Going HOME!

Well, we are in the throes of the final push HOMEWARD. I've been packing almost as quickly as John Michael and David have been unpacking and running...Meanwhile, back home on the range, our construction foreman is pushing ahead as fast as he can. The building inspector is scheduled for tomorrow so we'll hopefully have our occupancy permit by the end of the day. Wednesday will be spent touching things up, Thursday the cleaning company comes through and Friday we MOVE! It feels so good to see that in writing. We are thrilled with the house. It is really beautiful and the addition is going to add a lot of flavor as well. God has been so good to us and so have our friends, neighbors, family....Another day will be the essay about all the lessons learned during our year of conflagration exile....Here's a few pics of what's been going on. Hopefully, I'll be able to put more up in the next couple of days.
Here is the new railing Bill built. He took out all the middle rails and left the corner posts standing. He wrapped the corner posts w/new wood that he stained and routered to look more like the trim at the bottom of the steps. It turned out really nice after many months of all of us staring at it and shaking our heads wondering who was going to do what about it. Those rails are now much sturdier than the original and the corner posts have maintained their Steve-proof-grade mounting.





Here's the kitchen with counters in place but now all the appliances are in place, the pantry has a door and shelving and flooring is in place. It really looks fantastic.






I love this picture of the kids on the new laminate floor in the master bedroom. The floors look terrific and I'm so happy to be rid of carpet - of course, we'll see if the floor outlasts my happiness after kids and dogs have their way with the house! You can see in this picture that everything is still covered w/a layer of dust. Thus, the post-construction clean-up crew...