With the impending full moon tonight, today’s 3 inches of rain and a storm surge, we experienced the highest tide since buying our property.  As you can see in the above picture, our marsh completely filled with water and was just a few feet below the level of the road.  It was so high that for the first time, water flowed back through the culvert in the driveway and into our pond.  Of course there are no worries with flooding at our homesite as it is about 120 feet up the hill.  The new year is starting out to be quite stormy but we still hope to have some clear weather later in January so that we can spray the concrete shell.4 comments

Jeff and I woke up Christmas morning to a day that was bright and clear (albeit rather cool and windy).  It was the first chance in a long while that we have been able to get some work done on the house.  Before going to Beckett’s for Christmas dinner, we headed up the hill and worked on the North wall.  One of the last bits of rebar work goes up the back side of the North wall.  First we put up tar paper.

This interesting picture above was take with my supposedly indestructible, military spec Motorola phone camera.    The glass face shattered leaving a crack over the lens.  This is what caused the cool double exposure effect. We will be using Jeff’s camera phone now. Anyway, back to the house.

We had some left over #5 rebar (thicker than what we usually use) and struggled a bit to bend them to match the curve.  We probably could have just laid them straight across but I like to think about the aesthetic beauty of what lays inside the concrete. (Can you hear Jeff mumbling under his breath?).

Along with two days of clear weather, one of our other great Christmas presents is this neat indoor/outdoor mat made from recycled plastic.  It’s outdoor now but as soon as we have our shell done, it will be indoors.  Thanks, brother Tim.

At the end of the day on Saturday we were pretty much done with the North wall but we could see the next weather front moving in.  Made for a nice sunset though.

I was able to get off work early today so Jeff and I headed up the hill to tie a bit of rebar.  We still need to tie more re-enforcing around the lip of the South retaining wall.  We managed to get about half of it done before the cold and impending darkness drove us down the hill.  It feels like it might snow tonight and will likely reach freezing temperatures.  Not a pleasant thought for our cold and leaky trailer. (the furnace is going out), but at least it’s not raining.  It will be so great when we are finally in our warm and snug earth sheltered home.  We will pretty much be able to heat the place with a candle.

Despite the cold fingers and toes, it felt great working on the house again.  The weather has not been very cooperative and it’s been three weeks since we were last up here working.  Below is a great shot that shows an overview of where we are right now.

And don’t feel too badly for us. We have an electric blanket!