October 2012 Progress

We had the chance to be back in Texas for a few days in October.  The primary purpose of our trip was for my college reunion in Kansas, but we certainly wanted to get a few things done at the homestead while we were there.  When we arrived, we found that the recent rains had prompted a huge amount of weeds.

But a good bit of hand work resulted in the front yard area looking like this:

And getting the tractor a new battery and getting things all fired up:

Resulted in our beautiful property being shredded to look like a park again:

Most of the work done was to complete the electrical and enclose the attic upstairs so it'll be cooler, safer and less dusty than it would be just exposed to the rest of the garage.  Here's the before and after shot of the electrical box.  We pulled another 2000' of wire (probably close to 2 miles in the house), installed numerous outlets and boxes, pulled wire for coax and stereo.  These two shots don't show the amount of work, but at least give an indication of the large progress that was made in ten days:

And the framing for the attic went well too:

One of the highlights of our trip was to visit the head office of Ogden Publications - Mother Earth News, Grit and other very useful publications.  We spent time with Bryan Welch, Publisher (sorry Bryan about the antlers):

And got to meet many of the staff of Mother Earth News and talk with them for a good period of time.  As those or you who know me and follow this blog know, the information and advice from the staff at Mother Earth News has been very valuable to me in the pursuit of information while we do our building and will be even more important to me once we're back on the homestead full time:

Hopefully, those still working on the homestead will finish the little bit of plumbing that needs to be done prior to an inspection.  Then, we'll see insulation and dry wall going up which will make the place very suddenly look like a home instead of a bunch of sticks.  Here's a shot of the living room from the kitchen area.  We'll show the similar shot later when we have dry wall.

We look forward to our next trip back and hope that we'll be able to actually live in the house at that point with a completed bedroom and bath.