As Fall approaches, we’re continuing to work on the little house so we can move in before winter. We did take a break to go to a Larsen family reunion at Waterton National Park in Alberta and to attend the Boundary County Fair. Posts on those later. But for now, here’s what we’re doing:

Our builder, Matt, poured the piers for the porch posts. We’re hoping to mill some of our logs from our trees for the 6×6 posts, but we haven’t yet figured out how to get several thousand pounds of logs down to a mill!

Here’s the “up” part of the post: Matt has started installing our tongue-and-groove ceiling. Mary lovingly finished each 16 foot board with layers of clear tung oil followed by a single layer of dark tung oil, with the effect shown in the photo below.

Finally, for the “down” part of the post, Matt rented an excavator to dig the hole that will eventually hold our 2500 gallon cistern. He also dug trenches for an overflow drain, the water line to the house, and the gray water drain. The photos below show the digging and also Mary’s daughter’s new kitten’s reaction to the massive hole in the ground.

We had rain gutters installed the day after the excavation, but I neglected to get photos of that! They are from LeafFilter and we expect the filter part will allow us to capture clean rainwater to add into the cistern.