubble bath'. See all his bubbles? He lay in the frame where the tub will be inserted and put all the plastic bags around him and was having a wonderful time pretending the tub was filling up and then he was bouncing in his bubbles.

Bubble Bath

Me and My Pal Having Lunch

This is on a day when I was sanding - another job I never though I would have to do!! What time constraints do to you! *laugh*

About two weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine about the amount of work we had to do before Christmas. Her husband is a painter, so I took a chance and asked if he would like to help us out with some drywalling. He said he would and so for the next six days he and Colt worked side by side doing the rest of the boarding. What a God send he was!!!!! Without him we would not be done for Christmas!!

Beginning the Livingroom

While Colt and Norman were doing the mudding Ray was mudding in another part of the house and I was upstairs painting. Austin and Cooper were there with me the first few days that I was painting. They thought it was fun to paint so I let them paint their names on the walls of Cooper's bedroom. This was in the primer coat, of course!

Artists At Work

Can We Please Paint?

About 10 days ago the fireplace finally arrived!! We had been cold at the house until then! Actually I was not even going to the house, because it was getting too cold!! The last house we had had a beautiful cast iron wood stove. This house we decided not to buy the same kind. I was thinking we would save money and pay half of what we paid on the nice woodstove. Silly me!! We went looking for stoves and finally settled on one that ended up being double the cost of the last one! But the nice thing about this stove is that it will burn for 20 hours!!!! The bigger one - the King - (we bought the Princess) will actually burn for 40 hours!! Can you imagine!! No more stoking the fire constantly! And the inside of the firebox is huge!!

Oh how I have missed my wood heat. For anyone out there that has not experienced wood heat - you are missing something wonderful!! It is so cozy!!! I always had a nice comfy recliner near the stove and the kids would call it my throne *grin*. Well, when we were designing this new house I made sure that there was a nook for my throne again!

These aren't the best pictures as the stove is dirty and the hearth not built, but at least it shows on it's way in.

A few days after the woodstove arrived my furniture (couches) arrived!! I found the most wonderful couches!! We have not bought new furniture since we were married and most of what we have either came from each of us before we were married, or we acquired a few things second hand along the way. So with this new house have come a number of new items and it has been so much fun choosing. I must have sat on a hundred couches - looking for the right comfiness (is that a word??), the right look, etc. Well, I found it when I fell in love with this couch!

Delivery!

The couches arrived and they have been sitting in plastic wrap in the livingroom waiting for the drywall, paint and flooring to be completed. But I needed the couches to arrive first so that I could pick my paint colour!! I already had a paint scheme in mind, but I couldn't be sure it would work until I matched it up to the couches. Well, it looks fabulous!! So matched. You'll have to wait until the end to see the colours and the rooms all put together! *grin*

My kitchen, schoolroom, dining room, and livingroom have a scheme of three colours - harvest yellow, sundance red (kind of rust coloured), and deep green (not forest - more of the yellow family). It looks fabulous. In the beginning when I was picking paint colours and letting Ray know what I wanted to do he was rather dubious. He is now right on board, as he has seen it come to pass. He loves it. He can see how warm the colours are and how classy at the same time.

When I was doing one of our oldest boys' rooms we had a lot of fun. He wanted a war theme. He is an army cadet and wanted it to be army green. I painted three walls 'toy tank green' and left the fourth one for him to paint his mural on. Ray and I then took spackle for the ceiling and tinted it different colours. He used brown, tan, green, and another form of brown. He draped the walls and then I stood back as his guide and told him how much I wanted sprayed and where. When he was done he had a wonderful camouflage effect on the ceiling!! And our two sons have not been seeing the process over the last 10 days, so they have decided they do not want to see anything now until it is complete. They want to be totally surprised - just like the home improvement shows - "move that bus!" *grin*

I then found some wonderful bedding for his room and went to the army surplus store and bought some neat things. By the time we are done in his room it will be very cool!!

While this was all going on I was busy painting as I said. Well I never expected to have to do anything else!!!!! But you know..... I didn't think I was going to insulate either!!! I have now been promoted to mudding helper as well! So now I have had the 'pleasure' to mud a few rooms!

What a Messy Job!!!

Here you can see how close the mudding, sanding and painting are to each other!!! I was painting this room and Ray needed to sand an area and rather than chance the dust from falling into my fresh paint he had Colt hold the vacuum up to collect the falling dust!! I tell you, this will be the fastest house built in history!!

One night I let Cassidy go with Ray to keep him company. They worked til about midnight and then Cassidy went to bed (on one of my new couches!!) while Ray continued.

Sleepover

Here is a picture of Ray working in shorts.... because it got so hot in the house. He was working directly over the woodstove, doing the mudding in the upper hallway. Luckily the upstairs landing beam makes a nice disguise. *smile*

As soon as the drywall was completed Colt was delegated (to his delight) to be the flooring guy. He has been putting down the laminate for the last three days. He is doing a fine job and the floors look wonderful! We bought barn oak and the colour is a darker shade than we thought we were buying - but we do like it!

Dining Room Floor

The End is in Sight! The Drywall is Happening!

Early Snow on the Ground

Now that there is snow on the ground it is not so convenient for me to go to the house anymore. At least not until Ray throws up some drywall and a piece of carpetting, so we can make a playroom for the boys to hang out in while I am painting.

I went to the land today to see Ray, before heading to town to buy paint. He and I had to make some decisions, because we had promised the boys that we would put a trap door from their room into their little brothers' room, through the wall. We had also decided to put a trap door on the floor, between their beds, under a rug, leading down into the tv room. The boys thought this was so cool!! Just like in books! I am a kid at heart so I like to give my boys the things that I would love to have. Imagine a trap door in your bedroom floor or an escape hatch out of your room into another room! LOL!!

The Ceiling of the Middle Boys' Room

The guys are very busy right now, drywalling. They finished the ceilings on Monday and are now working on the walls. Instead of flying through the house doing all the boarding first, and then doing the mudding after, we are doing it a bit differently.

I figured if we do it that way then I have to wait til the end to paint and then we still need the trades to come in and finish the carpetting, lino, plumbing and electrical. And then Ray has to do the laminate and at the end we still have to move in! That could take us 6 weeks or more! We just don't have that much time as we were hoping to be in by Christmas.

So now the plan is that Ray has boarded one room - the little boys room. Then he went off and boarded some other bedrooms, and kept up the mudding on the little boys' room. Tomorrow when he has finished mudding the little boys' room I will be able to paint it. At the same time he will be just finishing boarding the other three kids rooms. He can then begin mudding those three rooms. As soon as I am done painting my one room he will have finished the next three and I will move into those. At that point he will then move into our room to complete that.

The point of doing it this way is that as soon as I am done painting those four rooms, he will then move in and do the laminate and trim. I am then free to move the kids' stuff into their rooms, just for storage purposes.

He will stay a step ahead of me and that way we can both be working at the same time - saving a ton of time. The only flooring that needs to come in is the bathrooms, laundry, freezer room, and mudrooms for lino. Plus the tv room, our bedroom, stairs and landing for carpeting. The rest of the areas are going to be laminate, with rugs on them. And Ray will be doing the laminate, so that can be done as we go along.

By doing it this way we can get the cabinet guys in with the kitchen before Ray has even finished drywalling and painting the livingroom, dining room, mudrooms, freezer room etc. So things are going to get hopping really quickly now!!!!

Ray Working on the Little Boys' Room

I went to town after seeing Ray and bought my paint. I am painting the room in two colours - rich blue and rich red. Three walls blue, one wall red. I was fortunate enough to find some really neat accessories - locally and at Ikea. I got a primary red, blue, yellow table and chairs and a cubby unit with coloured baskets. Plus I got all kinds of other stuff - brilliant yellow and stainless steel clock, bright red and stainless steel garbage can, laundry baskets in colours, toy boxes etc.

Briton will be getting his first bed as soon as he moves in. It is a neat bed that starts off as a bed down low and then when he is older we can raise it up to about 3' off the floor. This then creates a fort under his bed.

Cooper is getting a new bed also, since the beds we had in the other house were built into the walls! His bed is a short loft bed, with a desk/bookshelf and dresser underneath. When I told him yesterday that I would be painting his room this week, he said, "That make me happy," with a big smile.

Bedroom / Bathroom View

This is the view of the master bedroom, the boys' bathroom and the landing from near Dane's door. We have yet to make the railings. Our goal is to peel branches from our land. Oh yeah! I wonder *who* will picked for that job!! LOL!!

Our Tub

This is our luxurious soaker tub!!! I can't wait for that part to be done!! I am having fun choosing colours and our room will be chocolate brown and a very light creamy brown. I had fun finding towels and accessories, since our other stuff is all basically falling apart from years of use!

As well as picking paint yesterday I had to confirm the carpeting. Well, here is a picture of one little guy giving us his take on the sample I brought home.

I think he likes it!

Working Like Madmen!

Ray has been working like a madman lately. He finished working for his company about a week ago and since then he has been working fulltime for us.

In this time he has completed the insulation. Then one day he and our oldest son blew the ceiling insulation in. They were all so glad when this job was done!

He has spent his days covering all the insulation with plastic and that is now complete. There are so many small jobs that have to be done. One of them was installing the tile that goes under the woodstove. He has yet to complete the grouting.

Under the Woodstove

Also one day our oldest son had the pleasure of figuring out how to install the garage door. I thought they came assembled. Silly me!! It took hours to complete this thing.

Putting It All Together

And they have been working on the siding. For a while there we had such lousy cold weather that they could not do any siding. If you side when it is too cold the siding will break. So they could only do a little bit in the warmer times of day.

The Recroom / Boys' Room End of the House

Putting Up Soffits

And then of course the drywall arrived and they had to do the ceilings. It can be back breaking work and recently hubby put his back out, so they rented a machine to get this done. We were fortunate enough to get the ceilings done over a weekend. This way they only paid for one day of rental.

Snowy Day!!!

View From Front Deck

View From Side Deck

We have had a few sprinklings of snow already this year. But today was a wonderful morning. We woke up to about 4" of snow and it was still snowing. So the kids hurriedly got their breakfast and then dressed to go out to play.

First Winter of Sledding!

The little ones had fun, until it got too cold. The little guy could not stand up for long. He kept falling over from being overbalanced from all his heavy clothes!

Down He Goes!!

I'm Not Afraid!

Awesome Sledding Hills!

The house we are in right now has some wonderful hills!! Also some dangerous hills!! And some roads right by the house, with no fence in between the two!!

Fifteen Feet From House!

The big kids got busy trying out the most lethal of the hills - before I stopped them! It is melting in this picture, but when they were sledding it was great!