More progress

We spent the day at the house yesterday. I mostly worked in the garden, and sought out the shade with my book, but Melissa got step one (pun intended) of the stairs complete. No more ladders to get to the second floor! It was hot (over 90) but it's amazing how cool it was inside the house. Thankfully there was a breeze, and the roof panels have some fancy reflective material that really shield the heat.

It's amazing how having the second floor and roof panels make it feel so different--and like so much has happened in a couple weeks. There is still months more work to do (more outside sheeting, roofing, plumbing, electrical, insulation, sheetrock, etc etc, etc, but there's enough in place now to really see how great it's going to be.

We spent some time on the second floor (yes, I had to climb the ladder again--NOT my favorite thing) reconfiguring the upstairs bathrooms yesterday (wow--this is a nice benefit of not being tied to plans and paying someone for each change) and I think it's going to work out nicely.

In the meantime, I picked 3 summer squashes, lettuce, nasturtiums and cilantro. And I pulled all the sugar snap peas out of the beds. The weeds are taking over, but I can't bring myself to use the Roundup in the vegetable garden. There's gotta be a better way.

Here are the photos of the house progress:

Front. Office on left. Panel (center) waiting to go to 2nd floor

Back. Living room right, kitchen center, laundry, garage left.

Side. Living room left, office and door right.

Step 1 of stairs.

Holiday weekend, after the fact

They were predicting temperatures in the high 90's and low 100's for the 4th of July weekend, so we did what any sensible people would do: packed up Willie and headed for Donner Lake. We're so lucky that we live only an hour away, that we can go to the house pretty much anytime we like, and that it's usually 20 (or so) degrees cooler up there.

Because we'd given blood on Saturday morning, and it was super hot, we got a very late start (packing up the hot car with low energy was just so unappealing!), but made it there by dinner time. We spent Sunday hanging out, and most of Monday too. It was fun to catch up on magazines, go sailing, watch Willie swim in the cold lake water, and relax. All in much cooler temps.

Monday, we headed back before dark, and then got to meet my friend Kathy and her daughter for some fireworks watching (and yes, we wore red, white and blue). The display seemed a little lacking this year, but how cool is it to hang with the friend you've had since age 2 on the neighborhood hill where you watched fireworks from probably around age 4 until 14? It's fun to think of all those years ago, hanging with our moms and listening to their conversations and now my friend's girls doing the same with us.

Hope you all had a nice, long, patriotic weekend!

More house photos later this week: the progress is exciting!