Almost done! Lots of fun updates

Hi everyone!!  It has been a very eventful and exciting few weeks since we’ve been back to WY.  There is so much to share with you.

First, we worked really hard on the house – we officially have ALL the board up for the board and batten siding! (just have to make, stain, and put up the battens to cover the gaps between each of the boards)  And we put up the entire roof on the mudroom and even one piece of the trim (over the door).  We will finish the other side of the trim this week.  We also put up some of the ‘wood’ trim along the angled edges of the mudroom – that was the not so fun part… Lots of ‘let’s see how it fits!’ while both of us climbed the ladder and held the board up.  The other hard part of last week was adding the upper boards to the gable end of the front of the house! Boy that was tough… As you know I’m not a fan of ladders, although I have to say I’m getting much better and not quite as fearful.  But anyhow, when we were putting up the front siding for the gables, Scott would climb the ladder, I would hand him and help him shimmy up the board, then with the long level, I would hold it (from the ground) and push on the bottom of the board so Scott can get the drill ready to screw the board down.  PFHEW!! It was a long few days doing this, but now, our house is starting to look complete! 

We still have so much work to finish, but at least all the heavy stuff, well most of it, is done now! 

Some more exciting news!! Well, the not so exciting part first – we called several places last week about getting our electric put in but each place said it would be either 3-4 weeks before they could even come out for an estimate and up to 4-5 months (yes MONTHS) before they can get it in for us! UGG!  You just don’t realize how much you miss certain things, certain guilty pleasures like using a microwave or even watching The Big Bang Theory on TV, that is until you have to go without them.  It’s been since April 24^th since we arrived in Wyoming and since then we’ve had no electricity or running water.  On the bright side we do at least have a toilet now and our septic is hooked up! That’s very exciting.  So I digress…  the exciting news! We wanted to be prepared for winter time and have some form of heat.  Yesterday we went to TSC to look at wood stoves again.  The one I like is big, heats up to ~2,700 sq ft I believe, has a gorgeous glass front and was on pedestal feet.  However, it was $899!  Way out of the budget (considering we have no budget since we’ve spent all our build money).  But, there at the front of the store was another large wood stove with a solid base on it, regularly $649, but on sale for $100 off for only $549!!!  Here’s the best part! With the money we saved (keep in mind we also didn’t have to pay tax on anything because we purchased in MT) we were able to buy an entire pallet of compressed wood bricks.  We were planning on getting wood, however, 2 issues – first, we have no way to split the wood (or a chainsaw to cut it up even) and second, we have no storage to keep it dry.  And we already have our scooters living with us in the kitchen plus lots of Scott’s tools in the mudroom and even trim pieces for the room that are also in the kitchen…. So we just don’t have room in the house for numerous cords of wood too!  Supposedly (we’ll keep you posted), the compressed wood bricks – by the way they were also on sale and saved us $50!) are supposed to last 2.5 times longer than traditional wood.  And they are much smaller so it won’t be an issue to find a place for them in the house (probably in the kitchen with everything else! Haha).  Ah! I’m so excited for the wood stove.  We are going to use the little trailer today or one day this week, pull it with my car, and go pick everything up.  YEAH!

Would you like to hear another piece of exciting news??  My husband is a GENIUS!!  But don’t tell him I admitted that! Just kidding!  He knows!  Anyhow, while we were in town yesterday he picked up an outdoor outlet.  You all may remember that back in June the electric company came out and we thought they were going to run poles to the build site and attach an outlet to the pole so we could use electricity. Well, that’s not exactly what they did.  They instead just put up the meter box, no outlet at all, right at the pole at the road.  So all summer we’ve not had a lick of electricity and have had to use the generator for everything.  Well Scott had an idea.  After carefully examining the box at the pole, he determined that he could hook up the outdoor outlet himself.  I have to admit I was VERY nervous this entire time because I didn’t want him to get hurt.  But he insisted he could do it and by golly he did!!  We now have an outdoor outlet at the meter box and a 300’ extension cord to the house! I guess when you go without for such a long time, you are willing to do what you can!  We have one power strip hooked up and that gives us what we need!  That means, drum roll please….. I can sew again!!!! YEAH! Ironically 2 days ago I realized that my sewing machine worked when hooked up with inverter on my car… when there’s a will, there’s a way!! But I have to admit, this way is much easier!  And for anyone curious, this came up when I talked with Charlotte, since the electric company came out in June, we have had to pay a monthly fee no matter what and we are on the meter so everything should be all right!

And the first thing we did with electricity? Hook up the TV!  But for some reason either our converter box isn’t working or the remote to the converter box isn’t working (yes, we have a very old-school TV, so big when I put it in front seat of my car, my car then proceeds to tell me it needs a seat belt).  That’s one of those things we never jumped on the band wagon for – getting a flat screen.  Of course we wanted one, but these last 6 years with Scott our motto has been ‘Use it up, wear it out, do with less or do without!’  Well, getting a new TV when the old one worked perfectly fine just wasn’t an option.  Anyhow, back to my point… we weren’t able to watch TV, but we did hook up the DVD player and have been watching Gilmore Girls (we have all seasons on DVD).

More fun things to talk about! How about those pack rats??  Well, we’ve been working a little everyday to clean up our building materials and get them better organized or put away for the winter.  In the process we found that pack rat condo! And everything got burned…  His pallet, his cacti security system, everything!  And we even found the bugger and well, he is no more.  Last week he started nesting in my car on top of the battery and even chewed a wire completely off! Funny thing… we have no idea what that wire did because it doesn’t appear to have affected anything in the car.  So as a precautionary, Scott used something liquid on the ends of each wire that hardened so it wouldn’t cause any issues.

We also decided to pay-it-forward this week.  We’re almost nearing the end of getting the outside of our house complete and here in WY the thoughts of winter are all around us.  One of our neighbors, in their late 70s and early 80s, are still working on the outside of their room addition.  We both went over and helped!  Scott worked with Joe and put up some more of the siding and Helen and I worked on staining all the siding they have up so far so it’s protected through the winter. 

We still have a lot of work to accomplish, but we’re getting there! And I can say our house is starting to feel and look like a home.  This past week I wanted to do something to jazz it all up and I’ve been putting up all of Scott’s Army pictures plus, yes I’m admitting it, all our Christmas decorations too!  I’m sorry, but I’m a sucker for Christmas! It’s my favorite time of the year and I guess having all my favorite decorations up, makes it feel cozy!

I hope you all are doing well and I’m sorry I don’t have any pictures attached to this one… I will soon!