New Beams

We ordered the lumber for our beams this fall, not really sure when we would get around to replacing the ones around our fireplace, but knowing it needed to happen sometime in the near-ish future. What we had was doing the job, but was a bit makeshift as you

can see.Then one afternoon we got a fit of inspiration and decided to tackle it. So with a bit of muscle, some pounding and a lot of supporting we transformed our stairway from ugly makeshift beams to beautiful, permanent ones.All that's left to do is a bit of staining so they match the wood in the rest of the house.

Time to Get Kozy

Before winter hit, we were able to install our new fireplace. It's a Kozy Z42 that we were able to purchase locally here in McCall and install ourselves. It functioned just fine as is, but aesthetically we had a ways to go on the project.

The new fireplace requires zero clearance, so Travis has been working on building a frame around it to hide the stove pipe and one day (hopefully one day very soon) it will be covered with ledgestone and tile.
It looks better already, don't you think?

But before the stone and tile come the backerboard...

Our hope is that by the end of the month we will have the tile and stone installed. Here is a sneak peak at the ledgestone we are going to use. It was given to us by some friends who had leftovers from their house. We just have to see if we can purchase some corner pieces and we'll be set.

Good-bye Leaky Roof

Once again it's time to do some catch up with the blogging. I am going to try and keep things more up to date on here this year (we'll see how that goes...). One of the biggest projects we tackled this fall right after Travis was laid off work for the season was re-roofing our house.

For future reference, November in McCall is not the best time of the year to be working on a tin roof. Despite the cold, snow and rain, however, we (i.e. Travis) were able to get the north side of the roof finished with the generous help of some friends before the snow really set in for the season. The south side will have to wait till spring for it's makeover, but it doesn't have any leaks in it so it's not such a big deal. It will be exciting once the snow melts this spring to actually be able to see and enjoy our new pretty green roof!

Sheet Rocking

Much work, little blogging. That seems to be the story around here! Though honestly, there hasn't been a ton of work on the house this summer as the Forest Service has been keeping Travis quite busy this summer. But, here is a little back tracking of what we've been up too...

What better way to spend Fourth of July weekend than sheet rocking your kitchen?

And it's even better when you're sporting your wife's pink tool belt. =o)

Our beautiful new wall! It did take a little getting used to no being able to walk through anywhere we wanted but actually having to use the doorway. I suppose it's worth the inconvenience to have the (future) bathroom separated from the kitchen, though!

And what would 4th of July be without a berry pie to top it off!

Stay tuned for more exciting projects!

Saturday Progress

Last Saturday was so productive! We started off by taking advantage of the break in the rain to get up on the roof to resecure it and tar around all the nail holes in hope of stopping the leaking in our "shop" (It's also our future master bedroom, but for now it's a shop!).

(Unfortunately, while it did help, it didn't solve the issue of the leaking...good thing we are planning on reroofing everything this summer!)

Then while Travis climbed on the roof again to give the chimney a sweep I got some flower beds started off the front porch. I forgot to take before pictures, but here is what it looks like now.

Ok, so it's not very impressive yet, but just give it a couple months. Those ugly strips of green are rolls of wild flower seeds and my hope is that eventually they will be bursting with color and cheeriness!

Next Travis got out his monstrous chain saw (I'm intimidated to use the thing, it's huge!) and trimmed down the wildly overgrown bush in our yard.

Again I forgot to take a before picture but if you can imagine everything in this slash pile below attached to the tree in a wild, chaotic, random way, you'll get a pretty good idea of how it looked.

But since all work and no play supposedly makes you dull we took a break in the weekend and went morrell hunting. Here are our spoils...

I love McCall!

Tiling the Entry

The next project we tackled was tiling our entry way with some of the awesome slate tile we got in Boise (and completely weighed down the poor little car trying to haul it all back to McCall!). It's just a small area, but we really like the way it looks!

Travis started out by laying the HardiBacker and then screwed down some trim around the edge of it to mimic the height of our future bamboo floor. Then began the tedious process of laying the tile.

We love the natural slate tile, but because it's so "natural" it was very time consuming trying to match up the heights of all the tiles, arrange them the best we could so there weren't any drastic drops from one to the other and then use the mortar to even out the best we could!In "just" three hours we ended up with this!

Now we have a lovely, tiled entry way and it was worth all the time and patience it took to get it there (I think). I'm not sure we'll be quite so picky about the process when it comes time to lay the whole bathroom floor!

Free Dump Day

In our last post we talked about the spring bloom (aka "trash) that was starting to pop up in our yard. Well, now we are pleased to say that thanks to free dump day at the local landfill and the help of some great friends we now have a semi trash free yard! It's amazing how much difference it makes to no longer have a toilet in your yard!

What used to look like this...

Now looks like this!

Now we just have to figure out how to get all the broken pieces of glass picked up...