Progress over the summer and a visit by the LHBA

So, last post, back in December we had finally received our Certificate of Occupancy and moved most of our stuff into the house, a week or so before Christmas. However, we'd decided to take a break from work on the house and spend the winter in Orange County. We enjoyed spending time at the beach and Disneyland and weren't too disappointed to avoid an unusually long and snowy winter in the mountains. There was about 8 feet of snow at the house at one time! We came up every few weekends to slowly get settled and finally enjoy the new house. Despite a lot of work involved, the first few weekends in the house were a lot of fun. After the snow melted, mid-May, we officially moved in and got right to work on the huge list of things that still needed to be done... Its now almost the end of August, so I'll recap what we've accomplished over the past few months. We got a good deal on some stone in Orange County, so we hired some guys to put stone over the basement walls, parking area, and deck posts. We're pretty happy with how that turned out and still have quite a bit left to cover some retaining walls etc. This is our future front door and master bedroom patio door to the right. We had put in temporary stairs just to pass final inspection and decided to totally change the layout of the stairs, so that required quite a bit of work to build concrete forms and rebuild the railings. We chose a stamped concrete and are pretty happy with them. Only 52 steps up to the entry... don't have to worry about getting to the gym anymore! Inside, we are slowly getting the kitchen and other finish work done. Got all new appliances and granite counter tops, but still need to put the nice rustic hardware on the cabinets, put in the backsplash and the chimney vent hood. Just finished staining and installing the walk-in pantry doors, yay, my mess is now hidden! Still need to install the fireplace here in the living room, that's next on the list.. Dining room and stairs. Bathroom; (I've stained the logs in here and plan to do the rest of the interior one of these days.) Upstairs; this is currently the master bedroom, future game room. Savannah's room/play room. We love having this open space to play. Brooke's room. We love our front deck with the great lake views and shady quiet places to sit. Too bad its often full of construction projects. I am usually in the middle of a sanding and staining project (doors, baseboards etc.) But, Brooke loves to help and it keeps us busy. We love stepping out our backdoor to beautiful hiking or "bear hunting" as Brooke calls it. So, not surprising, we aren't even close to where we thought we'd be by now. We thought we'd be finishing the downstairs basement bedrooms, formal entry, and laundry room (the biggest bummer for me, since I've had to spend my fair share of time at the laundrymat...) Instead, we have only just finally gotten the plans engineered and approved by the city. Simply amazing how long that takes! But, we do love the house and are proud of what we've accomplished. It was really cool to just last weekend get visited by the Log Home Builders Association and receive this award.