Smooth white walls

The walls look quite different with all of the wires and pipes covered up. The rooms definitely feel more closed in without the see-through walk-through walls but everything seems to be okay size-wise at least! The guys doing the drywall work quickly and make moving those huge sheets of drywall around look pretty easy. I can barely pick up one end of the drywall to help move it around the room not to mention hold it over my head and screw it to the ceiling!

Master bedroom - one exterior wall left to drywall

Master bath and closet

Great room from the stairs - you can see that drywall is a messy process...the floors are pretty much covered in white dust and there's scrap everywhere.

Great room from the kitchen (skylight above still needs drywall)

The collar ties are trimmed out with douglas fir on the sides but not the bottoms yet.

The front entryway - the plant shelf on the top of the closet makes the wall seem less harsh. (No it's not a midget closet, they just haven't trimmed the drywall for the closet door!)

Laundry room

Front bedroom

Jack and jill bath

Back bedroom

Game room/shop downstairs

We spent the weekend fixing up the insulation. As Steve warned us, insulators are sort of the bottom of the building food chain, it's nasty work dealing with fiberglass so nobody wants to do it, they don't get paid much, so watch them closely and don't expect too much from them. His warnings were right on based on our experiences. While fiberglass isn't fun to work with, it doesn't take too much effort to put it in correctly...so we made sure everything was fixed properly. It wasn't a camera friendly weekend, although it would have been a good shot of Andy and the drywall ceiling falling as his board slipped in the attic and the drywall screws came out, whoops! At least it was an easy one to fix since they haven't taped and textured the drywall yet.

Sticks and stones... and sheet metal

That's what our house is made of!


Yes it is sort of funny how we spent so much money to dig out and haul off the huge pile of rock that was in and on our lot originally, and now we're paying money to have new rock delivered and attached to the house as decoration. Some parts of building just don't make sense...but I won't get started on all of them. The huge pile of 14 tons of malapai rock is slowly going onto the house front.

The rock and mortar look great. These guys do a great job figuring out how to fit the stones together and vary the shape and color of the rock pattern to make it all look right. Sounds like a tough job to me! The goal is to get all of the rock work done before it gets too cold. It's better to let the mortar dry in warmer conditions, so they cover it at night.

Winter is here!

Sleet and snow last night brought a very white mountain today! It's very cold, we even turned on the heat in our rental house today. We are so glad that the house is dried in and we don't have to worry about the interior getting wet any more. Insulation is nearly done and they brought all of the drywall in today.

Attic access above the jack and jill bath sink room.

The monster fireplace is moved into it's home with the metal flashing nailed down to the subfloor.

The first round of aspens look pretty bad (black leaves!) So I planted a second batch last weekend on the other side of the house...hopefully they fare better. They've had plenty of rain this week!

The drywall is all upstairs now.

Marvin made the second collar tie so we can have both trimmed out with doug fir before the dry wall goes in. The ceiling fan will hang between the two.

The winter view!

Although they weren't supposed to start dry walling until Monday they apparently did the garage today. Looks a lot different without the block wall and framing showing!

Fall is here!

An afternoon storm on Friday brought our first snowfall on the mountain. It was all melted by Saturday morning, but that's the sign that summer is officially over. I had some fun playing with the camera this afternoon, so I included some of my artsy shots for something different!

Plenty of wood cut and split for our first fire in the new fireplace. Andy and Joe cut this aspen the other week.

Some of the dead wood that we saved for backyard landscaping.

The windows have a pretty cool reflection!

The big pile of malapai rock that will be used for the rock veneer on the front of the house and the chimney.

There is green stuff growing in the backyard!

So we aren't the only ones in Flagstaff to use metal siding and malapai rock. Kip told us to go check out this engineering firm because the stone was done by the same guys that will do ours. The metal doesn't look too bad with the malapai...although our house should look less industrial with all of the windows and the hardi siding.


Okay now onto the house update...

Plumbing and electrical were finished last week, so they started insulating mid-week. Drywall will arrive this coming Wednesday and the insulation will be inspected. Marvin built the front stairs and we've been discussing the driveway.

The stairs have a large landing about 2/3 of the way down and then turn 180° to go back toward the house which should allow for a gentle transition from the driveway to the concrete pad below the stairs.

The excavator came back and dug out the dirt and cinders near the curb so that the curb can be cut for our driveway.

The excavator also worked on back filling the south side of the house. He made it look much easier than when we were moving dirt with shovels and the wheel barrow.

The start of the malapai rock pile for the stone veneer on the house. Much more to come...


A quick look at all of the insulation. The different colors are for different insulation R values.