A Little More Siding

Notice the title of this post is a little more siding? We must have the slowest siding guy on the planet.

Notice our garage doors are in though. That's nice to see.

Gnome's ready to put on the decks. I am too. We're hoping to be able to install the decks the weekend of July 11th. I'm sure we'll see all of you then.

I didn't get a chance to go out to the house with Dave today as I had to work. Apparently he was run off of the property by this sweet innocent looking bird.

It's a killdear, in case you were wondering. Apparently they are common in grassy fields and their nests are on the open ground (usually on gravel).

I have learned way more about flying critters in the last three weeks than I have in my life.

Siding

We have siding! Finally. The rain is delaying it a bit, but we're on our way!

Dave and I also started to install the doggy door. Yes, a human can fit through the door.

Hopefully the rain will keep away and we can get the siding finished!!

Buzzards!

Dave and I went out to our house to do some work today. Siding is going up and I'll have more on that shortly, but in the mean time, I had to post these photos. The 2nd one is kinda gross so proceed with caution.

As we were traveling out there, we thought we saw two turkeys on one of the roads you cross to get to our place. We thought we'd get a closer look and we stumbled across this guy.


See him on the right side of the photo flying away? It wasn't a turkey as we thought. It was a turkey vulture (commonly known as a buzzard). It was huge! We estimated it's wing span was in the 4 to 5 foot range. Yep, feet! It was huge. Giant bumblebees and now huge buzzards - I'm pretty sure the realtor never mentioned any of this.

Here's a closer photo for those who are interested.


Yep, it was pretty gross. When we left to head home 5 hours later, there were still 2 buzzards cleaning up the road. I told Dave he'll have to be really careful and not get hurt while we are building. I bet these guys could smell blood from miles away. Thank God my mom got us a first aid kit.

The Biggest Damn Bumblebee Ever

If I had known that the bumblebees were going to be this big, I may have reconsidered this whole move to the country thing.

This guy was found dead (thankfully) on a windowsill in our basement. He was over an inch long.

Dave said he was the size of a pterodactyl. He's not lying.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

While all of this rain has been great for some, it's really putting a kink in our plans.






Because of the rain, our siding guy got behind in his other jobs so he didn't get to our place this week. No siding means no drywall on my ceilings. No drywall on my ceilings means no insulation. No insulation means no no drywall on my walls. No siding also means no deck/porch frames. No frames means no decks/porches. No deck/porch means no stone. Got all of that?

Not that Dave and I weren't busy this week. We spent all Sunday, Monday night, Tuesday night, and Wednesday night running wires for an all-house stereo system we'll install eventually. We would have been out there finishing up Thursday night but I had to go ahead and get sick. Yep, I've been home for 2 whole days. I'm not sure that I have ever missed 2 days of work. Ever.

We were going to go tile shopping tomorrow, but I'm thinking spending a day at home sounds even better. Plus, it will give Dave a day to clean his grill (something pooped in our grill - yes, that's gross and no, we haven't used it since) and give me another day of rest. Sunday it will be back out to the house to finish up the stereo wiring.


This week wasn't a complete loss though. The electricians finished up all of their wiring. That's the nice and orderly white and yellow wires you see above. The pink and grey pile is our messy pile. I'm completely amazed by how much wiring goes into one house. Guess I've never given a thought to what's behind each light switch.

We did get to see our other new neighbors while we were working.

I'm not sure I'll ever grow tired of watching the animals from my back deck.

Let's Talk Storage

Dave and I knew we wanted lots of storage in our new house, but we didn't want to sacrifice any living space to gain this storage. During the design process, we had hoped to have a bonus room above the garage. We soon realized there was no convenient way to access this space from inside the house.

I wasn't too excited about having a bonus room with only garage access, so we decided that the majority of our storage space would come from this room. We have the option to finish it into livable space in the future, but for now I'm pretty excited about all of the storage space. I think my parents are as well as we've been using their basement for storage for the last 2 years!



This room turned out to be approximately 25 by 38 feet. Yep, it's huge!