Home on the range

Wanna see what I've been workin' on for the past, oh, going on six months?

Ta-da! It's a well house! Not really, no. But see that pile of dirt behind the well house? And that tiny Port-A-Potty in the distance? Wave, Port-A-Potty. Yeah well, that's the humble beginnings of Chez Woodlayson, circa late August.

The dirt came from...

...this great big hole in the ground, the previously referenced Party Hole. Seen here in mid-September, looking less like a hole and more like a bona fide basement.

We woke up one morning and there was some wood on top of our basement. The framing took a couple of weeks but in retrospect, it really does seem like it happened overnight. Although that may have something to do with the fact that after this stage was complete, the lion's share of the work fell into our capable hands and now it takes a week to stain a damn door.

Pictured is the open-air main floor before construction started on the second story, mid-October.

Ah, and here is Princess Peanut of the Serengeti, surveying the futile labors of mortal man from her lofty perch.

I got her to supervise for me a couple times, but it didn't work out. She kept calling the construction workers weak-minded earthlings and accusing them of smoking weed in the john.

Jump to November, and here it is with walls and a roof and everything.

Admittedly, I've gotten lax in my picture-taking duties lately, but I can say that now, in February, it looks much the same as it did in this picture. It has shingles now, and windows, not to mention the 2000+ feet of electrical wire and the plumbing pipe and the ducting and all that good stuff that's not very visually striking. That's what I tell myself anyway.

So, pretty soon I get to check "Design and build our own house" off my bucket list. Of course, this defers the "Live debt-free" item on said list indefinitely, but you can't have everything.