Siding - 1 wall down, 3 to go

It has been a few days since I got a chance to visit our house. Gilles' mom, Ghislaine came for an unexpected but very welcome visit yesterday and is staying for the weekend. So, today, we went for a visit to the house and brought Gilles lunch. The changes are more subtle now but no less significant than when the walls were going up.
The biggest changes that I noticed were

• The siding on the east side is completely finished. (See picture on left). It will eventually get stained / painted white. For now, it is absolutely stunning. It is a true labor of love to nail each piece of wood clapboard to the wall. Each nail goes in by hand. There is absolutely no use of a nail gun on this siding. It involves a lot of going up and down and cutting the boards to just the right length. Kudos to Gilles on a wall well done!!

• The insulation is  going up. I will have to do a blog post just on the insulation to do it justice. In a nutshell, it will be a very well insulated house. The first part of the insulation is in throughout the house minus a few spots that are not fully sealed (like around the second story windows for example)

• The wood stove - On Thursday, we will be getting the wood stove installed. So, for now, Gilles has started to prepare the floor where it will go. It will be sitting on reinforced flooring covered by grey slate tiles. The tiles are not quite in place yet, but they have been sealed and are ready assume position.

• The wood siding that was piled up outside of the house is now safely stowed in the shed or in another out of the way place. This upcoming week, they are coming to dig the trenches to lay the electrical and plumbing to go into the house. Gilles was very busy today moving all of that wood. Tonight, he was incredibly tired and rightly so.

We had a good time giving Ghislaine a tour of he place. She is ready to  move in. Although we did remind her she hadn't been officially invited ;-) We also had lunch in the downstairs soon to be kitchen. It was definitely cold, but it was nice to have the patio doors and front door closed to keep the wind and cold out. We also had a small heater which was effective if you were really close to it. All in all, things are progressing quite nicely. I wish we could live there now, but I will have to be patient.

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