As you may have heard, we had about $4,000 of tools stolen between Christmas and New Year’s. Certainly not the best way to end the year. Our soon to be family home, which is already such a special place, had people in it who were not welcome and had poor intentions. It gives me the creeps. And, I hate that these strangers took things that were special and sentimental to us, like tools that belonged to my grandfather and had his writing on it. Ugh.

But, the Universe works in strange ways…

Shortly after the robbery, we received an email from a reporter at Channel 7 News in Denver who had received a tip from someone that we had a theft at our property. They originally wanted to focus the story on our losses, but we said we’d rather move on from that and told them if they were curious about a young family wanting to live life to the fullest and pursue a simple life in the mountains, then c’mon up. The reporter, Russell, pitched it to his managers and they said they were interested in learning more.

So, on January 3, Russell and his camera guy, Jacob, spent a couple hours with us at the property. It was a fun experience and we think they captured our story well. If you’re curious about it, here’s a link to the story and the video is below.

https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/our-colorado/beating-the-housing-market-by-building-their-own-home-colorado-couple-says-its-possible

After our 15 minutes of fame, we’ve welcomed a bunch more people to our cheerleading community - we’ve learned of other families doing the same thing, a family building an off-the-grid cabin here in Colorado, and others who are hoping to also challenge the status quo in a few years. We also received tons of offers to gift us tools, borrow things, or help with the project. It makes our hearts full and gives us hope that this was a one-off incident. Thank you to all the new folks who are following our journey! We’re happy you’re here!

Ok, back to construction progress.

We finished up the cedar for the entry and it is stunning! We are so pleased with the way it turned out. And, since our main entrance is away from the road, it’s almost like a hidden treasure for friends and family who will be coming to visit. We had originally planned on doing the side walls of the entryway, but have elected to use the remaining cedar below the large windows in our master bedroom on the south side of the house. Then, we’ll have cedar on all four sides of the home. We’ll start installing that pretty soon.

Installing the last few pieces of the cedar on January 3.

After we wrapped up the entryway cedar, we moved back to finishing the siding on the area where the loft meets the main roof, as well as the siding on the upper part of the chimney. Anytime you’re working up high with lots of angle cuts, it’s slow going. Kelsey worked on the chimney for a solid two days, and we still have a bit more to do. But, it’s much more weather proof than it was.

View to the west toward Buffalo Mountain.

Then, it was about time to get ready for the next round of windows! Unfortunately, Kelsey cut his hand on a piece of sheet metal scrap and had to get six stitches. He’s a trooper, as we all know, and was back to work shortly after getting fixed up by the doctor. This is our first construction injury and we’re thankful it wasn’t worse. He had to have his stitches in for 10 days and just took them out yesterday, by himself. Surprised? I wasn’t.

Phase two of our windows arrived on January 9. This round included all of the remaining windows that open - 12 in total. The two largest windows were the sliders in our master bedroom. The rest were the small top and bottom windows along the south wall. Our trusty blue tarp has served us well, keeping the inside of the house dry and (mostly) warm, but we were certainly happy to cut into that baby and install the windows!

Phase 2 of the windows! Kelsey drove down to Denver to pick them up to save on the delivery fee.

First window on the south wall in the master bedroom! We think we’ll have plenty of light.

Over the course of the next few days, we got all of the windows in! We did have to take 1.5 days off from installation because of crazy wind, snow, and cold temperatures.

All 12 windows of this phase installed (January 15).

We’re patiently waiting for the final phase of windows to arrive in mid-February. This will include the HUGE picture windows. Two of the windows that will go above our panoramic door were too large for Andersen Windows to supply, so Kelsey will build those two. We have two excellent references to help us with this - a local builder, Shaun Salisbury, and Kelsey’s good friend James Duran.

If you’re interested in helping with the picture window install, give us a shout. These babies will be big and heavy and will definitely need a bigger crew to get them installed. We’re thinking it will be the week of February 10, but we’ll have an exact delivery date when we get a bit closer.

In the meantime, we’re desperately trying to line up a plumber. We’ve got a few good leads, but nothing final yet. We do have an electrician (yay!) and he’s started doing some of the initial prep work. On that note, tell me all about your outlet placements - is there a location in your home that you wish you had an outlet, but don’t? Are there some creative spots that you do have electricity that you want to share? Send us all the tips, please! Before we get to that fun, we do need to have the rough plumbing done before we can do rough wiring.

Once the rough plumbing is in place, it will be time to lay the radiant floor tubing and pour our concrete floor! Our excavator and foundation subcontractor, Bill Eckoff, will be doing the flat concrete work for us. Flatwork, at this scale, is definitely out of our wheelhouse, but we’ll be there to help as much as possible to keep the labor costs as low as we can. We’d certainly feel comfortable tackling concrete countertops or something like that, but 1800 square feet of highly visible floor, we’re going to call in some folks with more experience

Before we pour the floor, however, we do want to clean up the steel beams. In many places we have spots of rust, lettering from the mill, and other gunk that we want to clean up. This is a bit of grunt work sort of job and yours truly gets the honor of doing it. We’ll be using a wire cup on the end of our angle grinder. Once we grind way the grossness, we’ll use an acetone based cleaner and then seal them. We like the look of the beams the way they are, but we just want to clean them up a bit. I’m definitely procrastinating on this job, but know I need to get cracking on it soon.

Once the concrete floor is in place, we’re almost to the point of projects we’ve done before! That certainly feels good!

Thanks for your ongoing support - especially during the tool theft. We’re going to keep going and work hard every day to see this dream through!

One step at a time,

Cory

Here are a few other photos from this stretch of the project!