By Golly, It's a House!

The house as viewed from the Pease's driveway. 

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, focusing primarily on two things:  framing and rockeries.  The exterior shell of the home is now completely framed in, and you can really get a sense of what the house is; it will scale back down when it's painted black, but this is it, folks.  After the interior framing, they'll move on to putting up overhangs, soffits posts, etc.  Windows will be delayed, so that will delay the application of siding, so for a month or so, it will have this bright wood coloring.

 

Along with the framing they've built significant rockeries to create level terraces on both side of the house.  These areas are very important to us, because they give us the ability to walk out on grade from the house at all levels.  Being on a hill means you're always climbing up or down, and we just didn't want to feel like mountain goats in our old age.  We asked the team for 'Big-Ass' rocks, and that's what we got (Be careful what you wish for . . .).  As well, they've buried the 1500 gallon water cistern, which will meet the house demands and provide a water supply in the event of fire (made all the more crucial after last week's big fire in Cle Elum); and buried a similiar-sized septic tank at the base of one of the rockeries.

We wished for a real summer over the last 2-3 years, when our summers here on the west side were non-events - so cool and wet.  Seattle just experienced 29 days without rain and temperatures up into the 90s.  The east side has been toasty, too - 101 in Leavenworth yesterday.  The crews working on our house have been working in 95+ temperatures, and we know that's very hard on them.  But they're doing great work, and we are really happy with the house as it takes shape.

In the middle of that, I took a trip to San Diego to visit our daughter, Barrie.  Look for photos of that trip on my Facebook page.

All for now!  Here are photos from this weekend.

Testing out the framing for the mudroom/pantry/powder

The view from Wally's studio, looking over the entry hall

Looking through the great room, patio door on the left, then windows over the woodstove, then the main window assembly at the southeast corner of the living room.  Lots of sun here!

Master Bedroom. You'll never actually see this view because the closet will occupy the middle of the space.  That's the shower in the far corner, and the door to the hot tub outside.

View from the master bedroom.  Again, the closet is taped off in blue on the floor so the bedroom will be cozy. The windows open to the northeast, right where the sun comes up.

View from the bed in the guest bedroom.  My office will occupy the right side of this space. And that's the door to the upper terrace on the left.

Kitchen.  The worktable and the plywood on the floor mark off the island.  The far wall is for pantry and stove, etc.

A nice view in the morning; Dave's watering his big pasture.

The Pease's cool copper weathervane.

And here's Dave mowing his upper pasture - Dave mows a LOT!

Sunrise from the trailer.  Right about here we heard a bear greeting the day with a huge roar.