Thanks for the coverage!

The Setzepfandt House was featured in this week's Bellevue Herald-Leader Home Improvement section. We were so proud to show BH-L editor Sara Millhouse around the place, and talk about how far the house has come. Setzepfandt Nation (our name for the dozens of local folks who've worked on the house with us) has really come through. We still have a long way to go, of course. Today Ron is replacing some wood from around a door frame that appears to have been kicked in once, many years ago. I'm happy to have finally found, in one of the garages, the box that contains my cookbooks. Now I can make my mother's biscotti recipe and my sister's enchilada casserole (using Ron's antelope meat from the hunt last fall.) In my last post I mentioned that the downstairs bathroom is functional, and promised pictures. Another big development is that the upstairs carpeting is all in. We can start moving Ron's office furniture in, but we need help. Anybody up for an hour of furniture hoisting? There will be biscotti....

Two bathrooms, no waiting

Eureka! We finally have the second bathroom functional. The upstairs bath was one of the first rooms ready to go in June, even before we arrived (thank you, Setzepfandt nation). A blessing and curse, I suppose, because then the "emergency" factor disappeared and people around town who didn't have little things like running water or air conditioning got ahead of us on the list. But over the last few days, a bathroom emerged from the pile of fixture boxes that had sat in our dining room so long I began hanging my sweater from them. Pictures to come, but suffice it to say it is beautiful and very welcome. So there's no door. There's no door on the upstairs bath either - the need to pee in private is fading...

Only non-Hawkeyes flag in town.

Got this baby up on the porch when the American flag we had hanging there got a little raggedy. Go Pokes!

Cooking with gas, finally and literally

After two and a half months of moving into the Setzepfandt House and Construction Zone, we have a kitchen. We've spent weeks and weeks concocting dismal meals of easily choppable or cleanable foods prepared in a tiny microwave. Even nuke-able mac & cheese doesn't cook well blah blah blah enough! We're finally shopping, storing food in a human-sized fridge, preparing said food in an oven or range top or large microwave, and washing dishes in a large sink or - gasp - dishwasher. I realize I sound like the most avaricious consumer-head in the world, but after all this time it feels great to return to a standard of living that doesn't require so much focus on hunter-gathering on the campground sort of scale. It is still a work in progress, but with no further ado, here are some photos.