The Shed - A Work in Progress

Here's a picture of our shed/pump house. I think I need to replace it with a better picture, but this is the color we're going to paint our house. Luckily we were building this, so we could experiment with paint color. I don't know how well you can tell here, but this a light green Behr paint called 'Mother Nature'. We don't have the trim boards up yet, but they're going to be an off-white color and we'll be painting the door a dark brownish red. This will be the color we'll use on shutters for the actual house, and probably the door too.

Update on the Trusses

We got some good news this week. It looks like the trusses will be ready tomorrow - sooner than expected! The plan is to set them all this Saturday - we're so excited to see things moving along. We'll be out there helping (okay, so I won't really be helping) Uncle Carlton and then we're heading off to the river for Cody's 30th birthday. It should be a nice time, but I must admit that I'm not looking forward to putting myself in a bathing suit! I don't look pregnant yet, just kinda pudgy. But I guess that's no different than usual!

We're going to be parents!

Well, in case you haven't heard the news, there's a little Banner on the way! You can't really see much on this picture, but it's the little blob on the left in the middle of the black circle. You can't tell here, but we could see the fastest little heartbeat! This will be the first Banner grandchild, and the first great grandchild on both sides. We're very excited. We went to the doctor last Friday, and they set our due date as March 4 - the day after my birthday! I have a friend at work whose daughter was born five days before her, which she said is great because it would have been torture for her little girl to have to sit through all her mom's birthday celebrations waiting on her own every year - so hopefully this little one will come a few days earlier than expected! And no - we don't think we're going to find out what it is. We both love surprises. But who knows if we'll be able to stand it or not when the time comes that we could find out. We've got a long way to go still. More news to come as the little one grows!

We have walls!

Uncle Carlton just sent me this picture of some work they did last night (he, Cody and Buddy Register). It's going to be a couple more weeks before the trusses are ready, so they're going ahead and putting the OSB up on the outside walls. They may start building the interior walls too. As you can see, the right side of the house is taller. We're going to have 9 foot ceilings in the living room and kitchen, and 8 foot ceilings on the left side, which is the bedrooms and bathrooms. There's more and more progress all the time!



Exterior framing

Pouring the Slab

Cody surveying the finished product.


Cody and Uncle Carlton (the 'Contractor') discussing very important things I'm sure.


This is our friend Scott - he's the one that did the slab for our shed and for the house. He helped save us some money. Thanks Scott!


Here is one of the trucks pouring the slab


And this is me and Grandpa 'supervising'. Tough work, but somebody's gotta do it!

A Skeleton!

So, you've just got to hear this. When digging the footers for the foundation, we dug up a skeleton! How crazy is that!?! Actually it's my husband who's crazy. He thought we needed to add a little 'spice' to our blog, like digging up a skeleton, or saying we're building a basement with an elevator. So there it is.....BAM! We kicked it up a notch.

Plumbing Rough-In

Well, it may not look like much to you, but we're finally making some forward progress! This is the rough-in plumbing. Most of the pipes are along the back wall, as you can see. The kitchen is in the back right corner, and next to it is the utility room, and then the bathroom. Then there's just another half bath in our bedroom that you can see about midway along the left wall. I called Columbia County about 3PM this afternoon, and they said they would be out tomorrow to do the inspection! We can only pray that the rest of the process will go as well. I shudder to think how long we would have to wait in Alachua County - our inspectors are running themselves ragged all the time, and they're still behind!

Our Children

This is Sunny. She will be five years old next month. She's spent her last couple of years going back and forth to the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine to deal with a problem on her tongue. After many different procedures and medications, she is finally back to her old self (albeit about 30 lbs heavier due to the steroids), and we are finally starting to wean her off her medication. Thank you Dr. Liska! Sunny is such a good girl - everybody always talks about how well behaved she is - if only our children turn out so well!!

This is Little Baby. She just turned five in May. Her real name is Mary Jane, but we started calling her Little Baby when she was a kitten, and it just stuck. Boy, does she live up to it! Every morning she comes in our room and cries and cries until she gets her morning snack and a little lovin'. To her credit, she doesn't get to eat near as much as she used to since her little sister Sunny took to eating all her food any chance she gets (again, we credit the steroids). She's a good cat too - we're so blessed to have such amazing pets. She's never mean to anyone (except Sunny when she's had enough of the food stealing!). She's usually either hungry, wants some petting, or is sound asleep. This picture doesn't do her justice, but I'll get a good one some time soon and replace it.

Breaking Ground

This is some of the first pictures of the homesite. This was all we could do without a building permit. Now we've just got to wait on Uncle Carlton to get back from Montana to start things in full swing! I'll post some pictures of our shed once we get it painted - we're using it to experiment on what color to paint the house.

And the fun begins......

We finally got our building permit! After some minor delays, we're off and rolling and ready to get started. Hopefully we'll be in our new home by the end of the year.