First!! Lets start with the tiling of the shower! It's not fully completed but it's SO close to being done! Scott ran out of mastic (the white stuff the makes the tile stick to the wall), so he has all the rest of the tiles cut and ready to put up. And this last Sunday I went to Lowes and bought him 3 qts of the mastic so fingers crossed he has enough to complete! He needs to drill the hole for the shower head's on/off handle, then he can complete that last wall (I don't think there is a picture of this wall - it's half tiled).
But here are picture of the tiling for you!! Please note - it is not completed, there is not grout on yet, and we do not have lights in the bathroom (or anywhere in the house for that matter) so you will see some shadows her and there.
A couple remarks about the last picture.... The bump out you see on the right is there (not in the original plans) because we originally had the shower at either 30 or 36" wide (can't remember now), but after we got the wall framed up and set it in place, we wanted more elbow room! But because the drain for the sink was set into the concrete, it couldn't move. Instead we added this 'bump out' to hide the drain, and yet it makes a great foot rest for shaving legs!! (Making lemonade here!)
Also, you will notice the drain is set into the floor - we are going to (eventually) go to a local metal shop we found in Red Lodge and have them custom make a drain cover that will sit in this spot. It's going to be a surprise for Scott, but the drain holes aren't going to be your standard look - I'm going to have them cut out either '<2>' or Ranger crest (the sun, lightning bolt, and star). I think Scott will really like that!!! Plus it's one more small personal touch.
We are trying really hard to complete one thing before starting another, but weather, timing, work schedule, and baby mean we are veering off that path. We had hoped to get the shower fully completed before starting with the trenches for the electric and all that stuff.... but it didn't work that way. And we are lucky we did the trenching when we did because we've had some CRAZY weather here!!! I'm taking lots of rain (we think maybe 3-4" just this past weekend), plus hail, and even tornados East of Cody!
About 2-3 weeks ago we rented an excavator for Scott to do all our trenching for a 300' underground electric line, 400+' water line (because it had to go around the septic area), plus a cellar too! In addition he scraped our driveway too so it's very smooth now! And I think he said he dug a hole somewhere (I'm not sure where) so we can burn some of our trash and scrap building materials (the stuff we can't put in the woodstove like the treated wood). I think he spent about 15 hrs on the excavator in 2 days!!! Not to mention the time he had to lay the electric wires and the pipe for the well too.
We did run into a very stressful moment.... (I'll try to load pictures to show this). The rental company delivered the wrong excavator. They delivered this tiny thing that only had a 1 ft. bucket on it! Scott was going to try and make it work, but after digging for over an hour and not even having a hole big enough for a grave, we knew we had to make a change or it would take at least a week to get this completed! Next part of the problem - we were relying on the excavator to unload a 26,000 + lb load of concrete mix, mortar, concrete blocks and treated wood. There were a few parts to this problem - the main problem was our excavator couldn't handle even the half pallets of these materials. Second, the company both overloaded the delivery truck and stacked it so high there was no way for us to use our current excavator to unload it! And third, the truck driver was lazy and didn't want to help unload or even move the truck to a different spot for better unloading. All this added up to us being very upset and frustrated. Scott unloaded several pallets by hand all by himself, but I was so worried that he'd try to unload the entire truck by hand and then land himself in the hospital, that I had our neighbor come over and convince him to send the truck back and we'd make trips to go get the materials that way. Thankfully he went with Joe's suggestion!! And once that truck left, we headed to town to get the correct excavator. Scott said the correct excavator was able to dig the same about that took him an hour with the little one, but within just 2-3 scoops!
PICTURES (will be posted later)
On Saturday of that weekend, Scott had basically 90% of the digging done. Sunday he started to lay the pipe for our water line (it came in one really long 400' roll) but he was having a heck of a time trying to do it himself. No, I'm not being lazy - he didn't want me to help do anything for fear I'd get hurt or worse yet, hurt the baby. But luckily, our neighbor boy Brian came to the rescue!!! It was hard work as they had to uncoil this pipe just the two of them, but they did it! Then, Brian was able to use his truck to help with laying the electric wire. Because the wire was over 100' long, we had to go with a bigger wire so we wouldn't lose amperage (I think that's the correct terminology). After 100' you have a drop. Typically, you use a 4 aught wire, but we had to use a 350 wire. Also, even though the wire we purchased was meant for laying underground, we decided to put it in a 3" conduit pipe so if we ever have issues hopefully we can just feed it through the pipe and not have to dig it all up - not to mention this will help keep out the water and other things too. Anyhow - Brian and Scott fed the wire through the PVC pipe about 30' at a time by hooking a rope to the back of Brian's truck with the other end attached to the wire and pulling it through the PVC. This worked great!!! By early afternoon they had all the pipe down! The rest of the day, Scott spent covering up the trenches. By about 5-6pm, Scott was hooking up the final water line that would feed into the cellar. He again had a heck of a time getting it to uncoil, so this time I, very carefully, went out and helped. I also helped him (by standing on or putting pressure against the PVC pipes) force the two parts of the water line together.
During the next 2 weeks, in between recuperating and dealing with the weather, Scott (with my occasional help) hooked up the electric wires to the house, connected them to the breaker box, added in breakers plus wired up the kitchen, mudroom, and bathroom with the light switch boxes and outlet boxes. Currently, he has most of everything wired up except he still needs to add the 220 outlet for the stove and the dryer, plus I think we ran out of outlets, so we need to get a few more of them to finish the one kitchen wall.
Scott had every intention of hooking everything up at the meter box too, but after talking to him about it, I told him I'd rather not have a fried husband, so lets just chalk up the $$ and have an electrician come do it to be safe. It looks like it's going to be about $200-$300 for them to drive all the way out here and do it.
We had it scheduled for last Friday, but they called and said that we needed 2 small pieces of PVC for the final attachment to the meter box and they didn't have it on hand. So I ran into Cody and purchased the attachments (cheaper this way because of the markup cost). We were hoping they would be out either Monday or Tuesday this week, but it looks like it may not be till next Tuesday to get hooked up. I guess we've waited over a year... what's another week!
Over the last year or more, Scott and I have discussed what type of appliances we want in this house. We know we want a stove/oven (we really wanted either a dual wall mounted oven or a slide in dual oven, but at this time, those were not in our budget at all, so we decided to go with a very basic slide in single door oven), dishwasher that was quiet, and our luxury is that we want a commercial grade refrigerator/freezer. We've never been happy with the side-by-side (not enough room on either side), the French door style leaves you with a tiny small freezer, and plus, everyone we know seems to have an extra frig and/or freezer in their garage or basement! We don't have the money for quite a while to build a garage and I really don't want to have food stored in multiple buildings, so that's why we wanted the commercial style kitchen. HOWEVER - the problem is, we are on a very tight budget and just the frig/freezer would have been over $3,000!!! So we compromised and decided to get an old school style frig (freezer on top) and a full stand up size freezer - both of which combined were LESS than the price of one of the items in the commercial set!!!
And when I say we are on a budget, I mean, we don't have any money right now at all for appliances, but after going 13 months now without a refrigerator, we are going to figure it out one way or another because we are getting tired of canned goods. We are very much looking forward to cold drinks, milk, eggs, cheese, meat, storing our left overs, storing fresh fruits and vegetables, and so on!!! It's funny I just got off the phone with my friend Shannon who is loosing her mind over not having a refrigerator since last Thursday (5-6 days) and she can't grasp the idea of going 13 months without one!
Well, here is the exciting part - We went to Lowes about 2 months ago and picked out the exact appliances we wanted (except the stove because we weren't sure which style we were going to go with). At that time, the freezer and refrigerator were on sale, but not the dishwasher. Last Sunday, Scott was on call for work so he couldn't go, but I told him I just had to go buy our appliances so when the electric was hooked up we would have them and could use them. I went, all by myself, to Billings to pick everything out, buy them, etc (It may sound stupid, but I was very proud of myself for doing all this alone!), and come to find out Lowes was having a pre-Memorial Day sale and the freezer was still on sale for the same price, the refrigerator was on sale for an additional $80 off, the dishwasher was on sale for $90 off, and I was able to pick a single oven stove that was on sale for $250 off!! PLUS, I was able to get an additional 10% the entire purchase (I also got 100' of the red water line, 100' of the blue water line, 3 qts of mastic, and all the stove glass top cleaning products I'd need). I had to get their credit card, but I took money from our emergency fund (yes, I think going 13 months without any kitchen appliances counts as an emergency!!) and paid off the CC right there. The last thing we need is another CC to deal with. We've tried so hard to not have to charge anything from this move/build, but last fall we had spent all our $$ except our emergency fund and still needed a roof on the house, to move our stuff from OH, and to get by until Scott had his job. We are still working on paying those off, but we've made a deal with each other that after the electric, water, kitchen appliances, and shower are completed (what we've deemed essential to have for Blaine's arrival), we are not planning on doing anything else to the house until we can make significant progress on these bills.
Back to the exciting part.... ALL OUR APPLIANCES ARE ORDERED!!!!! To begin to explain just how exciting this is - Imagine what's it's been like when you have a refrigerator go out or when all your power goes off because of weather and you have to go 1-4 days without! I bet you were ready to pull your hair out going crazy! Going 13 months without permanent electric (we were very thankful to have just 1 extension cord since last November), having no running water or hot water, no shower, and no appliances has been such a struggle. But we stayed positive about it, handled it one day and one week at a time, and just kept looking ahead to the future. And we are so excited that the future is upon us right now!!! Hopefully by the end of next week we will have permanent electric, all our kitchen appliances, and since we will have electric, we'll be able to finish our water hookup within a month (hopefully)!!! We can't wait!!!Here are the links to the appliances I purchased - all of them total, with all discounts were about $2500-2600 (so not bad! for an entire kitchen!).
Refrigerator (in stainless - the doors are stainless but the casing is actually black, so I'm going to see about painting the casing to match the casing on the freezer):
http://www.lowes.com/pd_623749-2251-LFHT2131QE___?Ntt=623749&UserSearch=623749&productId=50269689
Freezer (in stainless): http://www.lowes.com/pd_637402-2251-LFFH20F3QM___?Ntt=637402&UserSearch=637402&productId=50273099
Dishwasher (the quietest one they had available):
http://www.lowes.com/pd_498132-39047-SHP65T55UC_0__?productId=50264331&Ntt=
Electric Range:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_31903-2251-LGEF3045KF___?Ntt=31903&UserSearch=31903&productId=3057153
On the baby front - all is well!!! She is growing like crazy! I have a definite baby bump now and I feel that everyday it's getting bigger! Last Friday I had my normal doctor appointment and she's measuring about 2 weeks ahead of her due date. So I'm guessing she will either come a little early and/or she will be a bigger baby. I was 8+lbs while Scott was only 5+lbs. It's hard to tell!! I have to go in at 28 weeks (next week) and have more blood work done plus my glucose test and now I'm at every 2 weeks for my regular Dr appointment instead of 4 weeks. She's kicking and moving around quite a bit throughout the day and last week I even felt her hiccup for the first time!
I've heard back from a lot of our friends/family that they received their Baby Reveal cards! I hope you all enjoyed them!! We are also so very thankful to those who have been gracious enough to purchase things or make things for us!
There was one gift we received off of our registry - a Pack 'n Play - that did not come with the buyer/giver's name!!! I called Walmart to ask so we can send out a thank you note, but they wouldn't tell us. If you, or someone you know, sent us the Pack 'n Play, Thank You so much!! We are so thankful for every single gift we've received and we'd love to tell you thank you too!
Two of my friends, Deedee Hensley and Lindsay Watson, asked if anyone was giving us a baby shower. Unfortunately we aren't going to be able to come home to Ohio this summer so they have asked to throw us a Facebook Baby Shower!! We can't thank them enough for doing this. Scott and I have been stressed out to get everything done and ready for Blaine, and to have so many wonderful friends and family willing to help us has been the biggest blessing we could ask for! Here is what our two friends had to say:
From Lindsay Watson:
Hello everyone! Super excited to be doing this! Blaine will make her debut shortly! Time is flying by so quickly (at least from the outside world...not sure if it is for Scott and Kristen!) If you chose to send a gift, Kristen will post pictures of her opening them...we want to make this as much as a baby shower as possible for her since they can't make it back to Ohio. We will be posting the link to the registry soon!
From Deedee Hensley:
Thanks to Kristen and to all her friends and family for joining this Facebook Baby Shower!! I like many of you, have been following Kristen and Scott's amazing journey this last year through Facebook and Kristen's Blog. I have really loved reading about not only their hardships and triumphs, but getting to see true blessings happen in their lives. Sharing the news about baby Blaine with all of us Facebook friends, made me feel like family and I've been truly excited for them.... We all know Kristen and Scott will need lots of baby items in the coming months.....what better way to help then a Baby Shower?? Because we cannot go to them and unfortunately the Adkins's will not be able to make it back to Ohio....we decided on a Facebook Baby Shower!! Please send gifts, or check at Walmart where they did register! Thank you so much for joining the fun and caring for this amazing young family!
Again I can't thank you two plus all our friends and family enough for all your support over the last year plus with all your support with Blaine!
I'm having issues uploading pictures, so I'll get them uploaded as soon as I can because I have a bunch!!
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