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We have more to report from Maisto Mountain! The past month has been quite eventful.
The siding on the house is now complete! Sarah was able to see the progress when she visited on Nov. 23 and how great the metal siding really looks. We especially like the metal roofing on the upper porch deck that will discourage the bees and insects in the summer. Also during this visit to the home together, we walked through the home with Obermeier Do-It-Best Hardware and decided which way each of our doors would swing so that our door order could be placed.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Brad and I purchased our comforters for new home’s bedrooms so that color schemes may be kept in mind when paint colors are chosen. We are told that color selections and furniture placement should be known before we start choosing paint, and Sarah is slowing working on this project. We also purchased kitchen and dining room lighting from an IKEA store in the Chicago suburbs on our way home from visiting Brad’s family and additionally decided to add some recessed lighting in the dining room and great room areas to give us a little more lighting on the dark evenings and winter days. On Brad’s return drive to Grandview from our Thanksgiving trip, he hauled a pickup truck full of his rock collection and towed the gator and the lawn tractor from our Avon home to the new home in Grandview. We are slowly but surely moving items.
Electricity, heating and air, and other details have been shaping up, too! Our contractors are doing a great job. Meanwhile, Brad has worked hard framing the walls in the basement. This includes finishing the insulation in the hobby room downstairs and making sure the basement bedroom closets are framed. He also has worked upstairs to frame in some special transom windows above our butler’s pantry doors, which will be located just off the kitchen. Sarah was able to see this when she visited Dec. 4. The transom window that will face into the kitchen is a very special window. We found it when we were dating. The window was sitting by the dumpster of Sarah’s renovated 1920s apartment complex in Indianapolis. These apartments where Sarah lived when she first moved to the city had once been an old hotel, and the management was ripping these transom windows out of the basement level for energy efficiency and throwing them away. It’s a nice memory to have our “dumpster dive” window in our new home!
We were able to take our first gator ride on a perfect 55-degree day when Sarah was visiting on Dec. 4. On that visit to the home together, we were able to see more progress on the electrical and HVAC, see outside hose faucets installed, preview the transom window, and see that our electricity had been hooked up to both the barn and the home. We also saw dirt leveled that weekend at both the front door area and the walkout area so that concrete can be poured for walkways soon.
In wildlife news, we completed having our month-long installation of a “wildlife camera” in the woods with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. We will be interested to see what pictures were captured. A few days after we mailed the camera back to the DNR, Brad spotted cat prints outside of the home. Sarah was able to see them when she visited in early December. They are huge! At first, we suspected a bobcat, but the prints are too large. The neighbor said there have been cougars (known locally as mountain lions) spotted in the area. We suspect a cougar and cub may have been in our back yard. Although we have not seen the pictures or final results from our DNR camera, we sadly have been told in initial reporting that the cats did not appear on camera. Better luck next time!
After our electricity and HVAC are soon finished, our next steps are hiring insulation and drywall contractors. Then we suspect that Maisto Mountain will really begin to look like a home on the inside! Currently, we are targeting a move-in date sometime in April, but we’ll see how work progresses.
Christmastime is a busy season, so if we don’t get another blog posted until the New Year, we want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and many blessings in the New Year!
The siding on the house is now complete! Sarah was able to see the progress when she visited on Nov. 23 and how great the metal siding really looks. We especially like the metal roofing on the upper porch deck that will discourage the bees and insects in the summer. Also during this visit to the home together, we walked through the home with Obermeier Do-It-Best Hardware and decided which way each of our doors would swing so that our door order could be placed.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Brad and I purchased our comforters for new home’s bedrooms so that color schemes may be kept in mind when paint colors are chosen. We are told that color selections and furniture placement should be known before we start choosing paint, and Sarah is slowing working on this project. We also purchased kitchen and dining room lighting from an IKEA store in the Chicago suburbs on our way home from visiting Brad’s family and additionally decided to add some recessed lighting in the dining room and great room areas to give us a little more lighting on the dark evenings and winter days. On Brad’s return drive to Grandview from our Thanksgiving trip, he hauled a pickup truck full of his rock collection and towed the gator and the lawn tractor from our Avon home to the new home in Grandview. We are slowly but surely moving items.
Electricity, heating and air, and other details have been shaping up, too! Our contractors are doing a great job. Meanwhile, Brad has worked hard framing the walls in the basement. This includes finishing the insulation in the hobby room downstairs and making sure the basement bedroom closets are framed. He also has worked upstairs to frame in some special transom windows above our butler’s pantry doors, which will be located just off the kitchen. Sarah was able to see this when she visited Dec. 4. The transom window that will face into the kitchen is a very special window. We found it when we were dating. The window was sitting by the dumpster of Sarah’s renovated 1920s apartment complex in Indianapolis. These apartments where Sarah lived when she first moved to the city had once been an old hotel, and the management was ripping these transom windows out of the basement level for energy efficiency and throwing them away. It’s a nice memory to have our “dumpster dive” window in our new home!
We were able to take our first gator ride on a perfect 55-degree day when Sarah was visiting on Dec. 4. On that visit to the home together, we were able to see more progress on the electrical and HVAC, see outside hose faucets installed, preview the transom window, and see that our electricity had been hooked up to both the barn and the home. We also saw dirt leveled that weekend at both the front door area and the walkout area so that concrete can be poured for walkways soon.
In wildlife news, we completed having our month-long installation of a “wildlife camera” in the woods with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. We will be interested to see what pictures were captured. A few days after we mailed the camera back to the DNR, Brad spotted cat prints outside of the home. Sarah was able to see them when she visited in early December. They are huge! At first, we suspected a bobcat, but the prints are too large. The neighbor said there have been cougars (known locally as mountain lions) spotted in the area. We suspect a cougar and cub may have been in our back yard. Although we have not seen the pictures or final results from our DNR camera, we sadly have been told in initial reporting that the cats did not appear on camera. Better luck next time!
After our electricity and HVAC are soon finished, our next steps are hiring insulation and drywall contractors. Then we suspect that Maisto Mountain will really begin to look like a home on the inside! Currently, we are targeting a move-in date sometime in April, but we’ll see how work progresses.
Christmastime is a busy season, so if we don’t get another blog posted until the New Year, we want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and many blessings in the New Year!