Progress on the site

Mario, from our framing crew was coming on Saturday. So we got to the land on Thursday afternoon so we could spend all of Friday getting ready. We spent most of the day cutting boards to length and made a trip to Prescott to pick up the boards we were missing. Then we trimmed out the windows and installed the low bats using scraps from the back of the house.






On Saturday, we got a fourth estimate on site work. The bids ranged from under $500 to more than $4,500, which struck us as astonishing. The high bidder left a flier on our property. He came with a young man who wanted to bid on staining the house. He wanted to know whether we had a sprayer. Then he asked if we had a ladder.











Mario arrived about 7:30 and got to work installing the high boards above the windows, then what bats he could. Unfortunately, we were about 70 bats short. So the siding on the north and east sides is complete, but the south (front) and west will have to wait until we can get more material. At least all the boards are up.







Having done as much siding as materials allowed, Gerald and Mario got to work on the deck. That was great for two reasons: one was that having a deck that consists of more than sheets of OSB will increase our enjoyment of the property substantially. More practically, we need to get all of the lumber up off the ground in preparation for the site work.

Meanwhile, in preparation for the site work, I picked up our "boardwalk" and as many of the nails as I could find lying on the ground. I had gathered a shopping bag full by the time I was done.


Here's how the house looked by the end of the weekend. A big improvement over the Lowe's Tyvek look, don't you think?

First fire

Gerald and I returned on Thursday and planned to finish all the low siding on Friday. But on Friday, we both decided we were tired of the rickety blocks and boards we had been using for makeshift stairs. Gerald set to work to build a temporary set of stairs. It was lunchtime before he was finished. I didn't mind, because I got caught up on my reading.






We spent the rest of the day on siding. Here's Gerald cutting out a circle to accommodate a porch light fixture.











On Friday night, we lit off the inaugural fire in our new fireplace. Our neighbor Kathleen was there for the event.











On Saturday, Steve Hampton, who runs cattle on phase 3 stopped by to bid on the site work. We were happy to finally meet him. He told us he planned to bring back the cows to our section of the ranch later this summer.









By the time we left on Saturday, we had installed all the boards except what goes on top of the windows.

April showers

We came up the following week on a Thursday. Gerald had bought a new fire pit, and we had what was probably our farewell fire in this one. Like our entrance sign, it was a victim of natural causes. Snow had gotten into it and frozen. When it thawed, the whole bottom fell out. A gift from Gerald's daughter, Christy, it served us well for probably hundreds of fires. We bid it a fond adieu.





J.C. came up on Friday with a helper to attach the exterior portion of the flue from our fireplace.











On Thursday, Gerald had painted it green in the hopes it would blend in with the roof. The color was a good match, but it was a little more prominent than we would have liked.










When that job was done, we asked Jeremy to install the corner pieces on the siding, which were too high for us.











Old Santa Fe Lumber delivered the rest of our siding. So with the corner pieces installed and the rest of the lumber on site, we could finally finish up the siding.

Unfortunately, I checked the rain forecast for the area. It called for a 90 percent chance of rain that evening and a 70 percent chance on Saturday, which foiled our plans.

Since we hadn't had any rain for more than a month, it was hard to regret the rain. But we decided we'd be more comfortable if we headed home, so that's what we did.

Natural causes

For the next two weeks, we were only able to make day trips up to the land. On the first visit, we found the high winds had dispatched the sign we so painstakingly had hung. We contemplated a remedy. Perhaps having a party in which we invited friends up for target practice to shoot some ventilation holes in the sign. Liquor to be served afterward, of course.






The next weekend, we took our friends Jim Carson and Marguerite Hankins, both artists, up for a visit so they could shoot some reference materials. We saw our first wildflowers.










Here's Marguerite shooting a pond in a different section of Ruger Ranch.