My Week of Vacation

This week Bob and I took vacation and worked on the house Ryan and Lisa are going to buy from us when it is finished. It should be ready by Thanksgiving if we keep pushing. Bob will have to keep working on it two days a week. We are hiring the contractor, the one that worked on our house, to install the kitchen cabinets and all the trim work in the house. The inside was gutted so it will be like a new house when it is finished. Once the inside is finished, we will start on the outside. We have to replace the roof and the front porch, paint and put on new shutters. The foundation needs a little repairing also. I think it will be a really cute house when it is finished. The yard has some really pretty trees and it's on an acre with ten acres next to it that are for sale. Ryan and Lisa are checking in to the possibility of purchasing those.

This is the house. We will be taking the front porch off and replacing it. We won't be putting screen on it.
The well has been a problem and added expense for us. The old well (which is the little square piece of cement on the upper left side of this picture) collapsed meaning the dirt and sand fell in and we had no water. The well driller came out to check and it wasn't fixable so we had to have another well drilled. You can see the new well on the right side of the picture with the blue cap. They went down 175 feet before they were able to hit water. It has a good flow, but the bad news is, the well isn't usable. It's salt water. The driller said that he has drilled 140 wells this summer and this is the first salt well he has had. So now we have to have another well drilled. In the meantime, we have no water, so we have to haul water from our house to fill the trailer that we are staying in at the house we are working on. (an hour away)
The well driller took a branch of an apple tree that is on the property and witched to find another place to drill the well. Bob decided try witching with the same branch. It's amazing that the stick really does go down. We hammered a stick in the place the driller said they would drill. We are sure hoping that we get a good flow and that the water is good.

Bob is checking for himself what the well driller said.

Since we didn't have water, I washed the trowels out in a big water puddle in the driveway. We were sure thankful that it rained most of the week, because we put buckets out in the yard to collect water for mixing the mortar.

We have all the drywall finished with three coats of mud. Sunday, Bob will sand the last coat of mud and then start the painting. I painted the bathroom and then laid the tile. All I have to do is the mortar now. I decided that I wanted to change the color of the mortar, so I had to take it back and exchange it.

Monday I go back to work.