Christmas 2014 Part 2

Dolores, Paul, and Donna's dad (another David!) were here to open
presents and have dinner during the late afternoon. We all ate more than
enough and exchanged presents. We played a board game later that night.
 A busy day for everyone.

Christmas 2014 Part 1

We had a nice Christmas with family and lots of presents. Here are some

pictures of the morning activities. Chris and Mary were here on Christmas Eve and stayed a couple of nights.

Footers Poured

Local concrete company poured the footers for the new house on a cold
day- foundation walls will be poured next after gravel is spread inside
the footers and drains placed around the outside.

We're using several different contractors for this build, I'm acting as
the general contractor to try and pull it all together and we'll do a
bit of the work, mostly finish electrical and trim work ourselves. Most
of the contractors we plan to use did the work on the guest cabin as

well, we were happy with all the subs we used so are asking them to work on this house as well. The main portion of the house is being framed and dryed
in by Brad Fouts. The house will have vinyl siding and a metal roof.

Here are the footer pictures.

Ground Broken for House

We've broken ground on a house here in Romney located just next to our
property. Donna's sister Dolores and brother in law Paul, along with her
dad are building the house. They are staying in the guest cabin until
this one is ready so close by to help pick out materials and get it just
the way they want it. Work started just before Christmas but just now
getting some posts and pictures online. House will be about 1600 square
feet with a two car garage in the basement. Front of the house faces to
the south with some views of the near by mountains.

Here are a couple showing the dig for the basement.

Visit from Mom and Patty

In mid-October, my sister Patty flew out from Kansas City and brought my mom with her for her first visit to our place in West Virginia. We had a great week of visiting and hanging out. While they were here, we did the Potomac Eagle train trip through the Trough. As usual, the scenery was excellent, we hit the leaves in full color and saw a few eagles from the train. Here are a couple of pictures.

Here's one of mom, Patty, and Donna.

Donna's sister Dolores, her Dad, and husband Paul. These are taken at the station before leaving- the trip down and back through the Trough on the South Branch of the Potomac takes about 3 hours.

Here are a couple of pictures of the trip, it was an overcast day but we were lucky and the rain held off.

Miss Squeaky Pictures

Earlier this summer, a kitten that looked to be about 6-9 months old showed up at the house and is now a full time resident. She's full grown now and an outside cat but does like to sneak in if a door is left open. She tolerates the dogs but if she runs, then chaos breaks out and they all have to chase- looks like Miss Squeaky will be an outside cat. We have a cat door in my workshop so she can get out of the cold and a heated pad on the screened porch so she'll do fine- so far, she prefers to be on the porch so she can track our movements.

She's really friendly once she gets to know you and loves to rub against your legs or sit with you outside by the fire. When we're working outside, she likes to stay close by.

Here are a few pictures.

Following us between the guest cabin and the house. Squeaky loves to visit Donna's dad, sister, and brother in law who are staying in the cabin!

Enjoying a snuggle with Donna by the fire.

Church House Pictures

Here are 3 pictures of the main room in the church house, makes up the living area, eating space, and kitchen.

99% of everything you see in all these pictures was already in the house as part of the purchase. We'll have a lot of clothing and stuff to take to Goodwill once we start clearing out the bedrooms. You can see we had a fire in the wood stove as it was in the 40's here and very cold inside- the stove did a nice job getting the main room up to the low 60's by the time we were ready to wrap up for the day.

Here's a shot of the sink, you just don't see orange like this anymore!

The next pictures show the metal spiral stairs up to the loft that runs about 75% of the length of the church. The close up pictures of the light show that it was originally an oil or kerosene fixture that was converted to electric some time ago.

Here's a picture standing at the back of the loft looking back to the stairs, you can see all the stuff that was left up there, there are a lot of old chairs, tables, and beds along with a collection of other "treasures". We found some fishing gear, some magazines from the 60's and early 70's, books, and there are a couple of large, truck inner tubes inflated and ready for the river!

There is a lot to go through and clean up but looks like this would be a great spot to spend some time in the summer. We're still figuring out how much we'll want to change- we know we'll want to improve the stairs coming in to the church on the front- maybe a deck along with the stairs as it would be a great place for to watch that water go by and hold a grill.

More as we move along, enjoy.