Below is the picture of our only Halloween decoration this year. It is a pair of witches boots. Everything else is buried in the storage areas right now until the house gets finished.

Perhaps, one of the most important changes is enlarging, painting and new carpet for the guest room as shown on the left. The extra 3 feet along the entire east wall of the room is an improvement. The room is just now waiting for Apple to release a new product so that Caleb and Johanna can come and stay. Who knows; maybe Kevin and Natascha will want to stay upstairs when they come for Thanksgiving.

Below is a picture of the kitchen cabinets and the new granite counter top. The counter top was installed on Friday along with the kitchen sink. The plumber came on Monday to hook up the sink so that now we have running water in the kitchen. We did not think we would miss the sink so much, but it was right at the top of the list of deprivations.

To the right is a picture of the new cook top which does not have the iron grates on yet or is not hooked up to the power and gas yet, but it will be sometime.

This is a picture of the southwest corner of the kitchen just to the left of the cook top.

From the kitchen, you come to the dining area portion of the great room. This last week we were able to bring up a small table to have dinner on until we can bring up our regular kitchen table. In the foreground, you can see the row of closets on the east wall of the great room that extends almost from the garage door to the sliding glass door next to Bill's yard.

Below is a picture of the fireplace in the northwest corner of the great room. The tile has since been finished and it is hooked up ready to go.

This is another picture of the great room. You will noticed that it is carpeted. Paul and Dad brought the couches up from the storage area on Saturday.






Here is another picture of the great room taken from the northeast corner of the room. We put the old fan light up over the southwest area. There is a new 60 inch fan light in the center of the great room.

Finally, here is a picture of the garage from the old garage door. New doors and openers have been put in and the walls have been textured and are ready for paint.





Since these pictures were taken on Sunday, the kitchen sink has been hooked up, our cable TV is working again, the new carpet is in the new front room and office, the backsplash has been tiled, a wash sink has been installed in the garage just outside the door, the furnace is getting closer to completion and the master bathroom floor has been tiled. We will include pictures of these changes next time.

ps. This is being published with Charlie's proofreading, so please excuse any typos.

It has been a couple of weeks since we last posted. It was fun to look back at the last posting and see how much has been done on our house since then. Below is a picture of the front of the house. The stucco has been finished for sometime now and the rock is now completed. The soffit under between the roof and the walls and under the porch is also in. The color of the stucco is cotton, which is a yellowish cream with a white on the trim. I am not sure if the colors are clear in this picture. The color is a little better in this picture of the garage. On the north driveway, there is a garbage dumster. Both gargage doors were installed last Thursday.

Mom, also wanted to have our address placed on the front of our house in the stone, like newer houses on the ridge above Alta Canyon Rec. Center. Below is her wish in place.

Another thing, Mom wanted was a new mail box. Originally, it was going to be stucco to match the house, but there was enough rock left over so they used this rock on the mailbox. They still need to place a top on it. It is a little bigger than I wanted, so I call it our grave stone marker.

Here is another picture of the mailbox with the house in the background. You can tell that she likes it enough to take two pictures of it.

Now for inside. This is a picture into the master bedroom from the hallway. You can see that the walls are painted a light green color.

Below is a picture of the side of the first closest inside the great room/kitchen area. We had a cabinet made that is on the side of this first closest by the back door that has small shelves in it for shoes or whatever.

Our kitchen cabinets were install last Monday. Below is a picture of the island. This picture shows the tile that is on the floor in the kitchen, hallways and part of the great room.

Below is a picture of the cabinets along the east wall where the sink will be. It will be in a similar position as our old sink just without a window.

The west wall of the kitchen is shown below. To the left is the space for the refridgerator. On the far right, is the opening where the double ovens will be place. Next to this, is the opening for the microwave that will be over the gas cook top.

This a picture of the new living room taken from the hallway by the front door. In the back, you can see part of the french doors leading out to the south side of the wrap around porch. Just as you enter the front room, there are half walls on each side of the entrance. This room has been painted with the new colors.
This is a close up of one of the half walls. There will be shelfs under the top counter.

To the right is a picture of the new linen closests where the coat closets used to be in the hallway.

Below to the right is a picture of the gas fireplace that is in the northwest corner of the great room. One of the french doors going out into the backyard can be seen in this picture.

The last pictures are of the interior of the garage. You can see the texture that we are having the garage walls finish with.

Below is a picture of the northwest part of the garage (the new section). The used this location to paint some of the new doors. As you can see, there are a lot of doors.

Finally, a picture of the basement room where we have been living in or confined to during the construction. We are looking forward to the day when we can move back upstairs.

At the urging of Caleb, we went out and took some pictures today and are updating the blog although it was a busy evening with Ian's birthday party.

A lot has happened to our house remodel over the last couple of weeks. They have finished the new walls, the rough wiring and heating along with hanging the sheetrock. To the right, is a picture of the front of the house with the addition. The white is sytrafoam where they are getting ready to stucco the house this coming week. In the below close up of the front of the house, there will be rock were the external walls are black.

The old kitchen cabinets are being stored on the front porch as we plan to put them in the garage when it is finished.

The next picture is from a shot of the garage from the old garage back door into the kitchen. The left of the picture is the addition to the garage. The floor is a couple of feet lower than the old garage.

This is a view of the new front room on the south side of the house where we have new french doors that have blinds inside of the glass panels.

The next picture is a picture looking east from the old master bedroom showing the siting room that we are adding on to it. There is a door on the east side that connects to the wrap around front door.

You can see that they have hung the sheet rock and begun to tape the joints.

The old middle guest room has been expanded to include the old hallway, so that it will be bigger than before. We have also had ethernet and cable TV wired into this room.

The remainder of the old front room will be a den/office. The refridgerator is temporarily in the office while we endure the construction.

This is a picture from the kitchen looking at towards the north at the new great room. There will be a row of closets along the east wall and the old sliding glass door has been move to the new north wall of the house.

This is a picture looking at the west wall of the great room. There will be a gas fire place in the corner between the doors and the small window. Cable TV, the internet and wiring for surround sound have been put in. The TV will be along the north wall to the right of the small window.

This is a picture just inside the front door. The the right of this picture is the new front room. This picture shows a nitch that has been put in above the new stairs that go downstairs along the wall on the right side of the picture. Behind the nitch is a new coat closet that will have a switch inside to control the outlets outside in the eves that are for the Christmas lights.


Here is another picture looking at the new front room from just inside the front door. In front of the french doors are boxes of joint compound for the sheet rock seams.

Below is a picture of the new stairs from the basement looking up towards the front of the house.

This is a picture of the storage area underneath the new wrap around front porch. Notice it is full of our household belongings right now.

This is picture of the new basement room underneath the new front room looking into the storage area underneath the porch.

Finally, here is where the old basement stairs where. The cable TV and ethernet connect box is shown on the right. Both walls need to remain as they are bearing walls, so this will be a storage area and also contain the new second furnace/air conditioning unit.




This week ought to be interesting as they should start to stucco the outside of the house, hang the sheet rock in the garage and finish the inside sheet rock joints, so they can begin to paint and lay the floor tile next week.

Well, we had another interesting and productive week with the house remodel. Jill and the crew came by to check things out on Monday. The highlight was when we went downstairs and looked at the new storage area under the porch. We had to have a flashlight to see anything, but with the flashlight out we made spooky sounds. Dallin and Daniel had fun scaring Kemry and Ian. They all voted that we leave the space empty so they could play in it. They finished puting the walls up on the addition to the garage.

They also stayed late and worked on the new roof. Below is a picture of the great room wall.

They also began taking off the shingles on the back side of the house.

Here is a picture of the back of the new great room.

This is a picture of the front of our house before they put the roof on the front addition.

Another picture of the front of the house. The first joist of the front roof was raised.

Here is picture of the beginging of the front roof.

This is a picture of the roof over the garage.

By mid week they finished the roof over the front addition.

By Wednesday evening, the roof framing over the garage was up.

Thursday while we served in the Temple, a record rain fall came down that lasted about an hour with 15 minutes being unusally hard. Blaine said that at work one of his roof gutters was out twenty or thirty feet. Even though our roof was not finished, nothing got wet inside our existing house even though the shingles were off. They builders had enough of the roof finish with tar paper over it and plastic covering the rest of the roof where it was not. The garage was soaked. All of the sheet rock was off of the roof of the garage and laying on the cement soaked. We felt really blessed to make it through this unusual storm.

The picture below was from Thursday evening. Blaine came over and used Mom's camera to take pictures of some tires that were given him. A couple of days later, they were sold via Craig's list.

Friday, the house looked like this.

On Friday, they had the shingles delivered and they will start shingling the roof on Monday.

The roof over the garage was finished on Friday.

On Saturday, the worked on putting the wood on the gables. They almost finished the garage area. We also had Kim, Jedd, Zach, Robyn, Haley, Emmy and Luke helping us move most of our stuff on the main floor to the basement. We now only have our bed and desk in our bedroom and the bed and computer desk in the guest room on the main floor.