Here is the house as it's looked pretty much every day since December second, when we got our first 14 inch snowfall! The snow fell very steadily in December - we had a record breaking 47 inches in our midcoast region! Holy cow, that's a lot of snow! We have the driveway plowed by a great local fellow who is a builder and plows in the winter which is awesome. The snow comes and comes and comes, and then Greg comes and plows it all to the back of the driveway, and we do a bit of shoveling out around the woodpile, car, and stairs. So far, it's not been too bad, now that we are accustomed to it. The first few weeks in the house were scary...is that the right word? I guess it might be. The metal roof sheds snow like mad, but the sounds are all new to us, as we never had snow like this in Washington. The snow piles up and then there is a long, steady "whoooooooooosh" as the sheets of snow slide off the roof and onto the ground. There are other interesting sounds that we are now accustomed to that are pretty crazy...one is when chunks of snow that have iced up a bit at the ridgeline finally start to break off and fall. This sound is much more macabre, and sounds like large bowling balls or at least softballs rolling and bouncing down the roof. Then there is the noise that the snow and ice makes if it finally loosens up from sitting behind the plumbing vent stack after a while...that sounds like a rumbling avalanche! It's crazy! Generally, most of the snow is off the roof pretty quick. We've had no troubles with ice build up, called "ice damming" here, which we were quite worried about at the start of snow season. We don't have the little roof overhang built over the rear entrance to the house (obviously, we aren't using the front door yet!) but the snow sheds fast. Phew. We really didn't like the idea of a large and lethal chunk of iced over snow hurtling down our back at high speed from the second story. That would pretty much preclude finishing the building process.
The insulation works just AMAZINGLY well. Icynene has got to be one of the best insulation products on the market. If you are going to go with an insulation product, it's the best! It's a Canadian product, and who knows about the need for insulation better than the Canadians? Perhaps Icelanders, but we don't have any of their insulation available. For our Canadian readers and friends, CANADA ROCKS! :-) The installer was telling us that the formula used by the company is top secret and the field highly competitive. They keep it under wraps. It's kind of funny to hear a bit about the high intrigue world surrounding spray foam insulation. Go figure!
Really, though, the insulation is fabulous. We are heating solely on wood, and the house still doesn't have ceilings in, and the attic is all open still, so a lot of heat is drifting into areas we can't use. But the fact is, that we are warm and toasty! We've had very cold temperatures since the start of December. We've burned 1.5 cords. That's to heat the whole house. We must be acclimating (or going snow crazy) as we have come to differentiate between cold temperatures. If it's 30 degrees for a high, that's warm. Overnight lows need to be under 10 degrees to be really cold. We don't use the fireplace at night unless it's under 10 degrees at night. We only heat throughout the night if it's 0 or under. (which is has been several times so far). I will say that when the temperature is 0 out at night, it's significantly cold. I mean, that is COLD! We came home from a local singing group (we found some singers to sing with - doing shape note singing) two nights ago, and it was about 12 with a BRISK wind. It was as cold as I've ever experienced. Amazing. Also amazing is that on very very cold nights (that's zero or under) the sky is such an incredible color, even in the dark. We are thinking this must have to do with the near absence of moisture in the atmosphere at that temperature (and the conditions are generally clear, crisp, utterly amazing skies when it's that cold here). The stars are radiant and golden at that temperature, and something about the air just looks different. I don't know how to explain it. Even without snow on the ground, you would be able to look at a sky like that and know that it was an unearthly cold temperature. It's quite awe inspiring really. I don't know if it's the kind of winter I'd like to experience for the rest of my days, but it's beautiful, too.
We are so thankful for the great insulation, though. New England is groaning under the cost of heating oil this season, and we fear that many many people in New England and the Maritimes are suffering from the cold. So many homes here are incredible old homes, but they are badly insulated, and many of them are also HUGE. The cost to heat is crippling for a lot of people. It's terrible. I personally think that the government would do well to start providing big discounts on super insulating with spray foam insulation. That's better than subsidizing oil costs forever, in my opinion. (granted, I don't know it all). Oil is running out anyway, and to be burning it up without good insulation is not only unbelievably expensive, but just flat out crazy in this age of dwindling oil reserves.
OK, more pics to come. I'm glad people are still enjoying the blog! I will start updating it again at last!
Well, there it is, that's the one half of the bathroom (it's a BIG bathroom!) with the dust of the grout still showing. Should be able to get that cleaned up tomorrow. It turned out wonderfully! One more room to tile, and then tiling is behind us. That last room is the mudroom, and we won't get to it for a while still. Which is fine. We need to decide on a good tile for it.
Well, we must be getting crazy, as we are excited that we might be getting more snow! And we're starting to have a lot of fun with the drywalling. The dust isn't too bad, and though it's not the best part of building, it's kind of fun because we are seeing great progress and doing well at it! Shawn put the second coat of drywall mud up in the kitchen today, and then put the first coat up on the walls of the first floor bathroom. The corners, which we dreaded so deeply, have turned out to be the best part of drywalling with this product we are using. The stuff is great! It's called Ultra Flex No Coat. What it is is the basic drywall paper tape with a bit of metal reinforcement in it that allows you to press it easily into the corners. It works magnificently! Finally a time saving gimmick that actually works like crazy! 
Aloha from Maine...sorry to mix metaphors like that. It was a glorious day today, bright and clear and sunny, cold but no wind. We had an amazing walk this morning. A clear cold winter day with lots of sun must be one of the best gifts of winter!
We got these beautiful photos of our Point Roberts garden our last year there in the mail yesterday from Colleen and Jim. Thank you so much!! Not only do we love the painting you did of it (we didn't know you painted that!!) but loved the picture immensely. We miss Point Roberts and all our wonderful friends there so much! And we miss the garden as well! This was such a wonderful taste of summer in the midst of winter that it's hard to say how it delighted us! We put it right on the fridge where we can see it often!
Well, it's true that drywalling is not every couple's dream come true. Dreaming and drywalling don't tend to cross paths. But we've hung all the drywall in the house now, except for in the basement. Now we have started mudding the walls. This process we were dreading, but we talked to the folks at the hardware store (and we've been talking to everyone else we can about it, too) and came up with a good solution to the drywall dust related to sanding. It's a vacuum attachment that Roy originally told us about. You hook it up to the dryvac and it's as easy as that. The vacuum attachment is fitted with sandpaper at the end, and as you sand, about 95 percent or more of the dust goes right up the hose! It's awesome! We were planning to leave the mudding and sanding till spring, and maybe hire someone to do it, but this is working out. It's going to take some time. But shawn's working on the bathroom mudding now, and we just have one last touch up coat to put on, along with some last cosmetic sanding to do. Corners are not bad, with a special corner product shawn found. It's going well! The ceilings won't be an issue at all as we are doing a pine panelling on the ceiling called v-match. We bought enough for the bathroom, and it's been conditioning inside for over a week. Hopefully, next week we'll install it. It should look gorgeous!
Our neighbors have spledid open fields (over 60 acres of field and woods) that we also can snowshoe in. It's fun to take a break from woods snowshoeing and get going across the open fields. Beautiful! We could use another bountiful snowfall to get us back out on the shoes. Since our last foot on the 14th, we've had some melting and some rain, which has melted off the snow (well, to a certain extent) and made a not so fun crusty topping to it). It's been great walking weather lately, though.
Here is the house as it's looked pretty much every day since December second, when we got our first 14 inch snowfall! The snow fell very steadily in December - we had a record breaking 47 inches in our midcoast region! Holy cow, that's a lot of snow! We have the driveway plowed by a great local fellow who is a builder and plows in the winter which is awesome. The snow comes and comes and comes, and then Greg comes and plows it all to the back of the driveway, and we do a bit of shoveling out around the woodpile, car, and stairs. So far, it's not been too bad, now that we are accustomed to it. The first few weeks in the house were scary...is that the right word? I guess it might be. The metal roof sheds snow like mad, but the sounds are all new to us, as we never had snow like this in Washington. The snow piles up and then there is a long, steady "whoooooooooosh" as the sheets of snow slide off the roof and onto the ground. There are other interesting sounds that we are now accustomed to that are pretty crazy...one is when chunks of snow that have iced up a bit at the ridgeline finally start to break off and fall. This sound is much more macabre, and sounds like large bowling balls or at least softballs rolling and bouncing down the roof. Then there is the noise that the snow and ice makes if it finally loosens up from sitting behind the plumbing vent stack after a while...that sounds like a rumbling avalanche! It's crazy! Generally, most of the snow is off the roof pretty quick. We've had no troubles with ice build up, called "ice damming" here, which we were quite worried about at the start of snow season. We don't have the little roof overhang built over the rear entrance to the house (obviously, we aren't using the front door yet!) but the snow sheds fast. Phew. We really didn't like the idea of a large and lethal chunk of iced over snow hurtling down our back at high speed from the second story. That would pretty much preclude finishing the building process.
