So much has happened in the past month!

We have power and water now. It’s amazing to be able to walk in and turn on a light. Unfortunately, we don’t have sinks or taps, but just having the water plumbed is awesome, and it won’t be hard to pick up a vanity and a sink and install it (or find it free on Craigslist, I hope.)

We also installed windows! They make such an enormous difference. The one in the bedroom was a steal. We found it at Home Depot on clearance for only $76. It’s a custom size that apparently didn’t work out on someone else’s project, much to our benefit.Windows of a comparable size retail for $200-$250! It provides a beautiful view of the upper field and the mountain, and adds so much light in the bedroom that there will clearly never be a need for a light fixture (we’ll just use lamps at night, like we do now.)

In the bathroom, we have two amazing new additions — another window (again, snagged on clearance,) and a cast iron, claw foot tub. Well, the tub is still on the porch until we get the floor installed and the wall tiled. But I can’t believe we were able to get this tub. It is exactly what we wanted all along, and just as we needed to make final decisions on the bathroom, it became available. It will be long and deep enough to soak in, and we’re going to install a shower fixture as well. Once, Mindy and I went to a bed and breakfast out on San Juan Island, and they had a deep tub with a shower fixture right in the ceiling, so it felt like your shower was actually warm rain. We might end up doing that, or we might have a traditional one instead.

Above where the tub will be is the window. This time I was smart and caught a video of Steve cutting the wall out for the window:

This window also adds a ton of light to the house, and it’s obscured glass, so it’s indirect light. Also that way we won’t offend the deer and bears as we shower.

Mindy put up the lion’s share of the insulation downstairs over the weekend, and we are starting in on drywall. This means that we are getting really, really close to being able to finally move in.

I figure the bedroom and bathroom will be finished first, then the kitchen, living room and entry way. By that time, it will likely be November, and luckily all the work we’ll need to work on will be inside: painting, trim, installing cedar on the ceiling … all the little touches needed to make this place even more amazing than it already is.

The biggest things I’m thinking about, looking ahead, is heat and food. Very Maslow of me.

Lisa and Bryan have a spare wood burning stove that we can use, which is awesome, because it’s free. The drawback? There’s a reason why they don’t use it anymore. It’s huge, it’s inefficient, and quite frankly it would take up most of our front room, and probably heat us out of the house in the process. So Steve and I are searching for any alternative that we can find. I would love to get a smaller wood burning stove for no other reason than the fact that we live in the woods, so use the fuel that you have on hand, am I right? Unfortunately, even small ones can get pricey pretty quickly when you account for the hearth stone and stovepipe. Heading into winter, I’m open to alternative solutions, including infrared space heaters, lots of sweaters, mandatory cuddling, and temporarily embracing global warming.

For the kitchen, we have a fridge, thanks to Mindy’s aunt and uncle. We need a range, which we will probably pick up at Sears, and a sink and cabinet. We have big plans for a kitchen addition in the future, but we’ll work with what we have for now, which will be more than enough. I’ll write about our future plans when we finish our first project, obviously.

In the living room, nothing exciting is happening. It simply needs finished. In a year I’ll build benches to go under the windows and we’ll move our couch somewhere else, but for now I’ll be perfectly excited to hang out in my living room, on my couch, watching the Seahawks on my TV, in my own house. That time is coming soon, so soon.

And finally, I don’t have any progress pictures to add right now aside from the video above. So here’s a picture of my niece drinking water out of a bowl like a cat.

“I’m a kitty! Leave me alone!”