Busy Weekend

Carol's birthday falls on a Monday this year, so we decided to celebrate it on the weekend just before. I had invited our friends Roy and Patou to join us for dinner and drinks on Saturday evening. Within a few minutes of that invite going out, Paul, Tamara and Paris emailed to ask if they could come to visit over the weekend. I figured the more the merrier, so we set it up. If you remember, we haven't done the floor in the guest room yet so we decided to take the day off from the office and get it done. It would also give us some time to vacuum up the dog hair before the Paul's bunch arrived later in the day.

We were up and at it early and had the floor finished by 3pm. It looks great, and it's nice to have the last of the flooring on the main and upper floor finally done. I went down to meet them at the highway so they could follow me up to the house. Right on time, they pulled up at 5pm and we wound our way up the tight switchbacks on the east end of Robbins Range Road. Carol and the dogs were standing on the deck as we pulled into the drive beside the house. Much barking and carrying on later, we were finally able to make our way inside.
The weather was predicted to be hot, in the mid to high 30's all weekend and it didn't disappoint. It was smokin' all weekend! We BBQ'd some steaks, had some wine, and settled in to enjoy the evening. Now THIS is why we put this big deck out here!
The next morning I took Paul for a tour in the Bobcat ATV showing him how it worked and where a few of the local roads/goat trails went. The plan was for him to take Tamara and Paris exploring. It was a good plan and the girls really took to it. I think the 3 of them spent about 5 hours over the weekend travelling many of the back roads and trails in the area. My take on it was they had a blast!
Saturday evening, as I said before, our friends were coming over for dinner. It turns out that they have two students from Germany staying with them, Maria and Peter. Of course they were welcome to join us, and as it turns out, it was Maria's 21st birthday on Saturday! Carol had made some of her famous BBQ spare ribs and potatoes, and with Patou's salad, Tamara and Paris' awesome cake decorating and the cake that I baked (yes, it was from a box!), we had an awesome meal! Carol and Maria took turns blowing out the candles. It was quite late by the time we got cleaned up, said goodbye to our dinner guests and fell into bed.

Another beautiful morning on Sunday meant we spent the entire day on the deck with most of us getting some good sun. Paris' paddling pool was a big hit as a place to cool one's feet after walking around on the hot deck. Another ATV ride and then Paul and family set out for the coast around 4 pm. It was left over ribs and steak sandwiches for dinner for us and another excellent episode of "The Newsroom" before bed for we Gull Lake Ranch residents. A really awesome weekend. Thanks, everyone!

Siding Progress

After a week of hard work, this is the result.
The siding on the basement level is finished.
Siding on the back half of the house is well under way. This (the back half of the house) represents the bulk of the actual siding as there is very little of the stuff installed on the front walls, and although there is more on the front sides, it is easily accessed from the deck.
Access has proven to be a big time consumer. In order to work from ladders and/or scaffolding, the ground must be relatively flat and stable.

 Our driveway and the dirt around the back of the house is not yet  "to grade" and was quite rough in spots. I spent quite a number of hours on the tractor smoothing it out, filling in the low spots and topping it all off with gravel from one of the handy piles left over from early in the construction. It is paying off, and things are progressing much better now.

The first job is to install the pressure treated 1x3's around all the doors,windows and obstructions (vents, taps, outlets, lights, etc.) then the siding itself, and finally the white trim boards. The result is very nice as you can see from the finished product on the basement level. We are targeting to finish this job by the end of the month (August) but that will depend on the amount of time we can take off from our real jobs at the office. This is just another challenge we must face as we move toward successful completion of our home.