August and September 2006
August 20 thru 26
The construction progress this week was focused on blowing insulation into the attic. We are close to being "dried" in for the winter.



August 27 thru September 2
Most of the construction is on the weekends now. During the week a lot of progress was made in preparing for the garage doors but hopefully we will have more to show for it next week. The big action this week was on Saturday when Rob returned to help finish things up. The driveway is in now, it meets up with the garage and it is graded gravel instead of mud. The real big task was getting the well hooked up via the trench that had been dug. During the flooding some of the sides had caved in so there was a lot of manual excavation in the bottom of the 7ft deep ditch in order to clear things out before hooking up the water, electrical and heat.


September 3 thru 9
A lot of progress was made this week. First of all, the two big garage doors have been completely framed out and the professionals will be installing the two 9'x9' doors and openers this Friday 9/15/06. Karl was also able to install the rear man-door for the garage.

The majority of the work this weekend focused on getting the north wall of the garage insulated with it's second layer. The first layer of insulation was installed by the Lake City team at the end of July. We installed the additional layer this weekend which consisted of 2" rigid foam with an R-value of 10 and true 2" x 2" pieces of lumber.

Karl had to score the rigid foam with a chain saw in order to embed the electrical wires.This allowed us to put in green-board (water resistant sheetrock) on the portion of the north wall to prepare for the boiler installation.

This oil-fired contraption will be our main source of heat via radiant tubing as well as heating our domestic hot water. As an added bonus, we were also able to apply rigid foam insulation to the outside walls of the guest bathroom upstairs. Over all, good weekend!


September 10 thru 17
During this past week a lot of progress has been made at the station as we are settling into a full time schedule. However, that news will wait until the next newsletter.
We got quite a bit done on the house again this weekend. We are at the station Monday through Thursday and working on the house Friday through Sunday. On Friday, Spenards installed our garage doors. It is great to have the house closed up. We also got locks on the man-doors. This was just in time as we got our first frost this morning (9/18).

After the garage doors and locks we moved on to our upstairs guest bathroom. Our goal is to build out the small bedroom and guest bathroom so that we can move into some heated space with facilities as the first step to getting into the house. Since we re-built one of the bathrooms in our Lakewood house we feel that we actually may know what we are doing when it comes to bathrooms. This familiarity really has us excited about the proximity of some usable success. We had to frame out the walls to match the width of the tub and also to provide support (the horizontal 2" furring for the rigid insulation doesn't line up with the top of the enclosure). Also, since the drain lined up with one of the floor joists, we had to build up the floor so that the drain would clear. After getting the mortar piled nice and high we were able to get the tub set in place.



September 18 thru 24
The new season is definitely here. The Autumn colors are present everywhere. We even caught a good rainbow without experiencing the rain ourselves. As the seasons change the importance of getting our heating system in increases and we worked to get our boiler chimney in this week. With the chimney in itself the only things that remain for the chimney are to install a roof brace kit and to get "snow-brakes" installed on the roof to keep the snow build up from sliding off and taking the chimney with it.


Inside much got done as well. Kristan was able to get drywall hung in both the bathroom and the laundry room as well as get a good start on the upstairs guest bedroom.

This week as we worked, it really struck me how much we have to be thankful for in the work that the Lake City team got done. From the plumbing in the bathroom and around the boiler to the walls we are hanging drywall on to the roof that the chimney is now poking through. This house has been built by many hands and God has used those hands to bless us incredibly. A few weeks ago we got to see a video put together by the work teams. We hope that you enjoy it as much as we do. It is a real reminder of how we have been so blessed by our Lord through people like you.

September 25 thru October 1
This week we didn't get a chance to work on our house. On Monday we had the opportunity to go to our sister station in Nenana and do some work there. Look for those details in our next newsletter (which should be coming shortly). We really enjoyed our time there and the season change is much more evident further North. North of the Alaska Range, the birch leaves have all fallen and on Friday night we had snow fall before we returned Saturday afternoon.

Slightly breaking our Sunday-Sunday update pattern, the latest news is that the power crew arrived this morning (10/2). Soon we should have power to our home to run the well and allow us to use space heaters as necessary to keep warm.