No post last week.

The weekend before last, we went to the annual family camping trip with Shawn's parents, his siblings and their families, and during the week we were busy with other things so not much progress.

Shawn did manage to install the vertical siding on the NE wall of the house. Here you can see the extra help Shawn had on hand for transporting the trim.

On Saturday, Shawn's parents came down again and helped with the house. Pam spent the day with the weed wacker and the mower again, so our property looks decent once again.

Shawn and Derald spent the morning hours wacking weeds to create room for them to work on the NE side of the house, as well as shoveling some dirt around to make the ground less treacherous. Then they installed the trim and the bandboard, and prepped the bottom of the wall for siding.

Near lunchtime, it started to rain, so the guys got a longer break at lunch. They went back out in the afternoon, and while it was still rainning they worked on fixing the rear garage entry door. We believe that door was not installed right, and the garage might have settled a bit as well, so the door had trouble closing. I'm not sure what exactly they did to the door, but I think it is fixed. I guess I never asked what they did to it.

After it quit raining, the guys managed to get the bottom siding done. This part is always difficult because of the angle, not to mention that the slope is steeper than the other side, and because of that, the table for cutting and prepping the siding was a distance away. I think Derald discovered new hip and calf muscles he forgot existed.

By the end of the day, they started to set up the scaffolding so that Shawn could work on the upper level siding.

On Sunday, Shawn spent the day taking the Orange crush seat apart and fixing a few things since he is listing it for sale. He also went all out and cleaned it real nice, and changed the oil.

In the evening, we took some free mulch we got from Evan's daycare person to put around the small trees we are trying to grow. Makes it look much nicer, and also will help with mowing around them.

On Monday, he took the evening off from house work to spend some time with Evan. Since the creek running through our property is so low right now, Evan had fun walking along the river bed jumping from rocks into the water and trying to catch fish and frogs.

Last night Shawn spent the evening marking out the studs on the wall so he can side. If the potential buyer for the Orange crush gets back to us, we probably will be doing that tonight.

Otherwise, perhaps Shawn will start on the siding. Here is a nice view of the house. It is starting to look like a house with the siding going up.

We've decided that once he is done siding the upper part of this wall, we are going to stop working on the siding, and switch to installing the soffit and fascia next. Summer is almost gone, and the siding job has taken a lot longer than we hoped (and I can't imagine what the siding job would actually be right now if it wasn't for all the help from the in-laws!)

Sometimes Shawn wishes we would have picked vinyl siding. We probably would be done with the siding by now, but I am happy with this siding. (But of course, I'm not the one that has to install it.)

We want to make sure we get the house enclosed before winter, and worst case scenario we can put off siding until next spring. So next we are going to focus on the soffit and fascia to have that done before winter, so that snow does not blow into the house through the eaves. We don't need another winter of shoveling snow from inside the house.

And as a final parting picture, our sunflowers are blooming now, and here is Evan enjoying them.

Until next week.