Little things

We're trying oh so hard to finish all the main stuff inside this weekend. No real deadline, but it's good to have goals. It's the little things, however, that take so long! Plus, for each thing I check off my list, I think of two more. Things like plug wood screw holes, touch up drywall, little bits of trim here and there, wood finish various non-finished pieces, clean the dust from the 20' high ceiling fan, buy tiny little parts like washers or baseboard trim for the sole remaining 36" piece, etc.

cable rails

Got the cable rails in on the stairs. We'll do this outside and in the loft as well.


You can see one in the loft, the others are being made by Dad.
Also, notice the tread and riser screw holes are plugged.

Energy update

Total fuel use this winter: 320 gallons for comfortable heating and hot water for three, with no wood heat. This is very good for a house like ours!

If we paid Anchorage natural gas prices, it would cost us $36.75 a month on average to heat and create hot water!

This works out to around 450 gallons for the whole year. Next year we'll have our high efficiency wood stove, which can heat the entire house. Burning on the 3 coldest months could cut our usage in half.

Nearly there!

The blog has been quiet for some time now, but we've been busy. All the final little things take a long time, but we are now very close to completion inside. We finally installed the last of the lights for the dining area, kitchen sink, stairs, and some nifty pendant lights for the bar. These were going to be a track light, but pendants looked better so I drilled two big holes in the drywall, added two ceiling boxes and fished the wires through.

our new pendant lights, and a Photoshoped fridge
(ours is a white hand-me-down but we will get a new black one eventually)

We have LOTS of lights!
Wide angle lens distortion. Our house isn't this huge

After that, I spent a long weekend in Big Lake at my dads shop. He had already made the stair railings by laminating ash and mahogany, which I helped finish by hand planing to shape, since we don't have a shaper. It felt like I planed a mile worth of shavings. We also made a few miscellaneous parts like floor transition strips, and newel posts, which have holes drilled for a cable rail to come, and the upstairs railings, which are flat rather than profiled. They also have a Mahogany inlay.


Stair railing. Cables courtesy of Photoshop. Screw holes still need to be plugged and finish coat applied to stairs.

Upstairs balcony railing and our dusk view