More From Sept. 13-17

I will start this post with a little food item.

Rowan has really taken to cooking the camping way on our little propane portable burners. On the weekends she gets up and creates delicious egg scrambles with veggies and cheese. Our neighbors must be loving the yummy smells that constantly come from our house now that we do most of our cooking outside on the grill and in the garage. Explains why there are suddenly more dogs hanging around our house too! We are thinking we might have to put a walk-up-to-go window in the garage so we can make a little extra cash to help pay for our project. :o)

Rowan in the garage kitchen

Rowan in the basement cave kitchen.

Back to construction.........

Here is a photo of Sharron Baker, who owns/runs Baker Stonework. She will be in charge of the crew who will be constructing our new stone porch and extending the height of our wood fire chimney on the house. She is pictured here with her lead stone mason, Sam. Sam is like a cartoon character, kind of like a tortoise with a GREAT sense of humor. A good ole southern Indiana boy with a Kentucky-like accent. Can't wait to show you his work. We have been to a few sights around town to see what the Baker group can do, and their work is fantastic. It is really great working with Sharron as we are all open to being creative as we go along with the project. It's really exciting.

Insulating the new crawl space for the dining room.

The first floor joist goes up

So, it now looks like a bomb has gone off at our house. We know that will only get worse for the next few weeks as the rest of the demolition happens.

Here are the foundation pads for the stone posts on the porch. It's very exciting to finally see the footprint of the porch space. It is larger than we thought it would be which is great. We plan on spending lots of time out there.

Floor joists installed

Sub-floor being laid

Jim laid out the stud/cripple/window/door measurements on the 2x6 plates for the dining room walls. The boys will use this guide when framing the walls.

So, the guys again got an amazing amount accomplished this week (only the second week of construction). Because we have had no rain in weeks (and none forecast in the next 2 to 3 weeks) Jim said we are already ahead of schedule.

Will be exciting to see what happens next week.................