Fireplace (And my New Toy)

The focus this week is on the fireplace and continuing the hardwood floor. The Amish team has split in half working on both. All of the dozens of stainless steel chimney pieces have been put together and installed, all the way thru the roof. That part is all done. They are now working on preparing for the stone. The stone will start going on tomorrow. Now the master bedroom, office and loft area hardwood is done, they are working on the balcony and will move to the hallway next, leaving the great room for last after the fireplace is done.

We spent the weekend putting the new tractor and attachments to good use. We were able to catch up on a bunch of projects, but still plenty more to go. See the pictures below. The only project we don't seem to have pictures of was a pretty good sized one and that was digging shale out of the hillside down below and fixing a washed out culvert. That put both the hoe and the bucket to good use!

Preparing for the days work!

Cleaning the ditch behind the house so it will drain better.

Smoothing out the areas where we trenched the electric lines months ago.

Spreading gravel in front of the doors to keep the mud down being tracked into the house.

Man...all this work....got it dirty, had to wash it off in between jobs....

Back to work, the storm we had a month ago that knocked our power out for 8 days, picked up the "hunting shack" on the back food plot and placed it upside down in the stream.

"She thinks my tractors sexy...."

The hunting shack all back into position again, even used the bucket to level out the ground better than it was before.

Digging a drainage ditch to divert water from washing out one of the culverts.

And finally, by mid-afternoon on Sunday, mowed the back of the pond dam. It is steeper than these pictures make it look. It looks sooooo much better after having not been mowed for 2 years. There were trees 10 feet tall growing back there, no problem for the new equipment!

Back to the house.....all the pieces parts for the chimney staged and ready for installation.

Bottom of the chimney where the free standing wood burning stove will be connected.

A view from inside the chimney, that is 31 feet to the roof!

The chimney wrapped and ready for the wire mesh and mortar.

Wire mesh all installed, mortar going on. Will be ready for rock to start tomorrow.

Making Progress on All Fronts

The Electrician is moving ahead with wiring all outlets, switches and some lights. We don't want some of the light fixtures installed until the work is done in those rooms. For example ceiling fans, we don't want them or their light fixtures getting knock by a board! He is working on outside lights/ ceiling fans on the front porch, coach lights outside the doors and lights outside the garage doors. He can also do bathroom exhaust fans, closet lights, smoke detectors and there is work to be done in the shop areas, which is a lower priority.

The Amish crew is working away on the hardwood floor. The master bedroom is done and my office is over half way done. They have also chalked a line and laid out the first line of boards for the loft area, which I suspect they will move to next after my office. They are holding off on the great room until after the fireplace is done. They don't want to drop a stone from 20 feet off the ground and have it bounce across the hardwood floor, good thinking!

As for the fireplace. The stone and all materials to prepare for and install the stone have arrived. I was waiting on two chimney parts to arrive, the shipment arrived yesterday, they shipped one of the parts wrong. They have the correct part and are going to see if they can overnight it to me. Once we get that one last part, the installation of all those chimney pieces will begin. This must all be done before the stone can go on so they are all dependent on one another.

The cabinets and vanities have been built and ship today from the builder and should be at the local building center by early next week. I told them to go ahead and get the kitchen on the installation schedule so that the granite can be measured and cut so the installation of that does not delay us.

The carpet has been selected, paid for and ordered. It will likely be in yet this week or next. We will have to wait until the trim is done on those two upstairs bedrooms before we have them come install that. Which will be a couple of weeks out.

Master Bedroom hardwood floor about 1/2 way done. (Viewed from Laundry room door)

Gas powered table saw, I've never seen one of those before either!

The stone for the fireplace.

The wood burning stove. It weighs 475 pounds!

New Tractor

The new tractor has been delivered! They brought the tractor with the bucket and back hoe, tomorrow AM they will deliver the brush hog, tiller and blade. Now I'll have something to do in the evenings and on weekends! It is a Kubota MX5100, 52HP, 4WD, Hydrostatic transmission.

Tile is Complete, Ready for Hardwood

The porcelain tile is 100% complete, the hardwood has been delivered and the installation starts tomorrow.


Hardwood floor being delivered. There are 86 "boxes" of hardwood.



The finished tile in the Kitchen. There will be an "L" shaped outer kitchen set of cabinets/ counter and there will be an island in the middle with room for chairs to sit at the island.

Close-up picture of what our granite kitchen counter top and island counter top will look like. It is called "Santa Silvia".

Big Ass Fan

The Big Ass Fan is alive! The 9 foot ceiling fan is installed, wired and up and running, it is truly something to see, awesome! The T&G Pine ceiling is 100% done in all areas. They just need to install the attic access door and trim it out, when they do the rest of the trim work. The tile work is about 80% done and should be largely finished today, with final grout sealing on Monday. The hardwood floor installation will start next week, the Amish crew sanded all the floors yesterday to make them smooth and ready.

Downrod with fan motor attached.

Fan "Airfoils" ready for installation. The tips are called "Winglets". These blades are aircraft grade aluminum on the inside and are real Walnut wood vernier on the outside.

A view from the top, after airfoil installation.

Finished! When the fan runs, it is 100% quiet, you don't hear anything, yet you feel the air movement. This fan moves the air of 9 - 52 inch ceiling fans and consumes the power of just 1, impressive.

Ceiling and Tile Flooring

The T&G pine ceiling is about 60% complete in the Great Room, the underlayment for the tile floor is 100% installed in all locations and the tile itself has been installed in the master bathroom, laundry room and hall bathroom. The mounting bracket for the "Big Ass Fan" has been installed, trust me, it won't come down!. We braced it more than even the manufacturer recommended.

Once the tile has been put down, it will dry and then the grout will be put down and sealed, all of which should be completed this week. The pine ceiling should be completed in the Great Room this week and than the only remaining ceiling will be in the Storage Area.

We selected our hardwood flooring. We found somone who had "cabin grade" Hickory. They sent us a sample and we loved it, so we ordered 1,800sf. Being cabin grade there will be many shorter boards but it actually enhances the look in our opinion and is more of what we wanted. We hope the larger order has more "knots" in it, the sample box they sent is actually nicer then we expected but for the price ($2.50/sf including shipping!), we couldn't pass it up.

Dining Room and Kitchen side of the Great Room.

This was taken from the front porch. They are walking on top of the dam for the pond.

Also taken from the front porch. We have a parade of deer daily... and tons of humming birds.

Not sure if this means we will find a pot of gold or we have spent a pot of gold.....

Master Bathroom tile

Installing the "Big Ass Fan" bracket, the peak of the ceiling is 24 feet off the ground!

Hall Bathroom tile, work in progress.

Just thought this was worth sharing, a shot of the pond on a nice sunny day!

A sample of the "cabin grade" hickory flooring we have selected.

Air Conditioning

Another major milestone, we have air conditioning in the house! Now we can keep all the doors and windows closed and all the work inside going forward will be much more comfortable. The knock-down in the great room/ hallway is done and the painting is 90% done. We also now have T&G knotty pine ceiling in the two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. Making great progress, on track for an early September move-in!

Spraying the knock-down

Close-up view of the knock-down before primer/paint.

Some of the walls after knock-down

Connecting up the A/C! (temporary....)

T&G Pine ceiling in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Power After 8 Days

We just had power restored a few hours ago. Almost 8 full days without power in temperatures above 95 every day and the past two days above 100! The camper is cooling down and finally feeling much better, we might actually get a decent night sleep tonight.

We also have gutters on the house now too. The gutters and downspouts are green to match the decor. With the size of the building, we have 14 downspouts to ensure we can capture and flow away all the water that will come down off the smooth metal roof. As soon as I get my tractor, I'll start planning the trenches to get the water away from the building and down over the hills/ into the pond.

The painting upstairs is almost done and the primer is on downstairs except the Great Room. The knock-down is going to be applied on Tuesday to the Great Room. The plan is to have all the paining done by the end of next week. Today the kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities/ linen closets were ordered and we picked out our vanity tops and narrowed the counter tops down to two choices. We also picked out the carpet for the two upstairs bedrooms today, they will be out this week to measure and get the carpet on order.

We also ran to Lehman's Amish Hardware and purchased our wood burning stove and all the pipe/ parts needed to get it through the 33 foot tall roof. They had to order one part, everything else was in stock.

Just some ominous clouds over the house one morning at sun rise.

Installing first piece of gutter, this piece is 66 feet long.

The wood burning stove and all the pieces parts, nearly filled the back of my truck!

Day 6 Without Power

Today is day 6 without power. Here is what the power company web site says:

"with the exception of the area South and west of McArthur small outages now make up the majority of the problems. Some locations may be off for a few days due to the time it takes to get to the number of individual locations."

Now they are saying there are 215 they serve in our county without power, that is up from 184 yesterday. We are expecting temperatures over 100 for the next couple of days, I thought mid-90's was bad.....

The drywall is done. I spent my 4th of July holiday cleaning the house in preparation for painting. I just need to mop the floors and then the downstairs rooms will be ready. Not sure when the person is coming to do the knock-down in the great room. I will follow-up with him today. I talked to the person doing the porcelain tile and he will be ready to start laying tile the week of 7/16.

Still No Power

It is day 4, no power. According to Buckeye Rural Electric Company's web site this morning, there are only 184 people they serve in Gallia County without power....we are one of them...... I hope with such a small number they get to us today!

The Amish are finishing the insulation in the ceilings in the upstairs bedrooms, bathroom and storage room today and the drywall team is doing all the ceilings in the downstairs today. Tomorrow the drywallers will be done. Then we can proceed to primering the downstairs rooms, doing the knock-down in the great room, etc.

Power Outage

We had "major" storms come through Friday evening and wiped out power for entire counties in Southern Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and probably more. We still do not have power, going on day 3. You can't find ice anywhere and the few gas stations that have power are either now out of gas or the lines run down the road if they do get some.

Danial came down yesterday and brought our generator so at least I am able to work today and we are doing our best to keep cool. He kept stopping and looking for ice for us when he got within 1.5 hours of here, never found any. The drywallers came today, they both apparently have power at their houses now and we are sharing my generator to run their tools, radio, fans, etc.

The Amish crew did come on Saturday and brought their portable propane lights and were able to get the first coat of paint on the upstairs walls. I also ran and brought the Amishman who is going to make our log railing so he could make measurements and start getting the materials together for that. So we are still moving ahead.