September Accomplishments

We continue to push the rock up the hill every weekday and Saturdays.  As a result things are getting done.

Our neighbor Mrs #22.  A curious and friendly gal she is.

OK, we did take an afternoon off.  The Hansen Guest Ranch put on an Oktoberfest celebration in cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce in Swan Valley.  The food was excellent, Bratwurst & Sauerkraut, Schnitzel, Spätzle, soft pretzels, and German Chocolate Cake. They had Sam Adams Autumn Ale on tap and even had live music.  This two little gals could really sing.  They sang a couple dozen songs from God Bless America to Sweet Home Alabama, but they customized it to Sweet Home Swan Valley!  They were outstanding entertainers!

We even met up with Casey and his new bride Abby from North Carolina, at the end of the event.  They were touring the USA for their Honeymoon.  They didn't have set plans, just woke up each day and decided what they wanted to do.  We think they would make good RVers!

We worked on spreading all the gravel that Troy hauled in.  Gari had the hard ground work on this deal.

We finished raking and smoothing and compacting just in time for Tom & Cathy's arrival.

Below is the Irwin Rd driveway.  We started lining the edge of the driveway with river rock we plucked out of the yard area.  We stopped because we think we are going to have to push snow off the driveway and the edge rocks will be in the way of that.

Looking north out the Chapel Road driveway.

Looking east out the Irwin Rd driveway.  We straightened the edges of this driveway; better than it was before anyway.

 At the end of the Irwin Rd driveway, we started putting the unwanted river rocks at the driveway apron.

We finished pulling all the wire last month.  We still have to cut in all the boxes so they "are ready for device" in order to schedule our rough electrical inspection.  Also have to cut in all the circuit breakers into the distribution panel.  We learned that in addition to GFCI outlets, we have to install AFCI breakers for all bedroom and smoke alarm circuits.  That was a new one for us.

There's the distribution panel, all the circuits are there.  Now just have to cut 'em in.

The garage door is finally going in.  We made the order in April of this year.  We weren't sure if it was going to snow in the garage before the door was up.  Fortunately we have avoided that.

Last panel to install..

Angel installs the track.

It is official, Eagle View residence is completely closed in and ready for winter season inside work.  Now we can lock all doors and keep our tools and materials in the house without concern of casual theft.

We spread some of the manure (frame left piles), about half of it so far.  Once all that is spread, we can start laying in the last fill layer of top soil (frame right pile) that we saved from the driveway excavation.  We want to get an irrigation header buried before we complete the final grading.  It may be spring when we get to that.

A few shots from inside.  We also took delivery of the shower unit for the master bathroom.  We plumbed the drain in and have requested a rough plumbing inspection for later this week.  Fingers crossed on the inspection results...

Some of the guest bath and laundry plumbing.

This photo below doesn't translate all that well, but what it was, was a sun dog rainbow right in front of Mt Baldy.  We have never seen such a thing so low in the sky.

September Fleeting

Well we didn't even get a blog post up in August.  To say we have been busy is the truth.  We seem to officially be in the phase of the house build project where it seems all progress stops.  The frame, windows, doors, siding and roof all go up so quickly, then the physical plant systems, plumbing, wiring, HVAC, audio, video, etc seem to take forever without much noticeable physical change to the project.  We spent half of August in the crawlspace plumbing the Drain-waste and water supply systems.  We think we are close to rough inspection time, but are currently waiting on the shower unit so we can complete that last drain, then the inspection.  In the meantime we started wiring and that seems a lot easier.  At least we are out of the crawlspace for the most part, but do get to climb all up in the roof trusses.  It will be nice when that is over :-)

The Metal contractor is finishing the last of the roof and walls this mid-August day.

Steve prepares to install the LB joint for the underground electric service cable entrance.

All good.  That's the gray thing on the right.  The cover comes off that LB box so you can more easily pull the service entrance cable through the underground conduit and then bend it into the house.  The black pipe is an RV sewer hook up.  We will cut that down to ground level as soon as we get the gravel up to finished grade height.  We will mount a 50A RV electric hook up near the sewer.

We mounted the electric service panel inside the garage very close to where the service entrance cable comes into the house.  You can see the open 2-1/2" electric conduit to the lower frame left of the panel.

We pulled a temporary 50A electric service over from the shop.  We pulled it through the underground electric conduit so we don't have multiple electric extension cords running across the driveway.  You can see the black cable coming out of the conduit and we ran it up into the attic and across the garage into the house for a load center.

The temporary 50A service comes from the Shop.  You can see we are using one of the RV 50A electric hook ups for the source and just ran the cable down through the electric conduit under the driveway over to the house.  It's the little things...

There's the load center inside the house coat closet.  We just connected a 50A receptacle to the cable then used our RV electric test box to convert to a duplex outlet with 120VAC for tool and light hook up while we work.  This is much better than the extension cord nightmare set up we had a few weeks ago.

Evidence of plumbing progress underneath the house in the crawlspace.  In this late August shot the pipes are not glued just dry fitted for now.

This is the other side, north side of the crawlspace.  All we lack is the shower drain, and we will set that as soon as the shower unit arrives and we know where the drain will be located.  Soon after this picture (a week or so) we glued up all the drain and also installed and glued the supply system.  We still lack the shower drain though, which is holding up the rough plumbing inspection.

First evidence of plumbing above the crawlspace.  We now have the entire vent system plumbed and will have to update the photographic evidence. 

Here's a thing we did; we wrote some of our favorite scriptures around the framing of the house.  This Proverbs passage is written on the window header above the kitchen sink.

This scripture from Matthew is written above our guest bedroom door.  Come visit with us.

The Lord's Prayer is written above the garage door.  We have since sheathed over it, but we know it's there :-)  The Tyvek we stapled up at all the eave bays to hold the insulation inside the house structure and prevent it from spilling out into the soffits and clogging the vents.  We plan to have insulation blown into the attic.  R-40 we are thinking.

A view out the garage door.  That fine looking soil out there is really not soil yet.... it is presently a cow byproduct.

View looking east.  We still don't have an overhead garage door.  We ordered it in April this year.  We are praying it is installed before it starts snowing.

View looking southwest.  We are looking for a black steel Eagle silhouette to hang on the gable end to put our style on "Eagle View".

View looking northwest.

The 40 ft driveway between the Shop (left) and the House (right).  We envision the ability to place two RVs between there.  One hooked to the Shop, the other to the house.  Both with full 50A, water & sewer hook ups.  We are planning to winter over in the Shop this winter and continue working inside the house, hopefully making more good progress.  One nice thing is it is a short commute to work in the mornings.

View looking northeast.

Gari cleans up in the garage.

Plumbing the header for the water softener in the garage with Gari.

Last week we prepared for gravel delivery by outlining the driveway with some of our larger and plentiful river rocks.

First day wiring.  I see AV cable and some branch circuit work in the great-room.

Last week we had the propane tank delivered and buried.  Troy our awesome excavator makes the first cut for the tank hole on the south side of the house.

Shane from LP Propane operates the wireless crane while Troy guides the tank into place.  Gari watches closely to follow up with quality control.  She doesn't miss a thing.

Tank set in place and stubbed out, Troy begins to cover the tank.

Later that same week, Troy starts the gravel delivery.  This is planned to finish our driveways now that most of the heavy equipment building the house is finished.  Below Troy dumps a load in front of the garage.  Soon we will be able to drive and park things inside.  All we need now is the overhead door.

A second and third load are dumped in front of the garage.

Wiring is now in full swing.  Still waiting on the shower.

Woke up one day, went outside and saw this; two light eyes on the side of the house looking back at me.  Reflections from the Shop windows.

Ranchers have been busy cutting and bailing hay over the last few weeks.  We have watched many loads of hay like this go by Eagle View.

We had a bit if excitement a couple of weeks ago.  We were just finishing up dinner when we started to hear more and louder mooing than we normally hear.  We jumped up thinking the rancher neighbors were moving cows, and we wanted to get a few pictures.  We opened the Shop door and we see nearly the entire herd walking across our driveway!

Quick thinking Gari ran towards the gate to close it back up before every last cow escaped.  It appeared that the cows had pushed the gate down and just trampled over it.

The cows, about 60 of them, walked around the neighborhood for a little over an hour, then the moral of the story is that the cows do come home.  The ranchers with a little help from us guided the cows back into their rightful pasture.

 

  

Ceiling Job

We are working on the porch ceiling and we are doing this expeditiously in order to prevent the birds from nesting in the open soffits at the roof eaves.  After the porch ceiling job, the next task on the agenda is complete the encapsulated crawlspace to the floor.  That should be a one or two day job.  We already have about  5 or 6 days of work completed in the crawlspace.  Once the crawlspace work is complete, we will start with the plumbing and the electrical work.  We picked up a 42 space/84 circuit 225 amp service panel in Idaho Falls last trip into town.  We want to go ahead and set the electric service entrance for the house up as soon as possible.  When we picked up the service panel we checked on the pricing of the service entrance cable and were told that it is going up in price daily.  Of course, we know the drill, prices have been doing this for over a year now.  Pretty much all the building material pricing is still insane.  We need to pull the service entrance cable about 70 ft through and underground conduit, so it is a special and large cable.

The good news this week is that my finger has healed very nicely.  We are pretty amazed that it did so well.  The young doctor did a fine job sewing it back up.  Before & after about 2 weeks later.

The siding subcontractor ran out of steel last week, as you can see at the northwest corner and at the gable peak.  That gave us the opportunity to install the porch ceiling material we picked up a week or so ago.  We want to get the porch ceiling up asap to keep the birds out of the open eaves.

A shot below of the completed north porch ceiling.  We installed a 45 degree transition as the ceiling wraps around the east side of the house.  For a couple of amateurs, we are pleased with how it turned out.

Action shot of Gari up on the ladder working the last 8 feet of porch ceiling.  The end is now in sight for this job!

Steve wielding the pneumatic staple/brad gun.  We picked this little gem up at Hobo Freight.  It has been perfect for the porch ceiling job.

The house is looking pretty complete from the outside, but the inside is another story.  Below is the kitchen and family room area.

Below is the kitchen area.  The kitchen sink will be under the left window.

July Construction

First construction injury this month for Steve.  Not much of anything else new around here this month.  We have been getting up early everyday and trying to do something in the house.  It isn't exciting, but there are a fair share of problems most days so it is interesting.  We never know what to expect next.  I think that's the way it is when you decide to do your own general contracting on a house build. 

While using the angle grinder, the cut off wheel broke and sliced the top of Steve's knuckle open.

Dr. Anna stitched Steve up with 7 stitches.  That exam room chair was almost as uncomfortable as the injury.

Gari takes a spin on our neighbor's 4 wheeler in the front yard.

The metal workers have been here for a couple of weeks and have most of the siding and roof completed.  It is looking almost finished on the outside, but is far from finished on the inside. Looking northwest below.  We call this the back of the house.  At frame right is what we call our front door on the east side of the house, but we call the east side the side. haha.

Looking north east below.  We call the right side of the frame the back of the house.  We will put the A/C compressor and the LP tank back there.

Looking southwest below.  We call the right side of the frame the front of the house, but there is no door there, haha, that's the way we roll.

We took on installing the porch ceiling to save $10k.  Gari points at a detail.  We completed about 15 ft of ceiling on our first day of installation.  We learned a number of things and discovered a few framing problems that we are correcting.  Fun, fun, fun.

Close up on our porch ceiling work.