Charis' turn behind the camera

James was cutting some boards for walls upstairs, and it was so cold, 

and Charis wanted to take pictures, so out she went with the camera. 

Got some pretty good shots, too!  

Bye-Bye Trash

This...

made it out to the curb...

thanks to help from Dad, Ryan, and Dane one rainy Saturday morning.  

A special thanks to our little town's trash service for taking it away!!!  

Boy, that feels good.

Plumbing Update

The work continues on the upstairs bathroom.  In addition to drain lines...

there are fresh water lines and last, but not least, a new bathtub!  (well, new to us)

Fresh from Uncle Jeff's field. :-)

James and Uncle Jeff hauled this chunk of cast iron up the stairs, and we can't wait to put it to use!

In the meantime...

What is it that we've been doing since the last post? Well...  James has been slaving away, slowly but surely, on the plumbing for the new upstairs bathroom.  He's spent hours running drain lines and fresh water supply, resulting in a geyser incident and some very sore muscles. But everything is holding well! 

While he's been busy with that, I got to work on Lily 's room.  This will be Charis and the baby's room eventually and we had never painted it when we moved in. It was in need of some serious work, the first step being to move Lily in with her sisters. This has resulted in several Falls-Creek-like bedtimes -- "lights out" = party time. But we're getting there...

The before -- speckled green paint with white stripes where wallpaper borders used to be.  In fact, let me track down that picture...
  This is what it looked like the day we bought the house.  Wow.

after 9 bags of trash...

and here are the wallpaper borders coming off...

and don't forget the awesome cloud ceiling

(complete with 2x4 sheet-rock patch job from last year's hail storm leak)  :-)

Anyway... Kilz covers a multitude of sins.

And Sonic occupies a multitude of children...

With some great teamwork from Mom and Haley...

The room is much more serene!  I never realized how much it stressed me out!

Glad to have that done! 

Siding

The next step is siding.  That meant step-flashing first (I'm learning all sorts of new things!)

(The red in the picture is thanks to the intense sun -- good reminder of how HOT is here!)

We're waiting on windows on the back to finish that siding, but the sides of the dormer are done! 

Next came soffit, cornice, vents, and bird boxes. :-) 

And have you seen the pile o' junk lately???

Decking Time

Tarped and ready for the next step...

And DONE (for today).  This is about as much of a smile as I could coax out of them...

Rafters

Having a buddy helped immensely.  Dane helped with the measurements, James cut the rafters...

Then hoisted them up onto the roof...

The girls provided oversight...

And in no time at all, the rafters were in place.

 Time for lunch!