Springtime!

Well, spring is officially here, with all the rain and sloppy driveway mess it brings. It's been in the 50's pretty consistently for the past couple of weeks, and it looks like that will probably continue until May or so. Par for the course, really. Even though we've been too busy to work on our house and yard, things are still happening without our input, such as lovely flowers growing. Plenty of flowers on our property were planted long before we bought the house, such as this narcissus.

Others started out as really nice gifts given to me by my husband, which we later planted, such as these mini-daffodils.

The crowning glory in my mind, though, are these violets. NOTHING, in my opinion, is quite like these violets.

Technically they're not really part of the yard yet, but they will be someday. These violets actually bloom in my parents' yard in Montana, and I always adored the incredible scent of the sunlight hitting the violets in bloom. It was a powerful, magical scent, and I really missed it when I moved away from home. I'd talk about the violets sometimes, but I never really felt like people understood what I was talking about. My mother had tried to grow the violets in pots, but they never survived. Still, since I finally had a yard, I decided to give it another shot. So, last July, my spouse and I dug a few up from my parents' yard in Montana, put them in a plastic planter box, and brought them back to Washington with us. They've been sitting at the edge of the carport ever since, enduring rain, snow, and whatever else the weather wanted to throw at them. And, finally, miraculously, they've bloomed! I went to check on them, just in case, and as I leaned over I was hit with that scent, which instantly transported me to my childhood. I was so incredibly happy, since I hadn't smelled that scent in ten years, and I got to share it with my husband. So, even though we've been busy moving friends and helping out with martial arts seminars and therefore don't have windows or doors in, at least we have violets.

Sheathing Inspection: Passed!

Well, we had our sheathing inspection a few minutes ago. We passed! It's nice to know we're doing something right. He also gave us some other tips, such as when we should rough out our fireplace, whether or not we can just raise the next beam we have to install or if we need to use an engineer again, and if we should place some moldy (but not rotten) panels in our roof. The answers are we should rough out our fireplace in time for the framing inspection (before we install drywall), we need to use a structural engineer and get the permit revised to raise that beam a bit, and we should replace the roof panels (that have mildew on them), but we don't have to. The turnaround was pretty good, too. We requested the inspection yesterday, and today he came. He was very nice.

So far, so good. Hooray!

The next three weekends, including this weekend, are full of activities, so it's going to be hard to carve out time to work on the house, since the next thing is installing the windows, which we can't really do bit by bit. Instead we're going to start working on installing our hedge along the side of the driveway, because you don't need a lot of time to do a little digging or laying of a few stones. Granted, we have to buy the stones, but that's not super time-consuming. I'm looking forward to doing work outside when the weather gets a little better!

Besheathed

It is done! The sheathing is done!!

There's really not much to report. The sheathing of the lower portion of the south wall went like a charm. It was a nice weekend, weather-wise, and we got 'er done. The top part of the south wall was a super pain in the ass, mostly because of the extra 2x4s we had to nail up in order to have something to nail the sheathing to. But we got that done, too.

Now we just have to ask the inspector if we have to cut the windows out before the inspection, or if we can do it afterwards. We're going away on a trip to see family, and we're going to leave the room entirely boarded up. So, if we have to have the windows cut out, the inspection will have to wait until we return and can defend the ol' homestead.

It's actually starting to feel like spring around here, too. Makes it exciting, and blessedly warm in comparison. Hopefully the sheathing inspection will go well and we can install the windows, and then it's time to kick some serious butt on the inside framing, which shouldn't take nearly as long as our first big beam, heaven willing. But we'll find out, won't we?