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Well I’m here alone tonight as Aron has flown back to Airdrie to pack up our last storage unit and bring everything back here. Besides what furniture we have left in our house for sale, this will mean all our things will be here with us.

This week, the focus for the builders has been to keep working on getting the roof sheathed. It is a big job to get the big sheets of wood up on the steep roofs, so it has taken longer than I was expecting. About 3/4 of the house is done.

They now have to finish putting up timber beams that support the porch as well as the trusses that go over the porch, then they can finish the last bit of sheathing

The weather has been raining off and on, so that has also slowed down work on the roof. In the mean time though they have been doing other work in the house, such as building our staircase. So fun to be able to walk up the stairs to the second level.

Also we now have our bedroom wall, separating the bedroom from the great room. You’ll see the opening for the double doors framed and to the left on the floor they are beginning the framing for the fireplace in the great room. Not sure you can totally get the feel, but  our bedroom ceiling is vaulted, it is extremely high, will feel very open in our room.

Speaking of high ceilings, check out the height of our great room ceiling.

So that’s about it on the building front. Aron and I have been very busy this week coordinating materials and trades people. We’ve had a big blow as our window supplier told us yesterday that our window/door order would be 10 weeks to complete instead of the 4 he originally told us. We were expecting the windows to show up by the end of Sept at the latest, but now they are talking close to the end of Oct. This has significant impacts on us moving forward as quickly as we hoped.  Since they have our money, it feels like there isn’t much we can do. We are trying to put some pressure on them to move it up as much as possible.

Also, I’ve been challenged dealing with a couple of suppliers. You would think that suppliers would really want to get back to you and to make the sale, but it appears you have to chase them down and constantly be on their case to get quotes or even make a payment. I just don’t understand that, but after tomorrow, I’m hoping that we’ll have the majority of our materials sourced and ordered. That actually feels pretty good!

Sorry, just a little movie humor 🙂

Well we are getting very close to having the roof completely sheathed.  This means our HVAC and Plumber will be starting to do their work in the house right away. We also hope to have a roofer do the shingles as soon as possible and with the windows expected to arrive in a couple weeks, the house will really start shaping up.

The smoke has somewhat improved lately, but we can still smell it and see it.  The forecast for the next week is pretty wet and a lot cooler, so that should help the fire situation. It is also good timing for having our roof sheathed.

On a personal note, I went for my first day of training at my new job. I will be working for Lasca Natural, a company selling cabinetry and granite/quartz countertops.  I think I will really enjoy the job, will be a big change for me, but an enjoyable change. Only plan to work 3 days per week, with lots of flexibility on the days I work and time off.

Two trips back to Alberta next week, this will clear out our storage units completely as well as pick up some building materials we ordered. Will be a busy, busy week!

 

We’ve had a great visit this weekend with our nephew Scott Witbeck, his wife Jodi, and their girls, Taylor and Keira. Was aweseome to have family visiting again! The girls, and their dog Ali, love swimming in the river. They were in there swimming around and playing on the beach even when it felt pretty chilly to us adults.

Here is the most recent photos of the house. The trusses are mostly in place now. There is a few left to place over the porch, but I think that is it. Should start to see them sheathing the roof this week.

For those of you interested in our garden adventure.  Let’s put it this way, we way more food than we will ever be able to eat.  I took a few photos of our produce to share. We sure are enjoying eating everything. The food just tastes so much better, fresh from the garden.

This is our lettuce and green beans, both are producing great.

Here are the peas, they are just starting to fill out. We’ve had one meal with them and they were fantastic. The carrots and beets are down in front. We grilled some fresh carrots and they tasted absolutely delicious!

I take our garden baskets with us every trip to the garden and it usually ends up pretty full by the time we head home.

Pulled all our onions and dried them for storage.

Our experiment with direct planting canteloupe, watermelon and pumpkin seeds at the beginning of June has had mixed results. We have a few canteloupes that are already a pretty reasonable size. The watermelons did not do well, the only watermelon we have is the size of a marble right now.  We have a few nice size pumpkins growing, but the pumpkin plant is a monster. I’m constantly cutting it back and I’m sure there has been over 50 blossoms, most of which I’ve removed.

We finally picked our peaches, as a few actually fell off the tree. Next year we will have to pick them a bit earlier. They looked beautiful and tasted absolutely fantastic. Ruins us for any other peaches.

It’s starting to get dark here a lot earlier now so we had some lights we had previously purchased from Costco that we strung up. Feels so festive now when we turn them on!

And just because I’m a Grandma, I’m inculding a picture of our adorable little granddaughter, JJ. She’ll be turning 2 in a couple weeks and we can’t wait to see her. Love ya JJ!!!!

This is the big day we’ve been waiting for. The crane arrived this morning and they are starting to lift the room trusses and beams onto the house. In a matter of days we should have the house fully framed and sheathed. I’m soooo excited. The pace is really going to pick up once we can start doing work inside the house.

This is a photo from when the crane first arrived and starting setting up. We’ll be taking more photos and videos throughout the day and I’ll update the post later on this evening.

UPDATES:

More progress, the house is literally starting to take shape. It looks huge! I said to Aron, this looks like a lot of house for 2 people, to which he responded, ‘we need a lot of space’. We’ll need lots of visitors to help fill it up, hint, hint…

 

Nothing new to report, it’s been an extremely quiet week.  Our builder had an illness in the family, so he’s been off all week.

The house roof trusses and beams were delivered Friday, so that should help get us some good progress next week.

Aron’s been working in the garage doing the electrical. We’ve been doing measuring in the house for flooring, tile, etc. We also found a local supplier of quartz countertops, where we found what we were looking for at a price we could live with. I also may have also found a job working for them. Life throws some surprises at you every once and a while.

Once piece of good news, it’s raining right now. Hoping this helps with some of the fires. We’ve have terrible, terrible smoke all week.

Signing off for the night, sweet dreams everyone!

Wow, what a smokey drive to AB and back. We were worried about our trip as the highway close to Creston had an active fire and they posted that the highway could close at any time. Lucky for us, we made it through without any problem. Just super intense smoke and such a strong smell. Yuck!!!

Here is a shot of the river today as compared to what we normally would see.

The other day Castlegar and Kelowna had the worst air quality in Canada.  I can believe it.

So this is the forecast for the next week, sure hope the weatherman has it right. Could use a few days of rain/showers.

Going to start doing electrical in the garage tomorrow and maybe some trusses will be delivered. Stay tuned!

This is just a quick post, nothing too much to report. We did get all the overhead garage doors in place and the man door installed. The garage is basically secured so we can start moving things into there for storage.

This weekend we will be heading back to Alberta to start moving over our stuff in storage. We have 3 storage units to empty out, so this will be an on going process, but we are excited to get it going.

I did a walk through of the house today and took a few photos of the view from some of the windows. Thought I’d share these with you. I’ll probably post more of the views as the house progresses.  There is some building materials, vehicles and smoke in the pictures, but you can just ignore all that.

Master Bedroom (view through our double sliding doors)

Dining Room (view through side window)

Guest Bedroom (this is the view you will have when you stay at our house!)

View from Second Floor (no windows framed in yet, but you get the idea)

View from on of our office windows

I won’t be posting anything new until we are back from Alberta, after Tuesday next week. Should be some exciting updates as we are expecting the house roof trusses to arrive next week.

Hope you are all surviving the smoke, it is pretty awful here today.

 

Things seem to be moving along at such a fast pace now. In the last couple days the second floor walls have gone up and they will be ready for the roof trusses in a very short time.

Another exciting change is that our garage floor got poured yesterday. We’ve been quite anxious to get this done as we want to start moving our items in storage into the garage.  Tomorrow Aron and I try our hand at putting up the garage doors, wish us luck!

A little tidbit we recently learned (maybe this is common knowledge, but we just didn’t know). If you need to rent a UHaul truck do it early in the month. When we first checked out the price of renting a UHaul we looked at dates near the end of a month and the costs was around $1200.  We were floored and were pretty sure we wouldn’t be renting one. I checked again the other day for dates early in Sept and the cost was around $400. So we got a couple rentals for early in the month to try and move the majority of our stuff. Lesson learned!

Aron Update: We went to Kelowna yesterday for Aron to see Dr. Yap.  He said the eye is totally sealed up and the pressure is back up again. On the downside, the pressure is too high now, so he is taking drops to help with this. Interestingly enough, now that he is on the drops to lessen the eye pressure, he has not had any of the headaches he had been experiencing lately. He is practically back to his normal self, which we are both very pleased about.

As for the eye, the cornea is healed up nicely, but the Dr. can see some damage to the iris, but there is still too much blood to fully assess the extent of damage and he still cannot tell if the lens has been damaged. Aron can still only see light and dark, but until the blood dissipates this is to be expected.

The good news is that he can return to  his normal level of activities and driving. The Dr. also told him that he will be leaving the stitches in the eye for about 6 months. He will be going back in 2 weeks to check up on the eye pressure.

I’m going to dedicate this post to our garden and fruit plants. I took a few photos last time we were there, so I’ll share them with you and provide some explanations.

This in overall shot of our raised garden beds, only one is blocked by the corn, but overall you can see most of it. So far we are eating the following from the garden:

• Potataoes
• Beets
• Snow and Snap Peas
• Romaine, Butter and Cardinal (Red) Lettuce
• Spinach
• Cherry and Roma Tomatoes
• Green Peppers
• Zuchinni
• Strawberries

We’ll be having carrots, beans, onions and corn very soon.

Aron wanted to let one of the green peppers turn red, so this one is well on the way.

This is our strawberry patch. I specifically bought everbearing plants. We didn’t have this kind in Airdrie and we would get a ton of strawberries in a few weeks and then that was it for the year. With everybearing, we’ll get less at a time, but they should produce through out the summer. So far I’m impressed with how many strawberries we are getting, and they taste fantastic!  We are going to have to build a netted cover, as the birds are liking them as much as we do.

This is our peach tree. We only have eight peaches growing this year, but I think that now we are here full time to take care of it, we will get a bigger yield next year. I can’t wait for these little guys to ripen, the ones we’ve had in the past from this tree, tasted better than any peach we’ve ever boughten.

Our grapes are starting to change color. These are wine grapes, so they have seeds, but they are tasty to just eat. I think our lesson learned with the grapes is that they need more water. They are a bit small in size, so I’m hoping we can improve things next year.

I also really wanted to grow flowers in my garden, so this year was just an experiment with some bulbs. Next year I’m going to start some flowers inside to transplant in the spring.  I should have a big variety next year as I love having cut flowers in the house.

These are Dinnerplate Dahlias, and they are BIG! I took a shot with my hand beside one for perspective, but I still don’t think it truly conveys how large and beautiful they are.

These are a few of the gladiolas. I’ll be growing those again next year. They are so colorful and bring back memories of my mom. She always grew them in her garden every year.

On a totally unrelated note, we decided to do some shooting yesterday. I shot my compound bow and Aron shot the pellet gun (he can’t shoot his bow as he isn’t supposed to exert himself too much until his eye has healed more).  I just wanted to show the target after I was done, if you zoom in you will see a hole right in the middle. I could say, “I’m just that good”, but it was pure luck for sure. Still made me smile though.

And lastly, I think everyone reading this will relate. It has been sooooo smokey here today. I took a couple photos, but they really don’t give the full effect of the smoke. It smells so bad right now and there are ash flakes falling all over. We hear there are a few fires near by, so not sure how long this will last.

Today our builder brought in some extra hands to lift the two end walls as they are 20 feet tall and very heavy. It looks so cool to see the shape of the house start to appear. On Friday they also were able to get the floor joists up on the second level.  Probably won’t be long before we see some walls start to show up there.

Here is a picture from a bit earlier using the quadcopter, it gives a great perspective of the rooms and overall house.

Here is the main floor layout, you might be able to start making out what the rooms are in our build now.

Aron says I haven’t mentioned any of our wildlife encounters so far. Unfortunately we don’t have photographic proof of any of these, and there haven’t been that many either.

The other day Aron was sitting by the river and right in front of him a bald eagle swooped down and caught a fish out of the river. We see a lot of bald eagles flying up the river and down the river. We actually saw three together the other day. We also see a lot of Ospreys  and I saw a Heron flying over a few days back.  Speaking of birds, and on the other end of the scale, we also have hummingbirds. I read they usually leave around mid-July, but last week at our garden while I was watering, one showed up three times checking out our gladiolas.

Last week Aron was looking up river and thought he saw a log or something floating down the river. Turned out to be a black bear swimming across to our side. He was coming to shore close to our trailer, so Aron had to make a lot of racket to scare it off in the other direction.

Tha’s really about it, we really haven’t seem too much of interest, but if we do I’ll let you know.