This summer, we have been doing various things to the house, none of which are as monumental as what we did last sumer but are none-the-less important. A lot of our energy has been put towards the bottom of the house where we've been working on better drainage and structural support. We had Lance from Bobcat Services up to look at the foundation. He had poured the 5ft deep concrete piers about 6 years ago and when we peeled the cardboard from the sonotubes we noticed there was rebar showing. He came up to discuss whether this was going to be a problem and calmed our nerves sufficiently. He also praised us on our "very professional" work. Its nice to hear that, especially from someone who has been in the business as long as he has.
We still want to tie in a few of the posts together near the ground on the highest side of the house and we still plan to fully skirt the house in with plywood. We haven't yet decided how we're going to run skirting right down to the gound. Whatever is touching the ground needs to be vertically mobile as we have a great deal of heaving here.
We have also been doing a lot of wiring. We do not yet have power TO the house but we have fully developed the scematics for the whole house including the crawl space and have most of the wiring done at this point. Its kind of fun actually planning these things out as its beginning to feel more like the aesthetics of a home and not just carpentry.
Also, I have been learning more about the plants here on our land and have discovered scads of blueberry bushes. The are small and tart but are wonderful in smoothies.
-Jane