Saludos a El Salvador!

Mario, one of the men who is building our house, has family in El Salvador that reads the blog and we wanted to give Mario a chance to say "Hi!" to them.

Disculpen, mi español es limitado. Mario está ayudando construir nuestra casa con su primo, Oscar. Ellos están haciendo un buen trabajo y lo apreciamos. Nosotros deseamos decir hola a las familias de Mario y Oscar. Entonces, "Hola!" Aquí está un vídeo del Mario en nuestra casa.

Flight Of The Ladybugs

We closed in the barn with a temporary plywood front door and cranked up the pellet stove to make it downright comfortable inside. Comfortable enough for thousands of ladybugs to descend upon us! We dealt with a good half of the beasts thanks to a shop vac and some scaffolding, and the pellet stove popped a few like popcorn. It was an interesting Easter to say the least.

The ladybug scourge



A plague, on Easter?



The South end, with Zoe



Our hand-crafted front door



The inside of the door. As Mies van der Rohe said, "God is in the details."

Ah, the sound of crackling insects

A roughed-in central vac port



Our front shower wall is finally framed

Sawdust To Glory

Our supplemental heating pellet stove was installed by Kegerreis Stoves yesterday. The radiant floor panels for the main heat, a geothermal heat pump, can't be installed until the drywall is in, but the drywall can't go in until the barn is warmer, which the pellet stove will provide the heat for. Plus, it'll sure stave off the chill of all future winters. The central vacuum guy from Vacu-Maid did his rough-in and the South facing side of the barn is now fully sided, though we don't have a photo of it yet.

The Harman XXV pellet stove provides 50,000 BTUs of environmentally friendly warmth

The air intake/exhaust will be painted to match the siding

Cement Siding, Cement Slab

Over half of the barn is now fully sided

The clapboards change to shakes at the gable

The porch concrete is poured and awaits future flagstone

The cement is flush to the door hole now, but will sit 1/4" below the threshold when all is said and done

Siding work continues on the South wall

Concrete, Stone & Wood

We took a field trip down to Bucks County Soapstone to pick up some soapstone tiles to go underneath the pellet stove. We also had them carve us a tile with a hex sign and the year we are doing the project on it to go right in front of the pellet stove. The bigger story, however, is that they are getting ready to pour the concrete foundation for our front porch!

Preparing for concrete

Our custom soapstone tile, with 8-petalled rosette

Lily, the soapstone company's shop dog, is a lemon beagle

We picked up a couple of windsor stools for our future kitchen island as well

The Ides Of March

The siding slowly creeps along



The shake siding begins going in above the khaki belt

The patio doors are in!

The little puck lights are looking sharp in the kitchen ceiling



The door, in the A Able shop, waiting for paint and stain

Cosmo, the Labradoodle guard dog of the A Able shop

You Make A Better Door Than A Window

Our front door was delivered to MRD Lumber... now it's off to paint

The Eastern side is done!

New windows are ordered for the soon-to-be-repainted blue doors

Duct, Duct, Caboose

The last week has been all about duct work and siding.

Willy Wonka's chocolate factory



More duct work above Laurie's closet



The siding is slow going on the least straight side of the barn

But boy does it look good. Now, to paint those clashing blue doors!

The siding on the South wall should go up much faster