More Progress

We've had beautiful dry weather for the last couple of weeks, so the builders were able to get the roof shingled and wrapped the house, getting it ready for the siding.

This is the back of the house - the patio door coming out of the living room.  The paper is covering the window openings right now.  The soffit and facia will be some of the next things added.

This may be somewhat difficut to see, but here are the choices we've made for siding, etc. Everything we've chosen is as maintenance-free as possible. Our siding is Smart Side, an engineered wood product that is pre-painted in a finish called "Diamond Kote" .We chose Seal for the color, which is a dark brownish-gray, and the trim boards will be Beige.  The garage doors will be metal, 2-inch thick doors by Midland in the Almond color (samples are the round disks by the siding samples).  Rollex makes the metal soffit and facia, and that will be Almond.  The Marvin Windows will be aluminum clad exterior crank out windows in the Coconut Cream color.  The new crank out windows all flip around so you can easily clean the outside of the windows without going outdoors or having to climb a ladder for the second story windows, so that is a great feature.  Lastly, we are planning to use a composite decking material by Kodiak for the front and back decks/porches on the house.  The material is a 50/50 mix of 100% recycled pine wood fiber and high density polyethylene, making it eco-friendly as well as maintenance-free.  We are going with the New England Grey color. The exterior doors and patio doors have also been ordered - information and photos later.

That's about it for now.  More updates later.  Good bye from Shagawa Lake, thanks for reading our blog!

~ Herman & Mary Lou

Visible Progress

Even though the weather hasn't been too cooperative (rainy), our contractor Dave, and his crew Chris, Chase & Tanya have made good progress over the past two weeks.  The garage walls as well as some of the second floor walls are up.  This coming week they will be working to complete the upper portion of the house in order to move forward with the roof trusses and roofing.  The windows are being ordered from Marvin Windows and will be one of the next things done.  Here are several photos taken over the last two weeks:

To the left of the bottom of the stairway is the kitchen, to the right will be the living room.

This photo is taken standing just inside the front door looking into the foyer and the living room.

Mary Lou is standing in the upstairs bathroom window in the above photo.

This is the view of the back corner of the house (window opening is in the master bath above the bathtub).  The beams have been added on the back of the house to support the edge of the roof overhanging the deck/porch behind the living room and the master bedroom.



Here are a couple of close up photos of the pre-insulated panel walls:



 The holes in the end of the panels will allow for any electrical lines to be added into the walls. The panels have pre-drilled channels near the base of each wall as well as about 4 feet up, to allow for electrical lines where any are needed.

This is the view from the back corner of the garage.  There will be a door out the back of the garage onto a concrete slab which will be covered by the overhang of the roof. This will be the perfect spot for the grill and perhaps a small pile of wood in the winter so Herman can fire up the stove in the dining room.

This view is taken a few yards into the woods walking towards the lake, looking back at the house.  The living room and dining room windows have a nice view of the woods and lake.

 As we mentioned previously, our next door neighbors own/operate a tree farm, which has been in their family for over 50 years.  We are fortunate and appreciative that they allow us to walk wherever we like in the forestland they own adjacent to our property.  This is a majestic stand of red pines along the road into our place.  It's like having our own private park!  The neighbors also have many walking trails/ATV trails throughout the other parts of their property. The trails are great for snowshoeing in the winter also.

The fall colors are just past peak here now.  This photo of Shagawa Lake was taken October 2 from our beach.

That's it for now. This coming week the weather is supposed to be more cooperative, which is great.  The next update should have even more visible progress.  Thanks again for viewing our update!

~Mary Lou & Herman