Sheathing and Siding

Time flies when you're building a house (and it also crawls). Since last posted, framing and outside house sheathing are done. Here's the main floor being framed:

And the rafters going up:

 Rafters going up, but from a different angle:

And then sheathing and housewrap on:

And windows in:

Now they are working on siding, starting with the back of the house. They have the back of the house done (the East wall), were working on the south side today when we stopped by, then will do north and west.

This is primed, but not yet painted. We're putting up composite fiberboard, and it looks nice. Also, our siding guy is Nate from Executive Exteriors and I could not sing his praises loud enough. That guy is AWESOME. Creative, communicative, problem solving, everything I would want in a contractor. If I didn't already have a roofing guy I liked, I would hire him to do my roof too. Highly recommend.

In my last (very short) post, I posted a poem about wanting the tractor to work. So I snapped this picture for you from my car when I followed Ryan to the guy down the road who fixes tractors. It was very snowy and slick, and following a tractor at 10 miles an hour on slippery roads caused me to twice have to back up on a hill, wait for the tractor to clear that hill, and then take the hill at a run in order to get over it. My tires would just lose traction halfway up the hill with no momentum to carry me over, meanwhile two kids in the back are saying, "Mommy, why are we going backward? What happened? Where's Daddy?" and "Tractor! Tractor! Traaaactoooorrr!!!!" (guesses on which kid is which?). 

In sewing news I haven't done much, but I did get my sewing machine fixed. When I did, the repairman told me that I have 249 hours on my sewing machine. That's all well and good, but sewing machine motors die at about 250 hours. Sigh. So I'm likely to need a new sewing machine soon, but that will probably wait until we know what kind of house overages and whatnot we are dealing with.

I did also make H a pair of slippers, which she loves but the pattern did not actually work well. I think her feet are too big and they needed to have more structure in them.

I'll have to take a crack at another pair, I think, or modify this pattern to my satisfaction.

Kids are doing well, it was cold and snowy earlier this week but then warmed up. While we did our taxes yesterday, a lovely friend of mine watched them and they got to draw on her driveway with sidewalk chalk.

 I think it's kind of funny that kids don't really get the connotations that come with chalk outlines, instead to them they are just chalk outlines. This is also something they never really got to do at our old farm as there wasn't much of a driveway, and sidewalk chalk doesn't work on gravel. I'm not sure what kind of driveway we will end up with at the new place. 

So until next time, stay warm! Spring is still coming!