A Tour of The House

 Tim woke up at o'dark-thirty this morning. I was vaguely aware of this, but it was ever so vaguely. He was meeting his son at 5:15 AM to go turkey hunting. It was his belated birthday present. His son has a job which allows him to be in the woods every day, and he takes advantage of his workday to look around. He's a keen hunter, so his job allows him to know exactly where he wants to hunt, and he and Tim were meeting this morning to go to a place where Mike had put some turkeys to bed. This means that he found turkeys and he waited for them to roost. When they did, he left knowing that if he and his father got back before light, the turkeys would be right where he left them. 

I woke up when Tim came back. He came walking into the bedroom. "How'd it go?" I asked, half-awake. "Great!" said Tim. "I got one." That was an eye opener. I got up and made my coffee. I had pictures to take. 

So Tim did his thing, and I cleared the sink and counter and got everything all santized and ready for him to bring his skinned, gutted bird inside to wash out and prepare for the freezer. 

We went out for lunch, and then headed down to the new build so that he could take the remains of his turkey to set out for the critters. Waste not, want not. Plenty of fox, coyotes, predatory birds, or even a bear might find our left overs a tasty snack. Tim walked them to the back of the lot where it butts up to the swamp, and where, incidently, he manages to get the damn tractor stuck every year. Twice this year. I didn't tell you about the second time because I was hopping mad at him. 

But. I digress. 

Who is that long legged fellow in the back ground? 

William. He's really sprouted this school year. 

You all wanted to see the house now that it is insulated. 

This is the living room. The scaffolding is set into what will be a tiny little office space for the computer. The window makes it seem bigger. The space is what would have been the landing for the basement stairs, but we turned the stairs around to go down the other way so that we could have that little space above the it for the office cubby. 

These are the stairs that caused us so much angst. Tim really struggled with them, and I'm not sure why. Levi and he sat down and talked it through. That's all it took for Tim to see it. 

This is what will be the kitchen. That little window will be above my kitchen sink. See the studs to what will be a wall to the left of that window? 

Behind that is my pantry. It is where the Hoosier cabinet will go, along with some metal wheeled food service shelving units. I wanted it to be small and easy to keep clean. It will also be the place where I store my brooms and mops and the like. Looking in this way, what would be directly behind you across the hallway is those basement steps. 

This is the bathroom. It is small, but it was designed that way. 

Right outside the bathroom door is another cubby which will hold a fullsize stackable washer and dryer, That was also intentional. The washer and dryer will be handy to the bedrooms and the bathroom, where the majority of the laundry needs to go anyway. That space is going to have special soundproofing. 

Two bedrooms come off the hall at the north end of the house. 

Here's the tile we got for $10. Turns out we are six tiles short to do the entire bathroom, but they are so 'generic' that I think we can match them up at Lowe's. We'll look at what they have in 18 inch tile the next time that we are there.  

And there you have your house tour. It is a small house. We paid very careful attention to things like door width (wide enough for wheel chairs and walkers) and for everything to be easy to keep clean. At this stage of the game, we can see it all coming together. We know how we want to arrange it. Once the insulation work receives its final inspection, we can begin installing walls and stuff like that. I think that things will really begin to move fast at that point. 

I did want AC to see something. This is an old picture, back when we were just beginning to install the windows. The house has 12 windows on the first floor. Because it is a new build, we simply cut out the holes and frame them in to fit the window. The four tiny windows we got (for an amazing $25 each clearanced out at Ace Hardware) will go side by side, two on each end of the peak to provide ventilation to the attic in the summer. We do pick up a lot of stuff when we see things on sale, but I guess what I need to make clear is that we know how we want things to be. We knew that we needed small windows and when we saw them stacked against the wall, you can believe we snatched them right up.  We watch sales very carefully because we are building this house without going into debt.

 We've really been accumulating stuff for years if you want to get right down to it. 

But there is a method to our madness. 

Truly!

So, there you have it. A tour of the house. There is not really anything to see yet. We are just the 'grunt' work done. When it will begin to become exciting is when the walls go up and the fixtures go in.

Late Edit for Linda: 

They do make compact apartment sized washers and dryers, but that is not what we are getting. We are getting stackable full sized appliances. I would hate to get by on compacts!