Floors and Walls!

Well, Chad and I have been back to school as teachers, but trying to work on the house in the evenings.  It's obviously slower with just the two of us for just a few hours a day, but we've managed to accomplish some major parts of the house.  We've had an electrician in the house for a couple days last week, but we found out from the code enforcer that we needed to use a certain wire encasing to be submerged in concrete walls and floors.  So that put things on hold for a few days while they're ordering that wire.  Therefore, the walls cannot be finished until the wiring and plumbing is finished, so we're working on floors.  In addition, I had a huge set-back with my tiled kitchen floor when I found out that the tile glue I used must have been defective, because the tiles came right up and it crumbled in my fingers.  So I had to scrape up the floor and each tiles, and then on top of that, it turns out that all of the tiles that I had pre-cut and laid would not cover the space leading up to the cabinet kick-walls, so I basically had to start from scratch and re-pour concrete, find more tiles to cover a larger area, and now I need to use a different method to glue them down!  Ugh.  Slow progress, but I'm learning, and we're excited to move forward!  Thanks to my family for helping out this weekend!

area for septic tank dug

My 3rd cousin Sarah stopped by from Cornell to check it out and help build our pantry can wall!

laying out an idea for the kitchen tile

kitchen cabinets purchased and ready to install

my dad (self-proclaimed "can wall king") and my sister Cait working on the pantry can wall

Chad starts laying the free granite pieces in our back hallway

I glued them all down

inside of the pantry

bedroom can wall

Chad digging a hole for the orange tree!

orange tree planted

Willy the Can Wall King takes a break at the end of the day.

coming together!

We're going to build a brick-pizza-oven that will pump hot water through this Pex tubing to heat the back hallway floor.

Maddie and Bridget and our truck full of granite cutoffs from a local tile shop, Tile Tec International

Michelle is the cement-mixing queen.