A new hearth for the cookstove

The final labor of love from Lisa was to complete the rock hearth for the cookstove. Here she is getting started.....

Mom made her smile for the camera...

And time for consultation with dad....

Almost done....

Here is the finished work....

And here it is with the cookstove set in place.

Paint goes on the walls

Here are the pics of the paint going up on all the new work in the house. Here is Lisa painting the kitchen ceiling--without even needing a ladder.

And here goes the new color on the kitchen walls- a nice terra cotta shade. [Do NOT dare call it Dusty Rose infront of Joanie!]

Here is the new wall in the sitting room side---(it really is terra cotta- not dusty rose)

Here is the new bedroom color. There will be a white chair rail splitting the two colors eventually.

Another walk in the woods

While Lisa was home we went looking for signs of spring. Up on the hillside most of the snow was melted - but we had to watch out for the patches of snow and the muddy areas....

We found buttercups blooming way up on the hillside- they are a sure harbinger of spring....

Lisa was scouting out favorite camping/overlook sites on the upper property. Here is the view from the first site she found.

Here is the view from the second overlook site...

Here is Kurt with his two daughters---Lisa in person and Amy is on the phone in Lisa's hand....

House Progress

Exciting news on the home front! Lisa came home for 10 days and great progress was made on our ongoing remodeling projects! Lisa and Kurt took out a window, moved a wall to enlarge the guest bedroom, added a closet, and finished off the ceiling and walls in the kitchen. Of course it was a big mess for awhile- but it was worth it.

They did their best to contain the drywall dust- here is just some of the plastic shrouding Lisa put up...

Lisa was the drywaller-extraordinaire. Here she is doing the last pieces of drywall to enclose a wood beam.....

Here is the new wall jutting out into former open space.

Here is the other side of that wall and framed in closet- in the newly expanded bedroom.....
The final messy step was to blow on more mud for texture on the wall. Here are Lisa and Kurt mixing of a batch in the hopper of the texturizer machine....

Here you can see how we had to cover everything before blowing on the texture....

The work in progress...

This is a whoops....Texture overspray on our finished door

and another whoops- texture overspray on the kitchen cabinets

Spelunking up the hill

While Lisa was home we went on our first open-ground hike up on the our upper property since the winter snow has mostly retreated. We investigated an outcropping of quartz and a couple of old mines on the property.

Here is Lisa standing in front of the patch quartz on a rock face -

And here she is looking closely at the rocks.

Nearby we spotted this area of blue rock- must be some mineral seeping out of the rock that has caused this blueing- Will have to do some reseach....

To the right of the quartz rock face - there was this natural crevice in the wall. I thought at first that is was a mine but It is not very deep and it was almost hidden by trees growing infront of it. Would be a perfect animal lair- so I didn't stick my head in very far.

Up on the next ledge we found this man-made mine opening. Lisa and I ventured inside- making lots of noise in case there were any animals and using the camera flash to find our way. The mine is about 30 feet long and 5 to 6 feet high. It was mostly carved in solid rock and had a level floor. This picture is just heading in......

This one is a little deeper inside- you still can't see the end.

This one is almost to the end..

And this is the end of the mine- we didn't see any gold lying around. Also no evidence that any animals have made this their home....

We lasted in the tunnel for about a minute and then turned and headed quickly for the opening- Here is Lisa heading out- with her shoe reflectors blazing...

Our final discovery was this rock lined hole in the ground that held water. After stirring the water a bit with stick we noticed a rather unpleasant smell- so the water is probably not useable.