Thursday, February 1, 2018

NEW HOME CONSTRUCTION JANUARY 2018





The various colors you see on the house are primed hardiplank and will not be stained and painted until this spring when the temperature allows.  It will look much different!



Happy New Year to Everyone!

Our new home is coming along as planned with the start of 2018.  We are getting our "in town" house all prepared for selling and hope to market it around the first part of April.  Our plan is to move into our new house, if all goes well, in May.  We do not want to move twice so our plan is a squeeze but we think it will all work out.

We had a nice white Christmas at home this year.  Cathryn's son, Bart, was in the Philippines for a month scouting out new fishing and guiding opportunities, John's #1 son, Josh was working in Medford, Oregon and John's #2 son, Jason, and the little grandkids, were having their family Christmas at home in Portland, Oregon.  Maybe one year we will all be able to have a Christmas dinner together someplace.  Since we usually have snow we are hoping to get together here!

Cathryn and I had elk steak at home for Christmas dinner!  It was delicious!

We went out to dinner after Christmas in Bigfork with our friends (below).  It was cold!


These cold looking folks are our dear friends, Brace and Kathleen.  

Annie wanted to show you one of her many Christmas presents!

This Chevy Traverse is our replacement car.  We were rear ended by a truck just before Christmas and our GMC Terrain was totaled!  It was a very frustrating experience for us but fortunately no one was seriously injured.  We were so lucky Annie was not with us!
Construction continues......

It has been a very cold and snowy winter resulting in a few set backs to construction.  Here are some pictures of the progress made the past six weeks.

Our back patio area before windows and doors.

After windows and doors.  Much better!

Insulation is being installed prior to the sheet rocking.

This is looking from the great room across the media area to the kitchen and dining area.

This photo shows the future kitchen to the left and the panel will become our media area.

This will be our studio - office.  We plan a sliding barn door on the large door.

Looking at the hallway coming in from the garage and the kitchen and media area.

Great room looking toward the front door.  A temporary door is installed to keep it warm.

It's getting there!  The ceiling will have tongue and groove stained wood on it.



Scenes of the surrounding valley from our new home.

This is our view of the Swan Mountains while standing outside our east facing bedroom window.  
Another view of the Swan Mountains while standing in the front yard.

This view is looking south toward Flathead Lake and the Mission Mountains.


We took this picture driving to our house from Somers, a small town about three miles south of our new house.  We love watching the ever changing weather patterns in this valley.

Looking out the windshield at the road as we were driving to our new house after a big snowstorm.

This is looking out the window of our present house before it got real serious about snowing!  My BBQ (to the left) will be under cover at the new house!

Well, that is about all we have to share at this time.  We have been very busy picking out our paint colors, flooring (going with hickory hardwood), custom cabinets for the kitchen and other locations, bathroom stuff and on and on!  We look forward to sharing all of that with you in the next few months. 


We laugh in the face of old man winter up here in the North Country!! 


Until next time.....Happy Trails!

John, Cathryn and Annie

Friday, December 15, 2017

HOME CONSTRUCTION - NOVEMBER & DECEMBER 2017




December 11, 2017


Fall Fun and Festivities

This blog starts out with the above picture of what our new home looked like early this week.  However, our continuing story begins mid October to bring you up to date on what has been going on around here since our last blog. The weather made a quick turn in late October from mild Indian Summer to cold and blustery winter!  Having been raised in Texas, I am familiar with sudden weather turns but Montana can hold her own with Texas!  Since writing the last blog we have had extremes from very warm sunny days to close to blizzard days.  The early snow storm we had around Halloween stuck around for a few weeks and delayed our home construction a bit.  However the snow went away and we have not seen any more until today as I write this, and it is just a small dusting with some very needed sunshine.  The forecast calls for much more snow this coming weekend.

Here are a few pictures of what we have been up to lately.

Beautiful Autumn scene from our back deck at our present house in Kalispell.


We never get tired of how beautiful the drive is from our new home to Bigfork along the north end of the Flathead Lake.

This could be a nice fishing hole on the Swan River south of Bigfork.  I took this photo during one of our frequent local road trips about mid October.

 Our church family friends, Phil and Ruby, sponsor an apple cider press party for charity each year.  It is a lot of fun and a lot of hard work but well worth it plus we all share in the fresh apple cider.



 Helen is 92 years old and none of us can keep up with her! She is our inspiration!

Everyone takes a turn on the apple press and quickly work up a sweat!  We do it the old fashioned way! 

House construction pictures.
This is how the house looked from the front about the middle of October.  Not much going on.
 
Do you see anything different in this picture and the next picture?



Notice the cupola on top of the rv shelter.  You will see what is going on top of it in the next picture.



Please excuse my pj's!  This is my birthday present from Cathryn......a copper weathervain for the new cupola.  Beautiful!  Why a pheasant instead of a rooster you ask?  Because we are building in an area south of Kalispell in the Lower Valley called Pheasant Haven on Pheasant Tail Court! 
This is going to make our new home very special!
 Winter came early to the Flathead!


Our early snowstorm the end of October.

Annie loves the snow!

This is what the roads looked like driving out to our house on my birthday!


Birthday breakfast at the Somer's Cafe with my beautiful lady was worth the drive!

And this is where we are as of Monday, December 11th.

The door on the right is 12 feet high to allow clearance for our future smaller RV.


Windows and siding are starting to be installed.

The sliders for the back were delayed but should be installed along with the upper windows in a few weeks.  We really like the way our builder pieced all the beams together without using metal straps.  It all fits just like puzzle pieces!  

There is a lot of things going on inside.  Electrical and plumbing and windows!




Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our family....



Josh


Jason and Kaitlen



Jason and Shawn



Bart with this year's Christmas roast!



Annie



John and Cathryn