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We’re still here and plugging away! Trying to get caught back up on photos…

Next up was the blue plaster for the back room. We love the color!

In this photo you can see how close the gray plaster is to the SBC gray. This is where we stopped the gray and decided to get a new color.

And here’s the new color – Amber Grain.

We made some coat hangers and shelves with leftover oak. The lower hooks are for our little people. You can see how great the plaster looks after it dried.

We had to get the floor under the wood stove set so we could get it installed. What better than rocks from our property!

And after much deliberation, we bought a Kubota! With the mild winter, Jeff’s put a lot of hours on it already.

We decided to get three colors of American Clay for the rest of the interior – one for the kitchen, one for the lower back wall and one for the upper back wall and living room. Choosing colors is always so tough. After looking at the options for about an hour we went with Nantucket Sand, Chesapeake Bay, and Bluefield (I think?). We’d already used our favorite color – Jasper – in the bedroom and didn’t want to repeat it elsewhere.

In various stages of drying – it lightened up quite a bit!

Electric and hot water-
Notice the light and switch above! First thing we did when we started building was get the electric to an exterior panel/outlet. We’ve run extension cords ever since. Jeff had already run most of the wiring at this point, but we didn’t wire outlets or hook anything up to the interior breaker box. With some help from both sides of the family we’ve got the majority of the interior electric done and hooked up to our exterior box. What a luxury to have lights! The absolute best part was hooking up the hot water heater. I tried to be tough and take cold spring water showers, but ended up nearly hyperventilating. It’s super cold! We love the hot water heater by the way. We got the Stiebel Eltron Tempra 20 Plus (electric). Right now we’re gravity fed from the spring – no holding tank or pump – and it has been working out great! The pressure is a little low for showering, but we’ll play around with different shower heads down the road.

Anyway, back to plastering…
The next color was the Chesapeake Bay for the back upper wall and living area.

On the display the color looked dark green/blue. It didn’t look so bad when it was wet, but sadly it dried to a shade darker than our SBC. I’ve got nothing against gray, but when you’ve been staring at it for the last three years, it’s the last thing you want to look at. We stopped before doing the living room and decided to try a different color. We did use only 1 color packet/batch instead of 1 1/4 packets, which probably contributed to the color difference. For the record, it was not my color choice.

I forgot to include this photo – Jeff found this old drain which was perfect for the earth tube in the kitchen floor!

Next project is the woof floor on the back wall. We got more red oak like we have in our bedroom, but this came from a different mill (closer) and the boards are various lengths.

We initially put the boards tight together but then had some problems with squeaking, etc., so we spaced them out some.

We’d been planning to create our own earthen plaster for the rest of the interior walls, but wanted to take the time to experiment with different mixes and materials. We don’t have much time these days, so we thought a quick fix would be to cover the walls with a concrete stain.

It didn’t look too bad at night, but daytime was another story. We started second guessing our decision. We took a road trip the next day and came home with this…

More American Clay! While it’s not cheap we really enjoyed working with the product in our bedroom. We decided it’d be better to get the walls done right instead of the temporary stain. Plus it looks much prettier!

We decided to use white SBC on the bathroom walls. It’s very different than the gray SBC – much smoother. We put some concrete stain on it afterwards then installed the mirror and sink.

Next is the kitchen floor pour! We decided to go with a concrete floor with the color (brown) mixed in. Given how messy kitchens can be it seemed like the best flooring choice.

We had to reschedule the pour a few times due to heavy rain. The chute reached the kitchen door as planned. We used a wheelbarrow to get it to the far sides of the room. The mix was a little dry so we tried to work quickly! Luckily we had a friend helping out.

They drove in a stick of rebar in the center of the floor to help keep the floor level.

The finished product! At first the color had a purple tint but after a few weeks that went away. We later etched the floor and put a low gloss finish on it. It’s got some character, but we love it!

It’s always nice to look back at photos and see how much progress we’ve made. The year has kind of been a blur!

We decided to utilize the space in the kitchen/bathroom wall to make a little medicine cabinet. Great way to get a little extra space!

Jeff did lots of work to get the septic tank & distribution box hooked up to the house and leach field. He put buckets of water in the box to make sure everything was flowing the right way and that there were no leaks.

This is a junction on our water pipe about 100′ from the spring. We want to be able to access this if needed, so we built a rock wall around it – here’s the start of the wall.

A few batches of SBC and the outside of the house is parged! Nice to finally check that off the list.

We used the old school chalkboard we had to tile where the tub meets the wall. Jeff put it in with white SBC.

Machine rental time! We created more planting beds along the driveway. Possibly fruit trees here.

Covering up the leach field and septic tank – Jeff was very happy to wrap this project up. The septic was a lot of hard manual work!

Next we worked on getting a road up near the house. This will be our driveway as well, but we needed it now so we could get a concrete truck within 15′…

Our bedroom is nearly finished! It was a great boost to see one part of the house looking how we envisioned. We may make our own plaster in the future, but we wanted a quick victory, so we got Enjarre from American Clay. The product was great to use – non-toxic – we didn’t even need gloves. The main downside is the cost. $55/bag and we ended up needed 3+ bags. Plus the color packets and mud glue are all extra.

We tried to use a paddle mixer with our drill, but it wasn’t powerful enough, so after a few failed attempts, Jeff ended up mixing it with his feet. Then we’d put the plaster in a smaller bucket and used a flexible plastic trowel to apply it.

Beautiful! After the walls were done we tackled the flooring. Jeff had already sanded it down and applied the poly. We installed it with screws so we can pull the floor up if ever needed.

The photos really don’t show how great it looks!

We are putting in a sliding door. Living in upstate NY, barns are everywhere and we figured it’d be easy to find some old barn door parts. Not the case! They cost a fortune! We found some heavy duty clothes line wheels that we’re going to try and use.

Awhile back we got a bunch of slate tiles on sale. Time to install them! The floor came out great. Can’t wait to get some color on the wall so the slate stands out some more.

We did some more work on the vanity. We’ll put a curtain underneath. On the top right will be shelving and/or to hide the vent pipe.

We originally planned to have a seperate shower stall and got a nice display model door super cheap ($10?). We’re now going to try and make the bathroom door using the glass piece with wood framed around it.

We have a friend doing the plumbing, which is nearly done. Running water may be in our near future!