#19 - Babies and Weddings and Duct Work, Oh My!

Matt's tool belt hanging on a nail in our (new house) closet.
These tools make me smile.  When I look at this, I see hours and hours and hours
of working and tinkering that he's doing on our behalf. <3 

Our life: instragram style

We've been in a slow and steady loop for a while.  Progress is being made, but it's not incredibly noticeable.  Nothing looks different from the outside and not much looks different from the inside

except


All the guts.  The guts of the house are coming along beautifully, and I think will be wrapped up very shortly! By guts, I mean the plumbing, electrical and HVAC.  And we also received our 3rd check from the bank (which, again, proved to be the most frustrating part of this process, did I ever blog about this?  I'm going to have to check.  If I haven't, it's a good story.)

Maybe it's 'cause I grew up as the kid of a tool & die maker, maybe it's cause I've been in a machine shop lots of times in my life and can smell it just thinking about it, maybe it's cause I've always been surrounded by hardware components (not that I know how to use any of them), but whatever it is I love nuts and bolts and gauges and gaskets. And I like this shot as much as I like the look of a pretty flower!

We have light switch wiring, overhead lighting wires, bathroom fan wiring, outdoor light wires, heating ducts, cooling ducts, vents, registers, all the really really functional stuff that makes the world go 'round. We have plumbing pipes where they're supposed to be, we have vents going out the roof where they're supposed to go.

Through the hobbit door

Have you ever noticed how many things are on roofs?  I didn't, until we had to start thinking about where our bathroom fan and dryer vent would exit the house.  Our laundry room is in the middle of our whole house, not on an exterior wall, so we had to come up with a creative solution for where the dryer vent will exit.  It can only be so many feet of pipe from dryer to exit.  As we consider all of these decisions, we have a tendency to hone in on certain house features as we drive around.  When we were thinking about the roof connection, we couldn't not look at roof joints (are they called this?).  When I thought our house was too pointy and enormous, we looked at roof pitches all over.  When we were considering how to landscape our front flower bed, I noticed shrubbery everywhere.  Now that we've been thinking about the vents, fans and pipes, it's all we see on rooftops.  And when you pay attention to it, it starts looking a lot like you should find some dancing chimney sweeps up there.  We decided where our dryer will vent out of the house but I'll keep the location of our exit port a secret for now -- until I'm SURE that it actually looks fine, and not too, um, well...strange.  (A little tip for roof pipes, etc.  If you spray paint them the same color of your shingles, they blend in better.)

Utility room indeed!

How we marked where we wanted the switches go.
A sharpie, a magnetic notepad, a staple gun (and some arguing, keepin' it real!, but we got the job done)

View of downstairs, take while standing on the landing of the staircase

Upstairs room

Upstairs bathtub.  More at a later date about why we chose this specific tub.

duct work.  This is beside the upstairs bathroom

The secret annex.  It's not empty anymore!  Also, this orange table is migrating and I have no idea why it's in here now.  Someone was using it for surface area, I guess!

On our radar is insulation and drywall for the interior (once all inspections pass for the current work on the guts), and on the exterior, the goal is to purchase the materials to start working on the eaves. We need to close those up because winter is on its way, and these are still open to the outside. So far, we've only been swarmed by stink bugs and had a day of lady bug swarming.  But, there was also a BIRD that got in.  And we do NOT need any more critters taking up residence for the winter.  Buttoning up from the outside is major priority.  Rain can't get in, but the critters can and they WILL.  They're probably out in the backyard right now scheming with our friend the skunk.

This is the dormer window and that blue light box is where a (yet to be chosen) pretty light will hang

That blue light box at the bottom of the stairs is where my 2nd choice tall skinny (not the 1st choice short fat one) Pottery Barn hanging light will be.  Another one will be at the top of the landing mostly above where I was standing to take this picture.

View from the upstairs stair window.  That's the hole matt dug for the power service that will now be underground!

more duct work

Meanwhile, while this all goes on day by day, we've had some more big events!  On my mom's side of the family, my cousin got married a week ago Saturday; and on my dad's side of the family, another cousin had a baby a week ago Friday!  So, our family had the joy of attending a wedding and also taking care of my cousin's older kids while she and her husband were in the hospital with their new baby.  This makes my heart overflow with JOY.

Matt, Me, my brother Andy, his wife Cara and my BABY NEPHEW DUE IN JAN!

A handful of my sweet family, mom, aunts, cousins, sis-in-law, daughters, AND MY BABY NEPHEW

MY BABY NEPHEW will probably grow up to be a model or movie star if he looks anything like his parents.  He will also grow up to be the funniest, most easy going, fun to be around person if he acts anything like his parents. <3

What we look like when we dress up.

 

What we look like other days when the bank says we can't have any money.

My mom and her sisters.  The one in green with the big smile is the mother of the groom.

My favorite series of photos from the whole day.  This is my mom smashing my face off.

This is my mom fixing her glasses and my uncle photobombing us after my mom tried to smash my face off.

This is my mom smiling, wishing she could be smashing my face off.

I am probably a broken record, but I LOVE having roughly 4 zillion cousins.  It's the best gift ever.  I feel especially grateful that I'm one of the older ones on both sides of the family so I have memories of a lot of my cousins as little kids and even as newborn babies (which makes me feel old when they get married, but that's beside the point.).  It's super special to have a front row seat to all of this.  The blessing is something I don't take for granted!

Along the same lines, the opportunity to add onto our home; and the chance to share the journey here with all of you--and that people even visit this blog to read about it--and with enthusiasm has been a blessing in and of itself!  So thanks for reading my tiny corner (with a really tall roof) of the internet. Also, we've had strangers stop in our driveway to talk about it, which is really fun--and it's not even habitable yet.   I can't wait to see what happens when we can bring people inside.  It's pretty exciting!!

And one final item to share.  Last week, I was overwhelmed by a very specific aspect of this project.  As in, losing sleep one night and I am not one to lose sleep EVER.  The exact details are not important.  But I prayed one very, very, very specific prayer and The Lord answered that prayer DIRECTLY...not with 1, not with 2, not even with 3, but with FOUR people!! God prompted 4 people to help answer a prayer of mine that they didn't even know I had prayed.  THAT was cool.  And I am humbly thankful.

my neighbors deadheaded their zinnias and gave me a bunch to crush and scatter next spring!

That's it for Monday!  Carry on friends!  Keep your chin up, have a snack, and don't forget Who loves you.