Many thanks, and more pictures.

Hi, I just wanted to compile a list of thanks to all that contributed in many ways to this project.

First, I want to thank my parents Ronnie and Patti.  We owe a major debt to my mom for moving here to essentially nanny the kids, and for her financial generosity.  And I'd like to thank my departed dad too, without him none of this would have been possible, he instilled the DIY determination in me and I would give all this up for him to be here with his grandchildren.

I oew a monstrous thanks to Beth and our kids for their tremendous patience while all this went on.

Thanks to Beth's parents for their support as well, Jim I think I still have more of your tools.

Thanks to my friend Eric Todd, he flew all the way from Yuma and helped me the first week put together a clean comfortable place to temporarily live.

Thanks to Doug and Fritz for their major input into the design and layout, their ideas on where to move walls and reduce wasted space were tremendous!

I would like to thank the many contractors that put their best effort in:

Devon Sweeney as well as Travis, Javier and Joel of Sweeney Restoration (look them up on facebook)  are true modern-day craftsmen, their carpentry work is absolute top-notch.

Kevin the plumber, Selvin the electrician, and Orlando the AC guy all did great work getting the guts back into the house.

Jose the day-laborer for his attention to detail in everything he does.

Thanks to all of our new neighbors, most notably John and Kara, their cousin Steven, Patrick and Suzi next door, and the others we are getting to know for being so welcoming and understanding during this crazy mess we had going on.

Again, many thanks to you all!

This post would be just words without the following pics:

Finally readers, please don't feel like this may be the last post, it is not, as most all of you know a house is never really done.

After the New year begins, and we make more progress with the huge amount of detail work yet to finish, we'll be sure to post up some before and after shots.

Unpacking, house diving, and HEAT!

Why is is that the dirt under a house always feels so much more.....well, dirty? Today, I put on my trusty petzl head light for hopefully the last house-diving expedition for the forseeable future.  Since our new meter won't get set til next monday or tuesday and the downstairs furnace is electric, I had to fix us up with some heat downstairs, so I piped in about 9ft of pipe under there and hooked up the trusty ol' gas heater and we're warm again!

Sooooo, as most but not all of you who read this may know, since the last post the house has mostly wrapped up except for a ton of detail-painting.  Our stuff was delivered, and we're moved in.

I also want to say I'm sorry, I really meant to try and update this at least weekly if not bi-daily but exhaustion, kids, and exhaustion kept me from it.

Without further adieu, here's some pictures of what all has went on:

This is the 2nd bathroom we added on, just to the right of that shower wall is where the washer/dryer stack.

These are our floors and stairwell all refinished:

Here's all our stuff going in:

We finished out Ella's room:

And here's our super-nice kitchen:

  The backyard before and after our stuff:

The garage is jam-packed but I won't show that just yet.

and little Ella loves to mock harvey (look in the blurry background: