Guest Blogger this week/month is me the project financier. DWB

Well we have been a little busy working on the house, playing soccer, attending church and taking care of school work, so the blog has suffered. Things on the house have changed just slightly. All the siding is done and they have begun backfilling the front yard. The exterior is mostly done except the stone now and staining the porch, deck and cedar posts. The gas line is in after having to go under the hwy, a fiber optic line, and two water mains. You would think we would have gotten to tap into the gas main in the back yard, but that isn't the case. The water line is also hooked up, so we can at least wash some of the dirt off the kids now. Stacie and I also laid the electrical service entry conduit yesterday, but it was dark when we were done, so no pictures.

Trim is going in and our tile guy has started laying tile. The budget is looking pretty good and we think we will be under budget, but not by a lot the way things "pop-up". Below are the latest pics.

Cedar Shutters and 8x8 cedar posts

The cedar is all done, we just need to finish backfilling and building the steps. (10' wide steps)

The deck with a big first step and the inspection crew.

4" Unfinished Hickory Hardwood. 2' to 8' lengths -final finish will be a clear polyurethane. I was concerned about the wildness of variety of the wood, but since we used the big wide boards that were long it looks good. BTW we love heart hickory. It looks a lot like walnut which we wanted, but costs way to much.

We put the hardwoods in ourselves with Stacie's parents help in 3 days which saved us about $1000. After doing it we recommend good knee pads, a big bertha flooring hammer (Stacie loved), a miter saw with a new blade (I finally replaced the blade dad) and a pnuematic flooring nailer. Thanks to our neighbor Oliver who works for a flooring company who took care of us. We appreciated his help greatly, plus the kids love playing kick ball with him.

Note the 8x8 cedar block. There will actually be a 10x10 post there. :-)

The kitchen was a little more challenging due to all the angles. Luckily all the angles were 45 degrees. Also see all our trim. (4" & 6" MDF)

We would have loved true panel doors but with them being double the $$$, we opted for these molded interior doors.

The drywall guys going to town. They rocked the whole house in 3 days and then mudded/sanded it in 4 days. Most impressive was the guy hanging drywall by himself on the walls. Drywall mudding is most definitely an acquired skill that I don't have and the drywall dust went everywhere when they sanded it. What a mess.

Well that's it for now. Up next is painting, which we hope to do some of ourselves in the basement and maybe getting some grass seed down. Until next time. Later DWB