deck

ALL DECKED OUT

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

We’ve had unbelievably nice weather so far. We just got our first snow on Oct. 22, 2015. It was only about 2 inches, and it melted off by the next day. That’s really late for our first snow of the year. By now, we have usually had several snows. I wonder if that means we’ll have a warm winter, or if we’re going to end up paying for that nice early winter with severe cold and snow storms. Time will tell. At any rate, we have taken advantage of the nice weather by continuing to work on the outside of the house as much as we can. When bad weather hits, we’ll move to the inside and work on that.

We got the deck put up (except for the railing). I guess I knew this, but it’s really big! It wraps around a little more than half the house. There is almost as much square footage on the deck as there is inside the house. That’s a good thing! It will encourage us to spend more time outside. 

 

Golden Cascades

DOWN TO 5 DUCKS

by with No Comment DucksGolden Cascades
Golden Cascades, 17 Weeks Old, 4 Hens, 1 Drake

Now we’ve got the final count. After discovering that we had two drakes (rather than just one, as planned) we have now donated one of the drakes to a nearby Wolf Sanctuary.  I’m sure the wolves there appreciate the donation. The photo above shows the ducks we plan to keep indefinitely. Hopefully, the drake will allow us to have a few baby ducklings in the spring.

The last batch of ducks we had remained unnamed, other than the colored bands they had around their ankles (pink, green, blue, etc.)  This time they look different enough that I’m planning to go ahead and name them. The names are still up in the air a bit, but for now they are as follows:

Wily – This is the drake that fooled us into believing he was a she, and now his life has been spared. Other than the blue-gray bill, I believe his plumage is closer to the preferred colors for this breed. (Per Dave Holderread.) Also, he has better camouflage than the other drake had, which is my preference.

Next, we have Bess, until I think of a better name. I thought about “Brownie” because she’s quite brown…I could change my mind.

Here is Ellie May. I just thought it was a cute name, and this duck has no outstanding characteristics.

Meet Gertrude. I just thought a duck should be named Gertrude.

This is either Spot, or Splash, or Dory.  One of these days I will decide. Spot would be because when she was little she had a spot on her right foot. Now she has a couple of black spots on her beak. Splash would be because she’s the first one in the pool many a time, and runs there first thing in the morning, before going to the food dish.  Because she likes the water, Tim thought of Dory, after the fish in Finding Nemo.  So, Dory would be cute….but which name will stick? Any ideas?

WHY WE MOVED HERE

by with No Comment GuffeyMountain Gaitway

There are several reasons that we moved here. First and foremost is our Father’s leading. But, there are plenty of other benefits for which we are grateful. One of the highlights of our year is to ride our horses in the mountains when the aspens are in full fall color. This year we trailered the horses to Kenosha Pass to take in the fall plumage, and took a friend along. Here are some pics. We hope you are as amazed as we are when we get to see God’s handiwork in such glorious splendor. 

binary comment
binary comment
binary comment
binary comment
binary comment
HORSES-ASPENS

MEGA POST

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

This post includes a lot of topics. I’ll try to keep each one short so you don’t nod off…

The Roof is Done
Whew, the roof is finally done! All the metal flashing is up and we should be water-proof now. All the ups and downs on the ladder, putting on the harness (so I don’t fall off), fighting the wind that frequently tried to pull the metal out of my hands, etc.
Lest you get the wrong idea, Laurie has been a tremendous help in all of this. She stays on the ground and does things like cut metal, pre-drill holes in the metal, hands metal and other stuff up to me, makes great suggestions, etc. She truly is an invaluable partner in all of this!
Here’s the finished roof:

Happy House Mini-Me
A while back, before we even started the Happy House, we build the duck house. We thought it would be cute to fashion it similar to what the HH would look like. It has 8 sides and we call it the Duckagon. Looks like a HH “mini-me”, huh?

More Digging
We did some rough grading around the house and it started to look pretty good. Unfortunately, we had to dig more holes for the deck posts. We’ll be starting on the deck soon.

Horse Pasture and Changing Aspens
I took some time out a few days ago to expand the horse pasture. The boys were eating the existing pasture down to bare dirt (can’t let that happen!). I don’t know how many acres I now have fenced in (with electric wire) for them to use now, but it’s probably around 8 acres (out of 40). I took this pic with the horses on the other side of the fenced area to give some perspective:
Laurie is actually standing in the middle of the “herd”, but you can’t see her. When we get the whole thing fenced, they’re going to look like tiny dots. Notice the aspens in the background are starting to change colors. 
Here’s a close pic of the aspens: 
And we actually took a few hours for a ride today! Can’t work all the time 🙂 .
DINNER

DINNER & WATER IN THE HH

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

Dinner and water? Sounds like an odd combination. But, things are continuing to move along in the Happy House (HH) and these are two things I wanted to share in this post.

A few weeks ago, Laurie and I set up a card table and plastic chairs in the HH. A few times we took some cheese, crackers and wine out there and enjoyed the view while munching. The other day Kelly and Carol (who are building a house on a property across the road from us) came over to share dinner. We decided to eat in the HH; a preview of the time we will be living in it and enjoying this experience every day. Carol snapped a picture with her phone:

What a view, eh?

Up until now, we’ve been dragging multiple water hoses around in order to fill up the RV, the stock tank for the horses and water for the ducks. Now that the house shell is complete, we were ready to get the well water run into the crawlspace and hooked up. We included a 300 gallon cistern for spare capacity. Here’s what it looks like in the crawlspace now:

We had put in hydrants (faucets) at the barn and at the RV. A short hose is now connected to the RV. We no longer have to fill up the tank in the RV, the water goes directly into the RV water system. This provides better water pressure and is really appreciated when taking a shower. Oh, life’s little pleasures J .
The ducks can now be watered with a short hose connected to the hydrant. And, the hydrant at the barn fills up the stock tank. No more dragging hoses around and having to remember to manually turn off the well pump when not in use! WooHoo!

We have been putting the metal roofing on and will have a post with pics when that is done, hopefully in the next week.

One by one, the pieces are all falling into place. And, we to continue to meet new neighbors and build relationships and connections in our new “hometown”. (I saw a person wearing a T Shirt that said: “Guffey, you either get it or you don’t”. You have to come see Guffey in order to understand that T Shirt!

THE DUCK STORY

by with No Comment Golden CascadesMountain Gaitway

In addition to building the house, we took on 13 ducklings, which arrived June 4th.

13 Ducklings, June 5

They grew, and grew, and at 12 weeks, they really filled the pool!

A few days ago we finally found time to “reduce the flock”. We sold two of the females, and butchered three drakes and two of the remaining females. As planned, we had six remaining ducks; presumably one drake and five hens, all the Golden Cascades.
The only problem was this little stinker. “She” turned out to be a “he”. This one looks pretty much like the other hens, and with 13 ducks, I hadn’t noticed that he talks like a drake. Just after the butchering was over, Tim noticed that this duck was making the drake sound, and sure enough, he also has the drake curly tail.
Golden Cascade Drake
He doesn’t have the white ring around his neck as the other drakes, nor the yellow bill. In fact, this bill is quite blueish-grey. All along I’ve just thought this was one of the hens. I had wanted to keep 5 hens for laying, but it’s not a real big deal that there are only 4 now. There will be plenty of eggs for Tim and me. We’ll have to figure out what to do with this extra drake, but we’ll figure it out.
For now, it’s awfully nice to have a mere six, calmer ducks. There’s less competition for food, they all happily float in the pool a great deal of the time, and it’s nice putting out half as much food for them. I don’t have to clean the water bowl or pool as often, either. Ahhhhh.
082615-CURRENT

GETTING CLOSER TO THE VISION

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

We went to Colorado Springs to pick up the windows and doors. We installed them and added the overhangs:

Here is a pic looking out from the interior:

What a view, eh?

This one shows the skylight:

When we headed off to bed it was 68 degrees inside the house. When we got up next morning it was 42 degrees outside, but still 60 degrees in the house. Not much heat loss overnight. And, we’re not even fully closed up yet!

This is a good time to review what we had envisioned and where we’re currently at. Here is our lot before we started (2014):

 

Here’s the way we envisioned it with an overlay of the house on the property:

Here’s where we’re currently at:

We are thrilled with the amount of progress to date. Over the next 2 weeks we plan to get the roof and siding done. Once that is done, we will be “winterized” and be able to work inside whenever the weather outside gets nasty.

As always, we give thanks to our Father for His this wonderful gift and opportunity.

SIPS-DONE

INSTANT HOUSE

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

After months of planning, reviewing drawings (correcting mistakes on the plan) and getting the SIPs panels made ahead of time the big day has arrived. All the pieces should fit together and in 3 days we should have what looks like a house. Here we go…

The first floor panel is in place:

The horses are clearly not impressed (or interested) as more floor panels are added: 
With the floor done, wall panels start going up: 
Now for the roof: 
After several roof panels are in place, it’s time for the compression ring: 
The last roof panel goes in: 
Now for the crown, the skylight dome: 
Perfect fit! (as if there were any doubt 🙂 

At this point, the house shell looks kind of like a water tower. But, there’s more to come!

Total time: 3 (very long) days. 

FOUNDATION COMPLETE

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

Whew! The foundation is finished and passed inspection with two whole days to spare before the SIPs crew gets here to put up the house 🙂 .

Here’s a pic of the foundation:

You can see the plastic around the outside of the foundation wall and the beams across the middle that will support the floor. 

Next up: SIPs installation.

HOUSE ON A TRAILER

by with No Comment Mountain Gaitway

On Tuesday, ‎August ‎4th, ‎the SIPs panels arrived. The floor, walls and roof of our house were all on a single trailer:

The driver unloaded the panels and Tim directed where each set of panels was to be placed (around the house) in order to make them the most convenient to grab and put up in order: 
Here you can see several piles of panels with the foundation wall just visible to the right of them: 
You can see that the panels are kind of like an Oreo cookie; OSB on each side with foam in between. The floor is 10″ thick, the walls 8″ and the roof 12″ thick. Each panel is made ahead of time to assemble with other panels. They interlock and form very tight seals. The thick insulated walls along with the seals (greatly reducing air infiltration, a major source of heat loss) is what gives SIPs their incredible energy efficiency. 
The installation crew has been delayed for a week, so we’re now expecting to have the panels installed starting on the 19th. 
Now, Tim just has to finish the foundation before they get here 🙂 .