okie boarder's house

So, thought I would do some updating on here since it's been a little while. We've been working on a lot of little things that are hard to see in pictures, but slowly making progress on a variety of items for finishing and settling in. In addition, we've done quite a bit on getting the garden area going, as well as trimming and cleaning some of the wooded areas right behind the garage.

**Note: This is adding quite a few pics...if this is too much, let me know.

Got this shot of a beautiful sunrise yesterday morning on my way into work. This is about 10 miles from our house where I get on the interstate.



Finally got a chance to burn. This was two of the 3 piles we had from all the cleanup we've been doing.



Got some sod put in on this slope...we were having too much washout and erosion, so needed to do something about it.



I managed to get my wife to actually operate a tractor. Of course her buddy had to join her...he was going nuts until we let him get up there with her.



Seedlings are doing well for the garden. I planted 60 tomato plants.



Garden area is shaping up...got all the good soil tilled in and getting ready to plant the warm weather crops in the next couple weeks. You can also see our ever growing stockpile of firewood and the composting area in this pic.



Lots of beautiful redbuds on the property, along with natural wildflowers and wild plums.











Getting the taters started.



Initial spread of the good soil.



Got some chicken manure from our friends, for the compost. I never thought I'd be so excited about chicken poop....lol



This was the soil I had delivered to till in. 5 year old horse manure compost...very good dirt.



It was quite a load...15 yards.



The beginnings of our composting area. I'm planning to have 3 bins like this, all together.



Spring has sprung...actually got some decent results from the bulbs we planted in the fall.



The never ending wood pile and stacking effort...LOL. We've managed to find a really good source for wood through our younger son's friend. His dad has several different properties within 15 miles of us that has runs cattle on. He is constantly having areas cleared for more pasture, so we has piles of pushed over trees all over for us to cut. He has all kinds of walnut, pecan and oak.

Andy, I'm sure I missed this in the thread somewhere, but what part of OK are you in?

Thanks. LOL, I doubt another boat is going to happen any time soon. We'll be spending lots of time and money over the next several years getting the property the way we want it. A small above ground pool might be in the cards, though.

Yeah, I noticed the other day they are carrying a few different woods like look like distressed or old barn wood. We definitely like how it is going together with the overall feel of the house.

We've made some good progress on interior trim this week and we're loving how it looks. We're also getting fairly well settled in and gotten ourselves unpacked quite a bit.










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Congrats to you and your family Andy, thanks for sharing the journey!!
Place is really coming along nicely!!

Andy,
Sounds like you got the occupancy permit from the inspector.

Looks nice! When is your hopeful move in target?

We've gotten quite a bit done since the last post, but still have a lot to do. The cabinets and vanities are finished and painted. We've been working on tile the last few weeks, and granite got put in yesterday. If all goes well, all the mechanicals will be done this week and the house will be functional. We're going to move in as soon as we can after that and finish what needs to be finished once we're in.

Smithfamily wrote: Looking great!

Thanks!

Looking great!

We've been making some good progress since the last post and hit a major milestone completion this weekend. We have the kitchen cabinets about 90% complete, with just a bit more work from our contractor this week. He built all the bulkheads with some of his guys, which now includes our older son for the summer. We, then, took over and tackled the rest of the cabinet build, completing the "trim out" (all face frames and trim). Over this long weekend, we were able to get everything done except the corner cabinets, which our contractor wanted to handle. We should be able to get everything prepped for paint this week and hopefully have them painted by the end of the week or next weekend. The coolest part of this is both our boys were able to be shown certain tasks and then pretty much work on their own. That was a very proud parent moment and really helped us move along at a good pace.

Several rooms, including the pantry, are all built with shelving, etc and painted now, as well. Next on the list is finishing the bathrooms.

Tape, mud and texture is done. We're about to be really busy as we go into this finishing stage.

Sheet rock is underway. It's fun to see the spacial feeling in the house change as the walls are closed up.

Yeah roof lines in NE are steep and with as few valleys as possible. Whoever designed my roof must not have been from snow country. I've had to install flashing that was never installed from the get go.

Okie Boarder--tell us about your storm shelter?