Fall Decorations Outside

Every year we put gourds above the door and now we have added pumpkins. Last year was the first autumn in this house so my wife bought smaller sized pumpkins to put above the front door but she just realize the scale of the house. This year she went larger, and I think that if we wanted we could go even bigger.



The "boys" are waiting to come in the house so I included them in the gourd shot.

Window Trim

Our usual carpenter is busy doing other jobs so we hired another local one to finish the trim.

You can see the trim on the lower windows and in this photo the uppers have not been done yet.

Carpeted Stairs

Yes it has been quite a while since I posted last and a lot of work has been done. We are nearing completion of the major work on the house.

This is the stairs going up to the second floor. We had intended on installing hardwood on the stairs, instead we had carpeting installed. This is the only carpeting in the house other than area rugs.

Upstairs is almost Done

I have been very remiss in my posting. But to save time, I am posting a video of upstairs. The walls are up, taped, and painted. My friend Dan helped me put in the floor, or should I say I helped him. The electricity is in, the lights are put up, and some of the furniture is in. We are still waiting for the bed. Tile still needs to go into the bathroom and the plumbing hooked up, we are almost there.

Front Stone Wall

My wife decided that a stone wall around the plantings in the front of the house is what we needed to finish things off. We had some stones left over from the front stairs so I built this little wall.


A side view of the wall.

Front Landscaping

Today we had the front landscaping done. Here you can see the plants planted waiting to flower and grow leaves. When that happens it will look awesome.


Landscaping from a different angle.


This is what of the front of the house looked like just before the planting.

Kitchen

The kitchen is almost all done. The soapstone counter top is installed and the cabinets are in.

Greatroom - View from Above

I am trying something new...a video of our greatroom.

Puss 'n Boots

This is one of the Puss 'n Boots that we bought today for the front of our house. It is not made of the usual Concrete, we were told it was made of sandstone. I'm not actually sure of what it is made of but it looks much different than the normal Concrete.

We picked up two of these statues from a place in Saratoga Springs, NY called The Hidden Garden. They have a lot of cool things for the house and garden.


Here are the two boys on the front porch. We just love the way they look. And let me tell you they are very heavy!


A view from the road.

Upstairs is Started

The second floor, phase three, has been started. The garage still needs work but our carpenter was able to start framing the upstairs rooms.

This will be the master bedroom. The door on the right is the door into the bedroom and the one on the left will be going from the bedroom into the bathroom.


This is the stairs going down to the first floor. What we are going to do is make the stairway ceiling about eight feet high and make a four feet high storage area on top of that; the ceiling is twelve foot high upstairs.

Dirty Water

We just had this water filter added because we have been getting a lot of sand and small rocks in our water. This has been going on since we have been getting water from our new drilled well. I suppose it will stop eventually but for the time being, we will just have to filter our water. The thing I am trying to prevent are the faucets from wearing out.


This is what the filter looked like just after it was installed.


This is what it looks like two weeks later.

Car in Garage

After digging our cars out of the snow every storm, and there has been a lot, we finally were able to park our cars in the garage. Work on the garage is still continuing but at least the cars are out of the weather.

Our friends and family may have noticed that we have a new car. Our old Jetta TDI has been retired; we donated it to the Good News Garage after driving it for over 276,000 miles. Last time we were up in Vermont it died and we needed to get a ride home. After that,we decided it was time to let it go. The Good News Garage will either fix it, it was still running good, and give it to a person who needs a car or sell it for parts. I wanted to keep it until 300k miles, if we did not have a new car we would have fixed it.

Cabinets Installed

Today we had cabinets installed in our kitchen. We are going to have a soap stone counter top installed. First, we needed the cabinets installed so a template can be created for the soapstone.


As you can see we have a soapstone sink also. If you apply mineral oil to soapstone it brings out the beautiful color, I oiled the sink in the photo above. Unlike Granite, Soapstone will not stain and is not affected by heat.

Garage Starting Siding

Siding of the garage has been started. As you can see here, the front has been completed.


The back has been started with about half done. The trim has been completed around the windows.

Screen Porch Work

The windows are in the screened porch now. Luckily, these were added before the snow we just had.


This is the inside of the screened porch. Windows for the Winter and screens for Summer.


Work is continuing on the back side of the house, adding clapboards. A few more layers were added than what you see here. It is going to be harder now that we have a few feet of snow on the roof.

Garage Doors

Work on the garage is going painfully slow. We cannot put the cars into the garage yet; we are supposed to get snow today. We did get garage doors installed, they will go up automatically once we get the electric put in. We will be painting the doors the same as the house, for now we chose a close color until we can paint in the spring.