Chapter 1 — How We Got Here

Sometimes the biggest changes in your life don't begin with a carefully laid plan.

Sometimes they begin with a decision that sounds a little crazy.

In our case, it started with selling almost everything we owned, leaving behind a beautiful home we'd spent six years remodeling, moving more than 800 miles away, and starting over again in our 60s.

We didn't have a contractor.

We didn't have a crew.

We didn't have a house waiting for us when we arrived.

What we did have was a piece of land, a lot of determination, and a pretty strong belief that if somebody else could figure out how to do something, maybe we could figure it out too.

And that's exactly what we set out to do.

Our adventure actually began back in the spring of 2022, when we sold our home in the mountains of North Carolina.

That house had taken us six years to remodel.

We'd put an enormous amount of time, money and ourselves into it. It had become a beautiful home, and under ordinary circumstances, we probably would have stayed there for many more years.

But the world had changed.

COVID had changed the way we looked at things.

The cost of living was changing.

Our expectations for retirement were changing.

And we began thinking seriously about what we wanted the rest of our lives to look like.

We weren't interested in simply retiring and sitting around waiting for life to happen.

We wanted to build something.

We wanted more control over our surroundings and more control over the costs of living in our retirement years.

We wanted land.

We wanted privacy.

We wanted fewer restrictions on what we could do with our own property.

And we wanted to be closer to Val's relatives across the Canadian border.

So we made a decision.

We were going to start over.

And then, almost immediately, we discovered that we'd created a rather significant problem for ourselves.

We had sold our house.

And we had almost no time to find another one.

The sales contract required us to be out quickly so the new owners could move in, while the people selling their rental property were also under pressure to leave.

That gave us roughly **three weeks** to find our next home.

We didn't have time to casually shop for property.

We had to find somewhere we could actually see ourselves living.

So we started searching.

We looked across several areas of the country, but eventually began focusing on upstate New York.

We wanted acreage.

We wanted privacy.

We wanted relatively few restrictions.

We wanted to be close enough to civilization that we could get whatever supplies and services we needed, but far enough away that we could have some breathing room.

And we wanted to be within reasonable distance of Val's family.

We found several properties that looked promising and made the trip north to meet with an agent.

We looked at property after property.

Some were interesting.

Some were definitely not.

And then, on the **last property we looked at on the last day of our trip**, we found it.

Thirty acres.

Hardwood forest.

Some hemlock, spruce and pine.

A quarter-mile meandering driveway leading back to a cleared homesite.

And something we hadn't expected to find.

An existing foundation.

It was an ICF foundation sitting on a poured concrete pad, with a septic system already installed.

The previous owner had already done a remarkable amount of work.

There were culverts.

Cleared areas.

A French drain.

Buried conduit.

And a foundation that was already sitting there waiting for somebody to build on it.

It wasn't perfect.

It wasn't finished.

But we could see what it could become.

And more importantly...

**we could see ourselves there.**

We bought the property.

And that was when the real adventure began.

---

Chapter 2 — Three Months of Waiting

Buying the property didn't mean we could immediately start building.

We still had to close.

And for the next several months, we lived with that strange mixture of excitement and anxiety that comes with having your entire future riding on a transaction that hasn't happened yet.

Until the closing actually took place, we were constantly worried that something—**anything**—could go wrong.

We'd already sold our home.

We'd already made plans to move.

We'd already committed ourselves to this new life.

But until we had that deed in our hands, none of it felt completely real.

So we spent those months learning.

We learned about our property.

We learned about the northern climate we were moving into.

We spent countless hours researching construction methods, insulation systems, energy efficiency and ways to reduce thermal bridging.

We were going to be building in a climate very different from the one we'd left behind.

And because we planned to live off-grid, energy efficiency wasn't just about saving money.

It was going to affect everything.

Every watt we didn't have to generate was a watt we could use somewhere else.

Every bit of heat we could keep inside the house meant less wood we'd have to burn.

Every material we could save money on meant more money available for something else.

And then there was COVID.

The supply chain problems were very real.

Materials were difficult to find.

Prices were climbing.

And even when you could find what you needed, there was no guarantee it would actually be available when you needed it.

That became one of the reasons we started looking at local Amish sawmills.

They could provide rough-cut dimensional lumber.

It would be green—freshly cut and still wet.

But they could provide it.

And, perhaps more importantly, they could provide it **when we needed it**.

At the time, our attitude was pretty simple:

Green lumber could dry.

**No lumber couldn't.**

We were also watching our construction budget very carefully.

We had just spent another **$50,000** on the property itself.

Every dollar remaining in our bank account suddenly seemed much more important than it had when we'd first started planning all of this.

So we started looking everywhere for savings.

And that's when another unexpected part of our building strategy began to develop.

We discovered that social-media marketplaces could be gold mines.

Used windows.

Doors.

A large Jacuzzi tub.

A brand-new rounded-corner shower stall.

A nearly new propane stove.

A brand-new, highly efficient wood stove that was still sitting on its shipping pallet because the original buyer had changed her mind.

And an absolutely incredible deal on insulated triple-wall stove pipe.

We eventually bought enough stove pipe for our entire project for approximately what one new three-foot section would have cost.

There were deals everywhere.

And some of those deals would eventually influence the design of our house.

We weren't simply building a house and then buying everything that went inside it.

We were finding things we could afford...

and then figuring out how to incorporate them.

It was becoming a different way of building.

And we were learning that flexibility could save us a tremendous amount of money.

---

Chapter 3 — Learning to Live in an RV

While we waited for the closing, we also had to learn how to live in a completely different way.

We had bought a used RV and a good used pickup truck.

We packed what we were keeping into the RV and prepared to head north.

The RV was going to be our home until we could build the real one.

That meant learning how to manage something as basic as **water**.

At first, we were hauling water in jugs and buckets.

That gets old very quickly.

Eventually, we found a local farmer who sold us two large water totes for $200.

They'd apparently been around $400 each new.

Another bargain.

We could fill one tote in the pickup, bring it back to the property, transfer the water into the second tote beside the RV, and then use a small 120-volt pump to move it into the RV.

It was a game changer.

Suddenly we had a much more practical way of keeping ourselves supplied.

And we were learning something important.

The life we were building wasn't going to happen all at once.

It was going to come together one small improvement at a time.

Chapter 4 — The First Pieces of Our New Home

Even before we had the walls, we had started acquiring parts of the house.

One of our first big purchases was a collection of used windows.

We'd found several very good windows for an amazing price.

Some were large matching windows that would eventually go into the living room and dining area.

Others were smaller windows intended for the loft.

One had unfortunately been damaged when somebody had tried to clean it with a pressure washer and broken the seal between the panes.

That one would eventually need some attention.

But even with that problem, we knew we'd gotten an incredible deal.

We were buying windows **before we even had walls to put them in**.

And that was going to become a recurring theme.

We were building our house around opportunities as much as we were building it around plans.

Around the same time, we made another important purchase.

Our first solar generator.

This was our first real experience with solar power.

We bought a Bluetti battery/inverter system and solar panels.

At the time, it seemed almost miraculous.

We could put the panels out in the sun, charge the battery, plug the RV into it and actually run things without firing up the big generator.

We were learning firsthand just how capable solar power could be.

It was also our first glimpse of something that would eventually become a major part of our lives.

We weren't just going to live *near* the power grid.

We were going to make our own power.

---

Chapter 5 — Getting a Head Start

Before the property officially became ours, the previous owner gave us permission to get a little work done.

That gave us an opportunity to start preparing.

We began cleaning up the property.

Trees that were dead or dangerous had to come down.

There was an old maple near the future house that had already suffered significant damage and was becoming a safety hazard.

We cut down scrub trees.

We cleaned up fallen branches.

We started organizing the site.

And we built a storage shed.

That little shed became enormously important.

The RV was already packed to the point where it was difficult to move around inside.

Getting tools and construction materials out of the RV gave us a little breathing room.

We even used some of the rough lumber our Amish supplier couldn't use for structural construction.

He'd simply asked if we could use it.

Of course we could.

We built the shed using materials that otherwise might have been discarded.

And once again, we were finding ways to turn something inexpensive—or even free—into something useful.

The shed also became the beginning of our future solar infrastructure.

We were already thinking ahead.

We didn't know exactly how everything would eventually come together.

But we were starting to see the shape of it.

Then, finally...

**closing day arrived.**

---

Chapter 6 — It Was Finally Ours

For approximately three months, we'd been walking on eggshells.

We'd worried about everything that could possibly jeopardize the sale.

And then suddenly, we were sitting at the closing table.

We handed over a check.

And somebody handed us a **deed**.

It was ours.

Our property.

Thirty acres.

And now we could finally do what we'd come here to do.

**Build.**

The relief was enormous.

We could celebrate.

And we'd already been preparing.

Our first load of Amish rough-cut lumber had arrived.

The previous owner had completed roughly half of the subfloor on the foundation.

And what he'd built impressed me.

He'd originally planned to build a log-cabin-style camp house on the foundation, so he'd designed the floor to handle a substantial amount of weight.

There were heavy floor joists.

Large 8-by-8-inch supporting beams down the center.

Doubled joists.

And one-inch-by-ten-inch rough-cut subflooring.

He'd even had the logs for the cabin he planned to build sitting on that floor for more than two years.

And the floor hadn't sagged.

It hadn't deformed.

It hadn't moved.

That told me something.

**Don't mess with success.**

I decided to copy his construction method for the remaining half of our subfloor.

We'd also made a serious trip to the local building supply superstore.

And I have to admit, I lucked out marrying Val.

She loves shopping for power tools even more than I do.

We bought a compound miter saw.

A table saw.

A battery-powered circular saw.

A nail gun.

Ladders.

And all sorts of other equipment we thought we'd need.

We were wrong about that last part.

We would eventually discover that there is no such thing as *all the tools you'll need* when you're building your own house.

We already had a portable solar generator and a large dual-fuel generator to power the RV and our tools.

So the day after the contracts were signed, we were cutting and nailing.

Our first goal was simple.

**Finish the floor.**

---

Chapter 7 — Green Lumber

We measured everything carefully so our new construction would finish flush with the existing floor.

Then we started cutting and assembling the joists and supporting beams.

It took us about three days.

And we took our time because we knew that if we got the floor wrong, everything built on top of it would be wrong.

Level.

Straight.

Square.

Everything started there.

Eventually, we had a real floor.

But we learned something about green lumber that nobody had bothered to tell us.

We knew the wood would shrink somewhat as it dried.

We could plan for that.

What we hadn't anticipated was what happened when we tried to use a nail gun on it.

The nails simply didn't hold the way we expected.

The adhesive on the nails depends on heat generated during installation to help bond them into the wood.

With wet lumber, that wasn't happening properly.

The first time we put tension on one of those joints, the pieces practically fell apart.

So we adapted.

We used a lot more nails.

And a lot of screws.

It wasn't the most elegant solution, but it worked.

And we learned another lesson.

If you can give green lumber time to dry before building with it, that's probably a very good idea.

Unfortunately...

**we didn't have time.**

---

Chapter 8 — Raising the Walls

Once the floor was complete, we moved on to the part where the house finally began to look like a house.

The walls.

We'd researched framing extensively.

One of the things we'd learned was that framing exterior walls at 24 inches on center rather than the more conventional 16 inches could save us a significant amount of material.

That meant less lumber.

Less cost.

And fewer opportunities for thermal bridging.

We were planning on using closed-cell spray foam insulation, which would add significant structural strength once cured.

So we decided to build our exterior walls using 2-by-6-inch Amish rough-cut lumber at 24 inches on center.

And this wasn't the 1¾-by-5½-inch lumber you get at a typical lumberyard.

This was actual **2-by-6 material**.

Big, heavy, rough-cut lumber.

And then we had to raise it.

Sixteen-foot sections of wall.

Just the two of us.

We'd get one up...

and sometimes it would come right back down around us.

It took a lot of struggling.

A lot of repositioning.

A lot of wondering whether we'd bitten off more than we could chew.

But eventually, we got them all standing.

We tied everything together with our top plates.

And suddenly we could stand back and see the outline of our house.

We'd moved from a concrete foundation...

to something that actually looked like a home.

---

Chapter 9 — Wrapping the House

With the exterior walls standing and tied together, we began working on the envelope.

Our research had led us toward a construction method designed to maximize insulation and minimize thermal bridging.

We started by wrapping the outside of the walls with **¾-inch foil-faced PolyISO insulation**.

We screwed the sheets into place using plastic washers and then sealed the seams and screw penetrations with foil tape.

The inside of those walls became **bright white**.

But we weren't finished.

Over the PolyISO, we installed ZIP sheathing.

Then we sealed and taped that as well.

The result was two layers of moisture and air control around the exterior of the house.

That was important to us.

Our primary source of heat was going to be a wood stove.

We needed the house to retain the heat we put into it.

We weren't interested in building something that would simply allow our expensive heat to escape through every seam, stud and penetration.

Everything we'd been researching came back to the same thing:

Build the envelope properly.

Insulate it properly.

Control the air.

Control the moisture.

And eliminate thermal bridges wherever possible.

It was taking more thought up front.

But we believed it would pay us back for as long as we lived there.

---

Chapter 10 — The Trusses That Wouldn't Come

There was only one problem.

We'd ordered engineered floor trusses for the loft.

They were designed to span the entire **24-foot width** of the house without requiring interior load-bearing walls.

That gave us enormous flexibility inside.

No interior load-bearing walls meant we could design the rooms however we wanted.

The trusses also gave us approximately **14 inches of vertical space** between the floor and ceiling.

That space would eventually become extremely useful for routing plumbing, electrical and other mechanical systems.

And because the trusses could be installed at 24 inches on center, they would line up directly with our wall studs.

We could tie the whole structure together from the ICF foundation, through the walls, into the loft and eventually up to the roof.

It was a very strong design.

There was only one problem.

**The trusses didn't arrive.**

We'd been told three weeks.

Three weeks came and went.

Then four.

Then we were approaching five weeks.

I called repeatedly.

And every time, I got a different answer.

Eventually I finally got the truth.

The order had initially been lost.

Then Lowe's had called on our behalf and managed to get a copy of the order into the system.

But now there was another problem.

The lumber used to manufacture the trusses was in short supply.

The next trainload was reportedly stuck somewhere this side of Chicago.

And there was nothing we could do.

We were stuck.

So rather than sit around doing nothing, we moved inside.

We laid out our interior walls.

And something wonderful happened.

For the first time, we could actually **walk through our house**.

We could stand in what would become the living room.

We could walk into the kitchen.

We could see how large the bedrooms would feel.

We could decide whether something was too cramped or just right.

We could begin imagining furniture.

We could begin imagining ourselves actually living there.

We could start to **dream**.

And it felt good.

---

Chapter 11 — Finally!

Eventually, those trusses arrived.

Twenty-five enormous engineered trusses.

And getting them onto the walls was another story.

We managed to get one end of each truss up a ladder and onto the wall.

Then we'd lift the opposite end and get it over the other wall.

And then do it again.

And again.

Twenty-five times.

By the end of the day, we'd had enough.

But we'd done it.

The trusses were up.

And they were secured to the walls.

Now we needed a floor over them.

Because summer was ending.

And suddenly...

**the weather was changing.**

After a long, relatively dry summer, we began getting regular downpours.

We desperately needed to get the subfloor installed so we'd have a roof over the first floor.

Fortunately, we weren't entirely on our own.

Some of Val's family came down and offered to help.

With their help, we managed to get all of the subflooring installed in a single day.

That felt amazing.

We then bought a huge tarp and covered the loft floor with it, creating a temporary waterproof barrier while we continued working below.

For the first time, we had something approaching shelter.

---

Chapter 12 — Windows, Insulation and a Stove

The windows we'd purchased months earlier were finally ready for their new home.

Because we'd had them before we'd framed the walls, we had accurate measurements for the rough openings.

That made installation relatively easy.

We cleaned them up.

Slid them into place.

Shimmed them.

Secured them.

And suddenly the house had windows.

We had a roof over our heads.

We had walls.

We had windows.

Now we needed to prepare for winter.

The first floor was ready for insulation.

We'd asked our local building inspector who he would recommend for spray foam, and he pointed us toward a company he trusted.

Closed-cell spray foam wasn't cheap.

But we'd decided it was worth the cost.

It provided excellent insulation.

It controlled air infiltration.

It resisted moisture.

And it added structural strength to the walls.

Remember those 24-inch-on-center walls?

We were about to get some of that strength back.

And then we got another lucky break.

Our Amish lumber was actually **2 inches by 6 inches**.

The insulation crew filled the wall cavities by sight, bringing the foam to approximately half an inch from the front of the studs.

They didn't initially realize they were filling a larger cavity than they normally encountered.

When they realized their mistake, they told us not to worry about it.

They'd made the mistake.

We got the extra insulation.

Nearly another inch of it.

Another little break in our favor.

The house was getting tighter.

Warmer.

More substantial.

And more like a home every day.

---

Chapter 13 — The Stove

We'd always planned to heat the house primarily with wood.

And we'd managed to find an incredible deal on a nearly new, highly efficient wood stove.

It was still sitting on the shipping pallet when we bought it.

But once the first floor was enclosed, we discovered that our original plan for its location wasn't going to work.

We'd wanted to put it in a corner.

Unfortunately, the stove required more clearance than the corner would allow.

Moving a window and a door wasn't an option.

So we changed plans.

We decided to place the stove centrally on the front wall between our two large windows.

And as it turned out, that was probably a better location anyway.

The stove would distribute heat much more effectively from the center of the house.

But it needed a proper hearth and heat protection behind it.

So Val went to work.

We found an attractive stone-pattern tile that looked great and didn't cost a fortune.

Val became the tile setter.

We bought a tile saw and the tools we needed.

She built the tiled hearth and the tiled wall behind the stove.

And when we finally set that beautiful new stove into place, it looked like it had always belonged there.

Meanwhile, Val was also tiling our master bathroom.

We'd found a large Jacuzzi tub for a fraction of its original cost, and we wanted that floor finished so we could install it.

There was a lot happening.

Fast.

Because winter was coming.

---

Chapter 14 — Building the Infrastructure

We'd bought a washing machine and electric dryer during a Memorial Day appliance sale.

The store was offering 0% interest for twelve months.

We took the deal.

Why not use somebody else's money when they're willing to let you?

We'd also acquired our propane kitchen stove.

And all of those things needed something.

Water.

Drainage.

Electricity.

Gas.

Infrastructure isn't very exciting to watch, but it is what makes a house a house.

I decided to keep the kitchen, bathroom and laundry areas together so I could minimize the amount of plumbing required.

That saved materials.

It also simplified the installation.

For our water lines, I chose PEX-A.

It was well suited to cold climates, maintained full-size flow through its connections and was relatively easy to install.

A cutter and an expansion tool were essentially all I needed.

I ran the water lines.

Then the drain lines.

Fortunately, there was already a sewer connection in the crawl space.

I could run a main drain line to that point and branch everything else off of it.

And then came the one that made me nervous.

**Gas.**

I'd never installed a gas line before.

I spent a few days worrying about it.

Eventually, though, I discovered that the basic process wasn't dramatically different from other piping work.

I just hated working with black iron.

That oily coating gets everywhere.

But I laid out the system.

We only had two propane appliances planned at the time:

The kitchen stove.

And our new on-demand propane water heater.

The water heater was particularly appealing to me.

Rather than maintaining a tank full of hot water all day, we'd heat water only when we needed it.

For an off-grid home, those little decisions mattered.

Everything mattered.

Every watt.

Every gallon.

Every dollar.

We weren't willing to give up the lifestyle we wanted simply because we were building off-grid.

We were trying to find ways to make the off-grid lifestyle **better**.

And we were about to find out whether my gas installation was actually going to work.

---

Chapter 15 — The Well

There was still one rather important piece missing from our plans for an independent life in the woods.

**Water.**

A few weeks earlier, we'd found a reputable well drilling company and made arrangements to have them drill our well at the first opportunity.

They already had several wells ahead of us, so we'd been told it might take a while.

That was fine.

By this point, we'd become pretty good at waiting.

We'd waited for the property closing.

We'd waited for lumber.

We'd waited for our engineered floor trusses.

We'd waited for just about everything that could possibly be delayed.

So we waited for the well.

Eventually, though, I decided to call and see where we stood.

That's when I got the bad news.

Their drilling rig was in the shop for repairs.

It would be at least another few weeks.

There wasn't really anything we could do about it, so once again, we put it out of our minds and kept working.

And waited.

And waited.

Until finally, about six weeks after we'd originally arranged for the drilling, the phone rang.

They'd be there the following week.

That was a pretty exciting phone call.

For all the things we'd already accomplished, having our own well was different.

This wasn't another piece of the house.

This was one of the final pieces of the **life** we'd come here to build.

We wanted to be independent.

We wanted our own power.

We wanted our own home.

And now we were finally going to have our own water.

When those huge drilling trucks came rumbling up our quarter-mile driveway that Saturday morning, we knew we were getting close.

The crew spent much of the first half of the day getting everything positioned and set up.

Then they started drilling.

And drilling.

And drilling.

They eventually worked their way down through approximately **140 feet of Adirondack bedrock**.

They encountered a few minor water-bearing seams along the way, but nothing that appeared capable of producing enough water for our needs.

Finally, at around 140 feet, they hit something that looked promising.

The water was clear.

The formation appeared to be a good open seam.

But there was a problem.

The test showed a flow rate of only about **1½ gallons per minute**.

That wasn't going to work for us.

I like my long, hot showers.

And we'd already been planning a house with a washing machine, bathtub, on-demand water heater and everything else that comes along with having a normal home.

A gallon and a half a minute wasn't going to provide much independence.

And we'd already spent more than **$6,500** getting that far down into the ground.

That number got our attention.

We'd come to New York with a finite amount of money, and we'd been watching that money disappear ever since we'd bought the property.

Every unexpected expense mattered.

Every decision had to be weighed against what we'd have left when we finally got the house finished.

And now we were looking at the possibility of spending considerably more on a well that might not even produce enough water for us.

The drilling operator wasn't ready to give up on the well, though.

He thought the seam they'd found was probably a good one.

The water was clear.

The formation appeared to be open.

His suspicion was that it simply wasn't flowing properly because the seam was plugged or restricted.

That left us with two choices.

Keep drilling and hope they found another water-bearing seam.

Or try to open up the one we'd already found.

They offered to **frack the well**.

The cost was a flat $2,000, whether it worked or not.

And if it failed, we could still continue drilling.

It wasn't exactly an inexpensive gamble.

But considering how much we'd already invested, it seemed like the better choice.

So we decided to take the chance.

It was around lunchtime, so the crew headed home to eat and bring back their fracking equipment.

When they returned, I initially thought some kind of military tank was coming up our driveway.

It turned out to be their enormous tracked fracking machine.

They also brought along a water truck carrying approximately **1,500 gallons of water**.

The operator explained what was going to happen.

They'd pump the water into the well under extremely high pressure.

The pressure gauge should climb to somewhere around **700 to 1,000 pounds per square inch**.

Then, hopefully...

**Boom.**

The pressure would suddenly release as the formation opened up.

It sounded pretty impressive.

So we watched.

They started pumping.

The pressure gauge climbed...

Except it didn't.

It stayed at essentially **zero**.

They kept pumping.

And pumping.

And eventually, they'd put all 1,500 gallons of water into that well.

The pressure gauge still hadn't moved.

I asked the crew what that meant.

And that's when everybody started smiling.

Apparently, the fact that the pressure wasn't building was actually **good news**.

Their conclusion was that we'd probably opened the seam almost immediately.

The water was simply disappearing into the formation instead of building pressure in the well.

When they finally pulled the fracking hose out, we got our answer.

Water practically **exploded out of the top of the well**.

It continued pouring out for roughly another hour before things finally began to settle down.

The initial surge was the water they'd pumped into the well during the fracking operation.

But then came something even better.

Our water.

Fresh water coming out of the Adirondack bedrock.

The well initially tested at nearly **20 gallons per minute**.

Once everything settled down to its natural level, we were still getting approximately **15 gallons per minute**.

We'd gone from wondering whether we'd have enough water for a shower to having more water than we were ever likely to use.

That was one of those moments when you realize just how quickly a situation can change.

A few hours earlier, we were wondering whether we'd have to drill another hundred feet into the ground.

Now we had a well producing fifteen gallons a minute.

**We had water.**

Of course, getting that water into the house was another expense.

The well was capped, and the following week the crew returned to install the pump, run the water line to the house, and install our pressure tank.

By the time everything was completed, our total investment in the well and pump installation had come to **nearly $15,000**.

And I'll be honest—we sweated that number for quite a while.

Fifteen thousand dollars was a *lot* of money for us at that point in the build.

We'd already spent an additional $50,000 buying the property, and we'd been trying to stretch every remaining dollar as far as we possibly could.

Now another fifteen thousand dollars had disappeared into the ground.

But there are some things you simply can't compromise on when you're building a home.

**Water is one of them.**

And looking back, it was worth every penny.

We had gone from wondering whether we'd have enough water to run a household to having a well producing roughly **15 gallons per minute**.

The water line was buried approximately **six feet underground**, well below the frost line.

Fortunately, the previous owner had already installed conduit through the foundation pad into the crawl space, so we were able to take advantage of that as well.

That meant our water line would enter the house through the protected crawl space rather than being exposed to the winter temperatures outside.

And that turned out to be important.

Very important.

Because we weren't building this house in a mild climate.

We were building it in northern New York.

We've since experienced temperatures around **-30°F** outside.

Yet even during those bitterly cold periods, our insulated crawl space has remained remarkably consistent—generally around **47 to 51°F**.

So the water coming into our house has never had to fight those outside temperatures directly.

And that was exactly what we'd been trying to accomplish from the beginning.

Every decision was about building something that would work **with** the environment instead of constantly fighting against it.

We'd come here looking for a place where we could build a more independent life.

Now we had our own land.

Our own house was taking shape.

We were generating our own electricity.

And now, finally...

**we had our own water.**

The pieces were starting to come together.

---

Chapter 16 — Now We Had Gas

With the well finally producing more water than we were ever likely to need, we'd solved one major problem.

Now we needed a way to **heat that water**.

I'd already decided that propane made the most sense for some of our appliances.

We'd purchased a high-efficiency on-demand propane water heater, and we'd also found that almost-new propane kitchen stove for a fraction of what a new one would have cost us.

There was just one small problem.

I'd never installed a gas system before.

I'd spent a lot of time researching it, though.

And eventually I had our propane lines installed, complete with the required debris traps, proper fittings, shutoffs and gas-line identification stickers.

When I finally stood back and looked at it, I had to admit...

**I was pretty impressed with myself.**

But being impressed with yourself isn't the same thing as knowing you've done something safely.

And there was still a little doubt lingering in the backs of our minds.

Gas isn't something you want to *think* you've installed correctly.

You want to **know**.

So before we ever connected an appliance or allowed propane anywhere near the system, I capped all of the lines and built a simple pressure-testing setup.

I made a pressure gauge that also incorporated a fill valve, allowing me to pressurize the entire system and then monitor it for leaks.

I brought the system up to approximately **38 PSI**, following the testing recommendations we'd been given.

Then came the first test.

I sprayed the connections with leak-detection solution and watched for bubbles.

Nothing.

Everything looked good.

But that wasn't enough.

A leak might not show itself immediately, so we left the system pressurized and waited.

Twenty-four hours.

That was a long twenty-four hours.

When I checked the gauge the following day, it was still sitting right where we'd left it.

**38 PSI.**

No pressure loss.

No leaks.

Now I was feeling considerably better.

The next step was connecting the appliances.

The on-demand propane water heater had already been sitting there for several weeks, waiting patiently for its turn.

I took it out, mounted it in its new home, and connected it to the gas line.

Then I ran the connection to the propane stove.

Once again, I made absolutely certain that everything was shut off and performed another pressure test—this time at the lower operating pressure appropriate for the appliances.

Again...

**Pass.**

Now we just needed some propane.

When the propane company arrived, they didn't simply pull up, fill a tank and leave.

They inspected the installation.

They checked that everything met the applicable state requirements, performed their own pressure test, and went over the system before they were willing to put it into service.

Everything checked out.

They installed our new **120-gallon propane tank**, connected it to the house, and finally opened the valve.

**Now we were cooking!**

Literally.

And we had hot water.

That might sound like a small thing.

After everything we'd already accomplished, it certainly wasn't the biggest milestone we'd reached.

But there was something incredibly satisfying about turning on a faucet and getting hot water from a system we'd designed and installed ourselves.

It was another little piece of normal life appearing in the middle of what had started out as a construction site in the woods.

Of course, I wasn't about to stop worrying about gas just because everything had passed inspection.

Eventually, I installed a gas detector at both appliance locations.

If either detector sensed even a small amount of propane, it would sound an alarm.

And as it turned out, that wasn't just something I'd installed to make myself feel better.

One day, I accidentally bumped the oven knob and turned the gas on.

A few minutes later...

**BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!**

That alarm scared the daylights out of us.

For a moment, I thought we'd discovered an actual gas leak.

Then I figured out what had happened.

I'd turned the oven knob on without realizing it.

Once the adrenaline wore off, I had to laugh.

But it also proved something important.

All that worrying about gas safety hadn't been wasted effort.

The system worked.

The testing worked.

The detectors worked.

And we'd made the right choices.

We were learning how to build and operate a house we'd never built before, in a climate we'd never lived in before, using systems we'd never installed before.

And every time we learned something new, we became a little more confident that maybe...

**we really could do this.**

---

CHAPTER 17

A ROOF

With much of our “infrastructure” completed, and our Amish friends scheduled to arrive in a week or so to help raise the roof rafters, it was time for me to get busy putting those rafters together.

Our Amish lumber had been sitting for a while now, waiting for its final assembly to become our new roof. I’d had them cut me 18-foot-long 2x12 rafters.

That turned out to be a bit of overkill.

But I wanted to be certain our home was sturdy and safe.

We were building with a 12/12 pitch, which meant this was going to be a **TALL** roof at the center. I wanted the maximum usable space for our loft, along with the shortest possible knee walls.

I had been watching a popular YouTube channel owned by a man about my own age. He was a master builder who had been designing and erecting buildings for more than 30 years. And in all that time, he had never built a roof using a ridge beam.

“Far safer,” he said.

For **him**, anyway.

He had spent years putting up buildings mostly by himself, so he had designed his structures around methods that allowed him to erect them alone, or with a single helper.

His roof-rafter design was genius.

And strong.

So we used it ourselves.

Instead of installing a massive ridge beam, he would take the two opposing rafters that made up a pair and lay them out together. Wooden gussets went on either side of the joint, and those gussets were glued, nailed and screwed to both rafters. Then he allowed the glue to cure.

He also drove a couple of long screws through the edge of one rafter directly into the other, pulling the two pieces tightly together where they joined.

It was a remarkably strong system.

And I proceeded to copy it on those enormous 2x12s.

There was just one little problem.

Two of those joined rafters weighed a couple hundred pounds.

Easily.

They were also **TALL**.

Far too heavy and far too tall for Val and me to lift.

And we hadn't even added the collar ties yet.

But I had another problem to solve before our Amish friends arrived.

I knew there was no way I was going to be able to sheath those walls once the rafters were standing that high without renting a man lift.

And a man lift wasn't exactly something I wanted to add to the budget.

So I made another decision.

I installed the PolyISO sheathing and the ZIP siding on each end wall **before** we lifted them into place.

It would be much easier on the ground.

And it meant one less expensive problem to solve later.

Then the day came.

Our help came riding up the driveway in their horse and buggies.

And not much else.

Well...

Besides a **lot of strong muscles.**

I had my 25 sets of rafters laid out and ready to go.

It took everything we all had to get that first end wall up and set into place.

But once we had that one standing, we made pretty quick work of the next 18 or so.

We had to leave enough room at the other end to get the second end wall raised before we ran out of space, so that got handled next.

And then it was time for our Amish friends to head home for their own chores.

We thanked them and said goodbye until the next morning, when they would be back to finish raising the rafters and begin sheathing the roof.

That would have been almost as difficult for me to attempt on my own.

And I'm not stupid.

That 12/12 pitch roof shot straight up into the air at a 45-degree angle.

Which was about **30 degrees more than I wanted to be on.**

The next morning, the horses and buggies came clopping back up our driveway.

And Val was ready.

She had apples.

Water.

And, of course, her camera.

We could take all the pictures of the horses and buggies we wanted, but our Amish friends preferred that we not photograph them. Even while working, they were uncomfortable with cameras.

And we didn't want to offend them.

They were our lifeline.

So the cameras stayed focused on the work.

The rest of the rafters were raised, braced and prepared for sheathing.

Following the same methods we had used on the exterior walls, we continued that system right up onto the roof.

I had purposely designed the roof rafters to end at the edge of the walls. Not only did that make securing them easier and stronger, but it also allowed us to continue our thermal wrap right up onto the roof.

As they screwed down the first rows of PolyISO on each side, we taped them to the existing wall sheathing, creating one continuous thermal envelope that would eventually run all the way from the walls to the peak.

Then came the ZIP Roof Sheathing.

The pink ¾-inch panels went down, were nailed into place, and then we taped all of the seams using ZIP Tape, just as we had done on the walls.

The roof was now weather-tight.

At least for a while.

The ZIP system would give us roughly six months of exposure time before it needed to be covered. We knew winter was coming, and we fully expected the cold and snow to arrive long before we were ready to install the metal roofing.

So the metal roof would have to wait until spring.

But that was okay.

Because by the end of that second day...

**WE HAD A ROOF!**

And talk about **HAPPY!**

We had spent so much time working toward this moment that it was difficult to fully appreciate what it meant.

Our house finally looked like a house.

But there was something else.

Something we couldn't have planned.

The very next day, we got a torrential downpour.

The kind of rain that would have absolutely ruined our subflooring if that tarp had still been our only protection.

And that tarp had a bad tendency of blowing off.

Now?

We had a roof.

And not just any roof.

We had an **INSULATED roof.**

It wasn't nearly as well insulated as it would eventually become, but it was enough for now.

At this point, we could actually live in the house if we wanted to.

It wouldn't necessarily have been the most comfortable living situation in the world...

But we **COULD**.

There was just one other little caveat.

We still had to pass the next phase of our inspections.

And that one was going to be the **electrical inspection.**

CHAPTER 18

Al & Val's Power and Light Company

Now that we had a roof, we could get back to making the home at least livable as we continued building.

Because while we had accomplished a lot to this point, and had done it in a surprisingly short amount of time, everything from here on out was going to move a whole lot slower than all that framing.

The next big project was electrical.

And this was one place where we COULDN’T scrimp.

It had to be done right the first time.

Once the electrical was buried behind our walls, there wouldn't be much opportunity to go back and fix something later.

So we spent what needed to be spent.

And during the pandemic, that wasn't always easy.

250-foot rolls of 12/2, 12/3 and 14/2 wire weren't cheap. Neither was the 50-foot roll of 10/2 we needed. And by the time we were buying all of this, you were lucky to even find some of it.

We had ours.

But it came at a cost.

Then there were the contractor packs of outlet boxes, 15- and 20-amp outlets, light switches, lights, wire nuts, conduit and electrical panels.

We needed two panels—one for the main house and another as a sub-panel out in the solar shed.

We also needed a 100-foot roll of 100-amp underground-rated service entrance cable for the run from the solar shed to the house, along with the conduit and fittings for the connections at both ends.

And the list went on.

And on.

With electrical materials stacked around the house, we got down to business.

I started with the outlet boxes.

I cut a short piece of wood to serve as a simple marker for placing every outlet at the proper—and consistent—height.

I'd walk over to the selected stud, press my little stick up against the side where the outlet box would go, set the box on top of it...

And nail it in.

That was, by far, the quickest and easiest part of the entire electrical job.

The real work came next.

We had to run all of the home runs back to the main panel, which we'd installed in our rear mudroom.

We chose that location because it gave us the most direct route from the solar shed to the house while avoiding the buried water line.

Once the home runs were installed in the 14-inch mechanical space in our floor trusses, we could begin running all of the individual circuits for outlets, switches, lights and everything else that would eventually bring the house to life.

But we had planned ahead for something else, too.

What if our main solar system ever went down?

We had a portable Bluetti solar generator that could provide emergency power, but obviously it couldn't run everything in the house.

So we identified the things that would matter most during an outage and put them on separate circuits.

We also wired those circuits so that their breakers were located next to one another in the electrical panel.

That meant that if we ever had a problem with our main solar system, we could quickly switch those critical circuits over to the Bluetti.

It meant we had a couple of extra runs we might never actually need.

But that was okay.

When you're living off-grid, redundancy isn't necessarily wasted money.

Sometimes it's insurance.

After about three long days, I had all of the outlets wired, the light switches installed, most of the lights in place, and our main electrical line buried and connected to both panels.

We were ready to turn it on.

Well...

Sort of.

We weren't going to plug anything in yet.

But I did turn the system on so I could test everything with my continuity tester.

I wanted to make absolutely certain that everything was connected properly.

And I wanted to be able to show our electrical inspector exactly what we'd done.

When the inspector arrived, I was expecting him to go over everything with a pretty critical eye.

After all, this wasn't something we wanted to get wrong.

But as it turned out, he was impressed enough with our work that he gave us the go-ahead to begin occupying the house while we continued the build.

That was a BIG moment for us.

Because it was getting colder.

And the RV wasn't going to do it for us when temperatures started heading toward -30°F.

We finally had a roof over our heads.

We had insulation.

We had walls.

And now...

We had electricity.

We could actually begin living in the home we'd been working so hard to build.

There was still a tremendous amount of work ahead of us.

But for the first time, this wasn't just a building site anymore.

It was becoming our home.

Al & Val's Power and Light Company was officially open for business.

CHAPTER 19

WINTER IS COMING FAST

We knew winter was just around the corner now.

Halloween was here, and it had been getting chilly enough to require the occasional coat—and definitely an extra blanket on the bed in the RV.

While Val could finally take a hot bath in her big tub, she wasn't going to stay very warm once she got out of that nice, hot water.

So we needed to get our chimney installed.

If we were going to start using that wood stove, it had to become our priority.

And, honestly, we were kind of excited to see just how well it was going to do.

This would be our very first attempt at living with nothing but a wood stove for heat.

We had **NO CLUE** what to expect.

Other than what our inspector had told us.

He'd said that once we got that stove going, we'd probably be opening the windows in the house when it was 20 degrees below zero just to stay cool enough.

We thought he was joking.

This was going to be my very first northern New York winter.

Val had grown up in Ottawa, so she knew what cold weather was all about.

Except...

We were now living in the **Great Lakes Snow Belt.**

And that could change things around here **REAL FAST.**

So...

Let's get that stove working!

Putting the chimney together was fairly straightforward and easy.

At least...

Up to a point.

That point being about **20 feet in the air.**

Because our wood stove was centered on an end wall, we really couldn't—and didn't want to—run the stove pipe straight up through the second floor and then through the roof.

That simply wasn't an option for us.

So we did the only thing we could.

We had already planned for the pipe to exit directly through the wall above and behind the stove. We'd even left the opening in the wall and tiled around it when Val had done the tile work earlier.

So all we had to do was install the wall fittings, the wall thimble on the inside, and the tee fitting on the outside with its support.

Then I could start putting together the three-foot sections of chimney pipe.

Simple.

At least on the ground.

By the time I'd gotten the fourth section installed, I looked down.

It was about **20 feet to the ground.**

And I still had another 10 feet or so to go to get the chimney above the roof peak.

This was the point where the job became considerably less enjoyable.

Eventually, I had to back my pickup truck up to the house and put my ladder in the truck bed to get high enough to finish the chimney.

And talk about a nervous wreck.

I was standing that high up with a heavy piece of triple-wall stainless-steel chimney pipe in my hands, balancing it on top of the previous section while trying to maneuver it into place.

Then I had to twist-lock it in.

Clamp the two sections together.

And keep reminding myself that falling was definitely **NOT** part of the plan.

Finally, it was time for the cap.

I had to get that piece in place with both hands while standing up there and looking down about 27 feet or so.

By then, I was more than ready for this little project to be over.

But I did it.

I even got the two mounting supports installed to hold the chimney securely away from the wall.

Then came the part I had been looking forward to.

Getting **down.**

Climbing down that ladder for the final time and then looking back up at that completed chimney was gratifying, to say the least.

But it meant something more than just checking another construction task off the list.

It meant...

**WE'D BE WARM.**

You can't imagine just how quickly that first fire got going that night.

Or just how quickly all of the windows in that house got opened a few hours later.

Our inspector hadn't been joking.

That wood stove could **HEAT** the place.

And now we knew something we hadn't known before.

We could survive the coldest nights.

We had a way to stay warm.

Another item checked off our lists.

Our **to-do list.**

And our **worry list.**

The house wasn't finished.

Not even close.

But winter was coming.

And we were ready for it.

**BRING IT ON, WINTER!**

CHAPTER 20

## OUR FIRST WINTER WAS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE!

With a buttoned-up house, a working wood stove, solar power, running water, **HOT** running water, and a couple of large piles of firewood, we felt pretty ready for whatever winter brought our way.

And winter had a few plans of its own.

As it turned out, winter was in a hurry to show us exactly what we had in store.

By the end of October, we were having our first snowfall.

And it kept coming for most of the rest of that year.

At one point, we got **two feet of snow in two days.**

With no porch to stack our firewood under and keep it out of the snow, we had to make do with what we had. We put tarps over the piles sitting out in the yard and hoped for the best.

Needless to say...

It wasn't exactly fun that first season.

At least we'd gotten some of the worst winter could throw at us out of the way.

And we were warm.

Actually, it was surprisingly easy to stay warm in our house.

It wasn't really **COMFORTABLE** just yet, but that was coming.

We had a roof over our heads, four strong walls, and a **LOT** of insulation.

And then we discovered something we hadn't really anticipated.

Our ICF-block foundation and the insulated pad beneath the house kept the temperature under the house at around **50 degrees**, even when it was 30 degrees below zero outside.

That was a BIG deal.

Because it meant we had just checked one more worry off our list.

**No frozen pipes.**

The water kept flowing.

Day and night.

But another issue showed up pretty early in that first winter.

Our solar panels.

Even a **LIGHT** dusting of snow covering those panels had to be cleaned off if we wanted to keep producing enough power after several days of snow.

And when you're getting two feet dumped on you in two days...

That takes a **LOT** of work.

Keeping those panels clear of snow and ice became a regular part of winter life.

Then there were our batteries.

We had learned that below 32°F, they wouldn't charge.

So now we had to figure out ways to keep those batteries warm enough to accept a charge.

And in upstate New York, that wasn't a problem that went away in a week or two.

That was going to be a **six-month problem.**

So now we knew what we were up against.

And knowing was actually a good thing.

Because now we could start making plans to address it.

### BUILDING A HOME

Speaking of making things...

Val used much of her time during the fall and winter to get really good at making furniture.

Our first project had to be a comfortable bed.

So she started researching designs and eventually settled on one from another woman who, like us, believed there was a better way to furnish a home.

Why buy something from a furniture showroom when you could build it yourself, save money, and end up with something even stronger?

And we had one other advantage.

A ready supply of lumber from our local Amish suppliers.

Val's bed turned out beautifully.

In fact, it was every bit as nice as anything you'd find in a furniture showroom.

Then she added a couple of nightstands.

And a dresser for our clothes.

And suddenly...

**WE HAD A BEDROOM SUITE!**

Living the high life!

While Val was busy building us some comfortable furniture, I got busy with some of the interior work in preparation for putting up our interior walls.

And since we now had a pretty nice bedroom suite, we decided that was where we'd begin our interior journey.

Oh...

And the downstairs bathroom.

If there was ever a place in a house where you wanted to feel comfortable, those were probably the two best places to start.

With all of our electrical lines run, the plumbing in place, and nothing else standing in our way, it was time to get busy making shiplap for those walls.

We were finally getting to the part where the house would start looking less like a construction project...

And more like **HOME.**

Or at least that's what we thought.

Because almost all of that work was nearly for nothing one night when Val suddenly woke me up.

“Al...”

She was convinced there was a fire in our chimney.

I woke up.

And there was.

THE WORST FEELING OF HELPLESSNESS...

If you've ever experienced the sheer terror and despair of being completely helpless, then you know what we were feeling that night.

I'd gone to bed early because I had to be up at 3 AM to get ready to take my Amish friends to an auction about three hours away the next morning.

I knew I needed my sleep.

So when Val came running into the bedroom, turned on the overhead light and whispered,

“Honey... HONEY! I think the chimney's on fire!”

I was out of that bed like a shot.

My heart was pounding through my chest.

That chimney was **27 feet in the air.**

And there was absolutely no way for me to get up there.

Even if I could have...

There wasn't anything I could do about the fire anyway.

The only thing we **could** do was stand there and watch.

We could see flames shooting out of the top of the chimney.

Ashes were floating down all around us.

And in places where the sections of chimney connected, the metal was actually glowing.

My mind was racing.

All I could do was hope that I'd built that chimney properly.

That I'd left enough clearance between it and the wall.

Enough clearance between it and the roof eaves.

Enough clearance that the escaping heat wouldn't ignite something we couldn't see.

But at that moment, I had no way of knowing.

And there was another problem.

We didn't even have an exterior faucet yet where I could hook up a garden hose.

If I wanted water, I was going to have to crawl underneath the house into the crawl space and connect a hose to the drain faucet on our pressure tank.

So that's what I did.

I knew it probably wasn't going to help.

But I **HAD** to do something.

Anything.

I crawled back out from under the house, hose in hand, dragged it around to the front of the house, and stood there holding it in a shaking hand.

And wondered how this had all come to this.

All I could imagine was our beautiful, unfinished home going up in flames before we'd even had the chance to enjoy it.

Everything we'd worked so hard for...

Gone.

Then something changed.

I noticed the flames at the top of the chimney were beginning to die down.

The ashes weren't falling nearly as heavily.

Then the flames disappeared.

All that remained was a dull glow.

And finally...

Even that went out.

The fire had simply burned until there was nothing left to keep it going.

And it felt like a **miracle.**

We stayed outside for a while, listening to the metal popping and cracking as the chimney cooled down.

And I made myself a promise.

**NEVER AGAIN.**

I would never be this helpless again.

I was going to find out exactly what had happened.

I was going to learn why it happened.

And, most importantly, I was going to learn how to make absolutely certain it never happened again.

Sleep wasn't going to happen for the rest of that early morning.

And I still had to get up and drive three hours.

It was going to be a **LONG** day on the road.

But the worst part wasn't the lack of sleep.

It was having to leave Val alone at home.

She was going to have the entire day to sit there and think about that fire.

To wonder what might have happened.

To worry about what could happen again.

And knowing that doubled my resolve to make **SURE** that it never could.

As I write this, it has been almost four years since that night.

And we learned our lesson.

We know why that fire started.

We know what caused it.

And we know how to prevent it from ever happening again.

More importantly, we've put that knowledge into practice every fall and winter since then.

And we will continue to do so for as long as we live in our little home.

Because there are some lessons you only need to learn **once.**

Chapter 21

WHEN THE WALLET HAD TO COME OUT

At some point, we had to face reality.

We were going to have to spend some **major dollars** if we were ever going to get our house finished.

We’d been pretty lucky up to this point with our local used-material finds. Our wood stove. A nice gas kitchen stove. An amazing glass shower stall still in an unopened box. The Jacuzzi jet tub. Our windows. The stove pipe. And a lot of other incredible deals.

But we still needed a LOT of things if we were ever going to get everything completed.

And a bathroom and kitchen were at the top of that list.

So, off we went to our local big-box home building store.

First on the shopping list was an economical and energy-efficient refrigerator. Nothing huge. We didn’t need much for just the two of us. Something on the smaller side would do just fine.

We also wanted some “contractor” kitchen cabinets that we could finish ourselves.

But we didn’t need all of them.

Just enough to get us started.

Our plan was to use those cabinets as templates and then build the rest ourselves.

Moving on to the other room we needed to finish — the bathroom.

We were going to need a toilet and vanity to make the bathroom usable. We ordered a kitchen sink and faucet set online for the vanity, and slowly but surely, the shopping list was getting smaller.

By now, we’d managed to get the washer and dryer hooked up.

But that first winter, we were struggling to make enough power to get us through a day or two, so using the dryer wasn't really in the cards just yet.

Washing was fine.

Drying was going to be the old-fashioned way.

Hanging lines from the ceiling in every open space in the house.

And that would be our life for a while.

---

We’d decided on an alternating wall style throughout the house, with sheetrock on our north- and south-facing walls and shiplap on the east- and west-facing walls.

With all the framing completed, the electrical and plumbing in, and everything ready for finishing, it was time to order a truckload of sheetrock and all the supplies we’d need to install it.

So, with everything ready to go, we hopped in the truck, headed to our by-now second home — the big-box store — and bought ourselves a truckload of sheetrock and all the stuff that went along with it.

The bedroom, then the bathroom, the hallway, and finally the kitchen and living room all had at least two solid interior walls.

Now came the part I truly **HATED.**

Getting all those seams taped and mudded.

All that sanding.

All that dust.

And then inspecting everything for the tiniest imperfection.

It took us a week or more to get it all done, mostly because we were waiting for the mud to dry so we could sand it, then mud it again where needed, wait for it to dry, and sand it again.

We’d done this before when we remodeled our last home, and I had hoped I’d never have to do it again.

But once it was finished, it made all the difference.

We had **(almost) ROOMS!**

Just a few coats of primer, a couple more coats of our selected paint colors, and we were that much closer to having a finished home.

And with walls finally in our bathroom, we could get that toilet and vanity installed.

Add a few minor things like floor and ceiling trim, towel racks, and the vanity accessories, and suddenly...

We had a finished bathroom we could actually **enjoy.**

---

In the kitchen, we’d had those cabinets stacked in their boxes for quite a while.

Getting them out and positioned in their appropriate places didn't take long at all.

We’d bought the minimum pieces we needed to set up our kitchen sink and stove surround, so Val could finally spread out a little and not have to run to the bathroom every time she needed to do dishes.

We just used some of the cutoffs from previous projects as a temporary countertop.

We had plans for that later.

Of course we did.

By Christmas, we’d gotten quite a bit of this list done.

Not a bad Christmas present at all.

And by the end of January, we’d wrapped up the rest.

For the first time, we could look around and see something that was starting to look less like a construction project...

and a whole lot more like **our home.**