Exterior staining complete ...

Over the last week or so, we had a crew come in, stain the house and paint the soffits.  One coat of stain and three coats of paint on the trim. They also installed some wire up on the beams to stop the bird  building next spring. You can see that Kim has done quite a bit of mulching and next up is some landscaping in the front of the house.

A favorite picture

And here is one of our favorite shots ... the south side of the house taken from up in the woods.

Back-filling complete .....

Lee wrapped up back-filling the foundation this week and the house looks much more balanced on the property.  He also spread some mulch, built a few walls and added some top soil.

Here is a picture of Robbie enjoying the crushed stone where the patio will be.  Notice that Lee bordered the patio area with some rocks from our quarry.

And to the left, another picture of the back patio area, but taken from up in the woods.  Kim has spent a lot of time clearing off the ledge around the house and it's really adding a lot of character.

To the right is a shot of the walk out basement area, which will eventually have a small patio about the same size as the graveled area shown.

Here you can see that the area to the right of the barn is now free of the bulldozer that was there for the winter.  It's been cleaned up with some top soil.  We kept a large supply of rocks of course ... not really much choice!

Now, looking at the barn from down on the driveway you can see that we do have some landscaping to be done. Kim just ordered a truckload of mulch, part of which will go over the dirt you see to the right of the barn. Anything to keep out weeds!

On the left side of the house in the front, Lee pushed down the large rocks that make up the retaining wall.  The drop beyond those rocks is pretty steep.

And finally, here is a picture taken as you come up the driveway.  From this angle,  you can see we're missing a tree on the front left side of the house to add balance.

And here is a view from up near the house facing down the driveway.

Father's Day break ....

Mia came up for a long weekend to spend time with her Dad.  We took a hike up by Bull's Bridge on Saturday. A mile or so of the hike was on the Appalachian Trail, so I've only got about another 2,180 to go. Mia let it slip, that if I can't find anyone to hike the trail, she would go. I'm pretty sure she is going to regret that ... or maybe not!

We also had a nice campfire and here you can see Kim, Bob and Mia enjoying being outside with the smoke keeping the bugs away!

The dirt ...

Lee now has two more pieces of equipment on-site as well as some nice top soil in anticipation of the excavation back-filling starting tomorrow.

This is very exciting as once we're done with this step, we plan on having the house stained in early July and then we can plant a few things and really feel moved in.

I've started to build a small retaining wall to the right side of the barn .... the key word being 'started'. The plan in my head calls for a few of them following the foundation up the grade. Anything to try and use the excess rocks we have in our quarry!

Brie is also looking to get involved and hoping to man the wheel barrow during the process.

Well, well .....

After being out of power and then out of water due to no power last weekend, we again found ourselves without water Thursday night after a big thunder storm. Saturday the well pump controller was replaced, but since that still didn't get things flowing, the PVC pipe in the well sleeve was pulled.  At 300 or so feet, a break was discovered and repaired.

We are now totally prepared for losing water pressure. We have several gallon jugs filled in the basement and during an outage, we fill up emptied containers wherever we go.  This weekend, that included the neighbors, the town public restrooms, a local restaurant and hanging the jugs out the windows while we went thorough a car wash. Kim and I are also looking for a sun shower to hang out back and I've been eying outhouse plans on the internet.

Logging

We had family over most of Memorial Day weekend. It was a nice break with good food, a bit of wine and lot's of laughs. However, there was some house related activity.  Cousin Dane was up and gave me a lesson in using a chainsaw.  Here's a couple of pictures of me (aka Mountain Man) down by the woodpile.

Mia also showed her metal and did her share. I always knew she had it in her.

Also, Kim picked up a gas weed-eater and went to town on the driveway.

Pretty soon we'll be operating a Logging Camp along with our Granite Quarry.  What's next ... Farming?