Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Our favorite time of the year is Christmas....for 40 years now Cliff & I have gone into the woods and cut down our own tree.... Sometimes when we lived in the Portland area that would be in at a tree farm but more than not it has just been out in the woods.

So for the last 8 or so years now we have been going to the same place with a group on the Sat after Thanksgiving and it is a blast. Anyone can come and we all help each other out. But for the most part it has been our home owners cause we all have tall ceilings and get big tree's. The one above is for us. I think it is 16' tall this year we have had taller ones but we are getting old !

So here above you see we take a flat bed trailer and load all the trees on....Then we always do a pot luck lunch and sit around the fire talking and eating good food. My husbands favorite fire starter gas and his torch!

Then when we get ready to decorate it Cliff has his special made tree stand that is a dolly and an attached tree stand with guide wires on the corners that hold wire that goes into the tree about half way up. This seems to hold it up every year. If you click on the picture it will get bigger and you can see what I'm talking about. He also marks the front of the tree with the ribbon hanging on it. This is totally his thing he loves it and I love the finished product : )

So below is a finished picture of our rails and the tree.

You are invited to sip some coffee or hot chocolate any time come by and we will sit in front of the tree and fire and enjoy the season...we pray you are very blessed at this special time of the year. Again Merry Christmas and have a very Happy New Year !

Before and After 10 years apart !

Mid summer of 1998 J & P came to our "open house" to talk about building a log home. When we say build that was exactly what they did....they hired a contractor to work with them and off they went to build their dream home. This picture was taken about 10 years ago.

Then a couple of weeks ago Cliff had the opportunity to visit their home and now here is their home with rock around the foundation and patio's ....

Their front door 10 years ago ...unpainted door and gravel around the steps .....

They have added rock around steps and walk. And painted the door........

J & P I hope you are as proud as we are. Seeing someone else's dream come true is such a cool feeling ! That is why we have ask if we could share this with you all : )

Fall and Fireplaces

So it is Fall and I love it ....but I was also thinking about it won't be long until we can start having fires in our fireplace. That took me to the thought of showing you some photos of our home in the beginning and then now.

So this photo was taken from our loft looking down on a wood stove that we bought used thinking it would be a start for us. And then as we stacked the logs on this wall we also thought maybe someday in the future we would want to ad a garage onto this end of the house and so behind the picture we planned to cut in a door.

So as you can see in this photo the door is in and Cliff & Justin ( our son) are starting to cut out the logs in the part of the wall to to add a true wood burning fireplace.

Above they are almost done taking the logs out.....funny Cliff thought wow this will be easy but it didn't happen to be that easy.... they had to cut each log out. When we built the logs where connected with12" spikes now they are 12" lags.

This photo is a couple of years old you can see how the project turned out to be a very nice River Rock ( local rock) fireplace. We love the wood fireplace nothing can match the feel, smell or sound of that crackling fire. You are correct it isn't the most efficient way to heat but we have a heat pump for that. You can also see we have a glass door that connects up to our new entry and the 30x30 garage that was added. Above the garage is our office....come see us sometime we love to share our home which is also our model!

The "D" family moved in and held a party for all who helped!

Wow you can see the house as you come up to it.....those where my words as we headed to the "House Warming" party .....

Front porch from the driveway notice "red" metal roof, clad windows, rails and even front door.

If you take a right as you come up onto the porch you end up on the deck.

OK so lets go inside and take a look....

I tried to get more of the house and not so much of the party goers....(this is from steps that lead upstairs) looking into the great room area of Living room behind that corner of the door and Kitchen, Dining area with loft above.

I was standing in the Living room looking Kitchen area

Then this is from Dining area into Kitchen with a Pantry off it and you can see a hall way that leads to the Powder room ( that is the closed door) with kids rooms on each side of it....

Ana wanted a happy room for her daughter and I love the green walls with pink and green accents all around....something else to notice is that instead of closet doors they hung drapes ( not up yet in this room). As I was doing this post I thought really what a great thing to do, costs less than doors, But the best part is this is a small child's room with toys in there that need to be played with : )

Then what better than a cowboy room for their little guy. He wanted one.....the door you see open goes into "jack & jill" bathroom lets look.

Check this out ~Yes that is a very small toilet cause they are still small people in this bathroom,

plus the below sinks are on cabinets that are a bit shorter for them too.

OK lets take a look upstairs....sometimes you don't know what kinds of stairs to do...well they have done wood covered stairs. All though they thought that they wanted open wood or log stairs they didn't do that because of a couple of reasons one was the county wanted this to be a closed off stair case ( there is a basement below ) for fire safety.

Up we go....door at the top is to a small office

Look at the open space a wonderful view out that glass.

Check out what Eric brought home last year.....this bear on the wall!

Great 2x6 Tongue & Groove floor that is the wood ceilings for the main floor rooms....lets go to the Master suite

Remember they have just moved in and so it isn't all decorated yet....but yes that is a small bed on the floor there is a little one here that isn't sure she should sleep so far away. When they where building they all where living in a 5th Wheel .

Come into this wonderful master bath with a killer shower that you can see reflected in the mirror there is also a tub in here.

OK so lets join the party ....below in the plaid shirt Eric wanted to take time to say thanks to all the people who helped them build their dream home!

Ana's brother drove 1000 miles to cook a pig for the "pulled pork" sandwiches by the way they where the best ever !

I hate to say bye to this project, but first I must Thank Eric, Ana & the kids for this last year of tracking the build of their home. I hope as you read this you will enjoy the process as much as I have!

They still have a few things to do as you can see in the below picture they still have to rock the fireplace and stain the house and decorate so I will will be back.... but for the most part this will be the last of the build photo's.

What a blessing this has been for me I hope the "D" family has enjoyed it and for all you reading this I hope you found it interesting~~~~~

Finally I'm back.........

OK so I have been busy check out the Press Release located on my home page at www.bakerpond.com to see what has keep me away from blogging......

So this is way past it's time in fact these pictures where taken back in March. Eric has had some very good friends and family help with their home project and as you can see doing the Tongue and Groove Pine on walls and ceilings can be way up there....

Here they are tucking the last T&G up next to their log ridge beam.

This was on the other slope......

But look how cool it looks finished with Ana's great pick of fans

Here is a picture of the kitchen and the granite counter tops remember this home is in the process of construction and family so you can't always have everything picked up and clean when you take the photo's

The "D" family thought about doing log rails but after they had a chance to see how much wood they have in the walls and ceiling they thought that a difference product would break things up a bit and I happen to love what they picked in this metal railing system. Besides with small hands around Ana will love the easy care also.....

Can't you just see them sitting in the loft enjoying the inside and outside views....

Moving into May they are at a place to start hauling in some stuff I'm surprised nobody was on the bed napping after all the hard work they have put into this project.

Or better yet in this awesome shower....

Yeah no more worries about falling off the sides .....

Now these just came to me "D" family is in and almost rolled over in the loan from Construction to Mortgage loan.....there are still things do besides unpack on the inside.

This is a close up look of the rails before they paint them again I think they will be very happy with the upkeep. I know some of you are saying but it is a log home where are the log rails....this is the cool thing though it is your home and you get to do the things you want : )

Check out that view they have and soon there will be green grass here to play on.....

You can see a ladder on the roof that is there until they get the home stained and the rock on the chimney.....

Here we are just over a year after they started the dream home .....I plan to have more inside finish photo's in the future....but have enjoyed showing you the process of this home in my blog and hope you enjoy looking at it. Thanks "D" Family !

Progress on the "D" house.....

Wow time has gotten away from me and I'm so behind in post about this house so I'm going to do a couple of photos now and then hopefully I will get to more later this week !

So at the end of Jan here is how things looked Everything had insulation and then just needed to have the T & G Pine put into place.

Here is the finished photo with T&G up and fans in place.

A look from the outside at that glass.

They also did a fair amount of Sheetrock on interior walls....so here is one in the process...

Then the finished painted wall with the windows trimmed out and light in place.

Just a couple of cute kids pictures because you know they where helping : )

Both the kids wanted to help Sheetrock....

And then Painting their rooms was also on the "to do " list !

Come back again......