Here's an idea of the kitchen layout. The window you can see is south-facing. There is another window on the west wall, and a door to the front porch on the far side of the island. The main door into the kitchen is on the east wall, and opens facing the end of the main wall of cabinets.

There's always something going on!

The house is just about all "buttoned up". The new windows are in and all of the exterior work is done--except for some painting of the trim which may have to wait until May as it's too cold to paint. Yesterday it was 6 degrees at 8:00 in the morning! This picture shows the stairs going from the dining room up to the 3 upstairs rooms. We removed the old suspended ceiling and the wall that enclosed the staircase. Doesn't look like much yet, but it's getting there!

Great news on the flooring front--we've found someone who can refinish the floors and save the original fir! So the only new flooring in the house will be in the two bathroom areas.

The latest obstacle: a building moratorium. Apparently the previous owners did some logging a couple of years ago. When you log, you have to apply for a permit which includes placing a 6-year moratorium on building--presumably so that the area can be reforested. When they applied for their permit, instead of carefully calling out the area that would be logged, they called out the ENTIRE 400+ acre parcel--which includes the house! It was not a problem up until now because the county has not required permits for our basic remodeling. But we may have to put in a new septic system and our porch addition requires a permit. So now we have to jump through some more hoops to get 5 acres pulled out of the moratorium. Never a dull moment!!

Interiors

We've been making lots of decisions about the interior of the house. One of the best things is that we were able to create a second full bath out of the laundry room. We took all of our leftover travertine from our recent home bathroom remodel over and it should be enough to tile the shower in the original (really really teeny tiny) bathroom. The lovely blue tile is what it looked like "before". Can't wait to see the "after"!
We're also working on a major kitchen overhaul. We tore out everything, including the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. The chimney runs straight through the middle of the house, so we're building an island around it. Here's the wall "before" and the island layout "in between". I'm ordering cabinets sometime in the next week from Huntwood (http://www.huntwood.com/ - we're doing Shaker style, cherry, sable color). When we get that all in, we'll have an "after". Still have to pick countertops, backsplashes, etc. We're waiting to hear whether we can save the original fir floors in the kitchen/dining room--there was some kind of 1950's flooring glued down, and the glue residue is pretty nasty.

November stuff

The foundation is fixed and the exterior is painted! You can see in this picture the posts that will support the new porch. We're wrapping an 8' porch around the side of the house so the kids can sleep out in the summer. We took a quick trip to Spokane to visit Bret, Stacey, Quinn, Nate & Shea, then headed up to the property over Veteran's Day weekend. Todd and the boys went deer hunting (bows) and I spent 6 hours with KC going room by room through the house. Christy, Sharon and Christy's 3 kids came up to help--thank goodness!! I don't think I could have done it without Christy's help.

Cleaning up - September/October

Junipers: gone. Trees against the house: gone. Rotten/falling down outbuildings: gone. Siding: repaired. Nasty old carpet, other sundry flooring: gone. Kitchen and bathroom: gutted. Electrician, plumber, HVAC guy, other sundry subcontractors: crawling all over the place. September was a month of cleaning up and cleaning out. We filled an entire dumpster with garbage. Because it gets COLD up there, the exterior painting needed to get done as soon as possible. KC the contractor and his guys worked like crazy to get as much done as possible before the weather turned. This is the house after primer (before painting).

The Land

Here are some photos of the area around the house. On the first trip, Todd's sister, Christy, and her kids joined us on our first hike. We also discovered a true, old-fashioned swimming hole. The boys had a great time leaping into the Kettle River!

First Visit

We took possession the Thursday before Labor Day, and zipped on over to our new property. It's a 6 hour drive, so I guess "zipped" is a bit of a misnomer. We discovered that the farmhouse was in pretty good structural shape after meeting with a local contractor, so decided to remodel it. Here's what we had to start with.