After a morning of apple picking at Carter Mountain it was back to Richmond and back to work on the ole house.  I took Friday off and was able to knock out a couple nagging jobs that had to be done... rebuilding the furnace vent and putting insulation around the pipes that froze last winter.  The last thing we want is a repeat of last year, when our crawlspace went from a few frozen pipes to a river in just a few short seconds.


Here are some shots of this weekend's work:

Sarah knocked out the spot for the future stained glass transom.  We'll have to frame in a header but you can get an idea of the size it will be.

This is the main duct coming into the kitchen, which we're then branching to run to either side of the room.  We're going to try and have the registers blow out the front of the cabinets which should be fun to figure out.

Sarah's checking out the contractor's work in the backyard.  The earthquake had caused the neighbors retaining wall to tilt into their yard and it was made worse by the fact that the soil was right up against the wall.  So he dug out all the dirt, pulled it back into place, and put in drainage pipe and gravel.  We'll be able to connect one of our downspouts to the top pipe you can see beyond, probably sometime in the spring.

And another thing to add to the nagging jobs list was re-coating the front porch roof.  It might not look like it in the picture, but the roof has a very steep pitch to it which can make working up there a little hairy.  Trying to make sure I didn't paint myself into a corner was fairly easy, but painting the last bit while holding onto the window with one hand was a little harder.

This week we're hoping to get our kitchen floor framing inspected so we can put in the subfloor.  That should make moving around there much easier and give us a good base to start putting in drywall.

Tree Time

This morning we took a little break from the work inside and moved out to the backyard, a place that at times has looked like a waste land.  It's been a parking spot for the truck, a place to pile junk and debris, and even where we washed our dishes in the early days.  So we figured to give it a little life and plant a tree this weekend. We chose a Sweetbay Magnolia, and it'll be the centerpiece of the garden we have planned for the future.


And, of course, here are some pictures:

Here's Sarah starting on the giant hole which was 6 feet wide and 18 inches deep in the center.  I can't take any credit for this one, she dug the whole thing herself.

And here it is after all the hard work.  Our friends Erik and Robin picked it up for us and we were able to back the truck right up to the hole and dump it out.

And since we don't want the new tree to blow over Sarah's making sure it's tied down and secure.

Future Visions

Since we're doing some of the boring work right now we thought we'd share a couple images of what we hope for the future.  The first is a view of the kitchen from the living room...

And now an idea of what we want to do for the back yard...

We're looking to plant a Sweetbay Magnolia sometime soon...kind of the much smaller cousin of a southern magnolia and is good for the size yard we have.

After a nice day trip to Shenandoah on Saturday to celebrate our one-year anniversary it was back to work on Sunday.  We're slooooowly putting in the living room floor, which is pretty hard given none of the joists are 16" on center and some of them are splayed.  So it'll take a while and require a whole bunch of custom cuts.  Our new toy is a Bosch impact driver which is making installing the screws a breeze.  We've learned that having the right tools to do the job is a must, even if it means spending a little more than we'd like.  Here are some pics from this afternoon:

Here's the new toy...                                           ...which is awesome!

The first one's always the hardest, right?  I think Sarah's relived to finally have a floor, even if it's just a tiny piece!