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!

Furniture Shopping.... Oh YEAH!

The day I was having my coffee thinking of what I had to do at the job I suddenly realized I had nothing to do. As I said, I had to wait for Ray to finish insulating and begin drywalling before I helped again.

So as I sat there I suddenly thought,



"I can go shopping!" I checked with Ray and decided to leave two boys at home and one at work with Ray and took the other three with me and off we went - two hours later. I am a spontaneous person!! LOL!

On my way to the coast we had a weird incident. The roads were absolutely terrible. It was just pouring - so much that it felt like I was swimming through an ocean!! When I got to the one area I dread - a canyon that is about 175 km long, my brake light came on and I had to pull over. Fortunately there was a rest stop almost immediately. I pulled out my car book and read what it said about this. It told me to stop carefully and do not drive - call for help.

Well, the reason I do not like being in the canyon is that there is no phone reception!!! It was pretty unnerving to say the least. I decided to pray - either that the red light would go out and we could drive or that a car would pull over and stop. Well, no car stopped. For about ten minutes the light did not go out. I restarted the car and then moved forward - it went out! I pulled out and headed west again. I drove carefully praying the light would not come on again. About 70 km later I hit a traffic jam. After a bit a car came by and I asked them what was going on. Apparently there was a very bad car accident just up the road.

An hour later we got through and headed past the site. It took us ten minutes to pass the site. I can only believe that God protected from being at that spot when that accident took place, because in the next 1000 km of driving my light never came on again! And I had no further problems with my brakes! WOW!

The following morning the boys and I headed to IKEA with a great long shopping list in hand! We had a ball (or I should say, *I* had a ball, I am sure the kids were bored senseless! LOL!) going through the store with money for once!! When I had finished shopping that day I had bought: 2 bedside tables, 2 bathroom vanities, a old fashioned porcelain sink, a wall shelf for the bathroom, a coffee table, a rug for the little boys' room, a toy box and tons of smaller decorative items to dress up my themed bedrooms. What fun!!! We packed the van snuggly and headed back to my sister's for dinner.

After dinner I went out again to Walmart and a couple other stores. This time I came out with all the matching towels and accessories for the bathrooms, a rug for the livingroom, plus a wonderful theme for the kid's bathroom. We are doing it in FISH. Just wait for the pictures. Talk about bright and colourful!!!

The following morning I decided I did have a bit of room after all to go back to IKEA and get a bed and two mattresses! We headed back to IKEA and when we arrived there the baby was sound asleep. He is the soundest of all our sleepers. I was able to pick him up, put him in the shopping cart sitting upright and lean him onto a jacket, and then go shopping. First I took some items back that I needed to. After this I transfered him to one of those flat bed carts. I lay him down on some coats and headed into the warehouse. We quickly found the bed and the mattress section.

I transferred him and his coat bed to the floor of the warehouse, loaded up the 100 lb bed and the mattresses and then lay him down again on the flat bed and off we went. It was quite cute, because one man saw me heading into the 'returns' area and told me that I am not allowed to return children! LOL!!

By the time I had the van all loaded up he was awake again! Here you can see the van all loaded up and ready to go!!! Before I got home I stopped in a small town and picked up an old bench and wooden box and put them in the front seat.

Loaded and Ready to Go!

One the way home it was quite funny. I saw this mini van ahead of me and I noticed this van had a mattress lying in the back (obviously the seats were down). On top of this there was furniture, (bed parts) - as I passed I noticed a coffee table in the passenger front seat and then I looked at the driver. It was a woman! I felt like saying, "Hey, Sister!" Only a woman knows how much you can pack in a minivan!!!!

Themed Bedroom - Narnia? Castle? or What?

One morning I woke up and after my morning coffee I was thinking about my day and what had to be done at the house by me. I realized that I did n't have any work to do for a few days yet. Ray was just finishing the insulation, actually, he was putting the plastic on all the walls.

The Upstairs Landing / Hallway

The Boys Room

Note the shelves built into the wall. They are identical on each side of the room, so that each child has one side of the room to themselves. This house feels palacial compared to our old house. There the boys had rooms that measured no more than 9x9 and the little boys had three kids in their room. The older boys were fortunate enough to have their own room. When the baby came along he got our added on loft - off our bedroom! So for them to now have only two share a room of 12 x 16 is remarkable and such a blessing!!

We are trying to decide what to do with decor in that room. I have thought about doing a Narnia theme, with one wall in a canyon/tawny colour and the other walls in a whitish colour, textured type thing. There would be trees cut from MDF built up on the walls and paintings on the walls. I have even already got my old fashioned lamp post to stand in the corner. But I am not sure about this.

The other idea came from my oldest son. He noticed that the holes cut into the all look like castle windows. So he is thinking a castle theme would be nice.

Built-In Shelves

The lower shelves run up along side the beds, and the higher shelves are placed in such a way so that the boys can each have a desk on their own side of the room.

When a person enters the boys' room it actually has a hallway at the beginning. We put the door to the room half way down the hallway (which is about 5' wide). We did this so we could build a wardrobe in the upstairs hallway, so they have the effect of entering "Narnia" through the wardrobe.

But now I am not sure because of the castle idea. Anyone reading this that has any ideas, I would appreciate some input. Or at least some more neat ideas to add to my Narnia theme. I feel that white (textured to look like snow) walls with trees painted on, plus built on, (meaning you would see 'some' green) seems so drab. One of our boys rooms has a beautiful red, blue theme with accents in white, yellow and green. Colourful! So I need the same inspiration for the middle boys' room.

Santa Needs a Chimney, Right?

In our old house we had a typical insulated steel chimney that goes with a woodstove. In this picture you can see our old house that we built. We never did finish the deck that would have wrapped around the house. You can see the steel chimney.

Steel Chimney

This time Ray decided he wanted to have a attractive rock chimney. So he set to work. He did a beautiful job. Since this picture he has put the wood trim around the top.

Building the Chimney

A few years ago he took three trips to Lillooet to get rock from the river. He brought back a lot of this very attractive rock.





He was intending on putting it on the base of our other house, but it never happened. This time though it will make it to our house, in the spring.

Boys Putting Rock Mesh On House

In the meantime, he could not use this kind of rock for the chimney, due to building codes. He had to use fake rock for the chimney.