Back at It - The Little Stuff

 It's time to keep on working on the little details at the house.  Some of these we finished back in the fall and some we put together in the week that we have been back in Montana.  We had a big blank wall over the sofa and either needed something really big or lots of little things.  We opted for lots of photos.  Some we had in NC and some we had in MT, so several of these photos ended up as checked luggage on the flight out.  We needed a couple of more frames and then had to figure out what worked and how to position all of them.  The star of the show is Merv's big Glacier Lake image.  The Glacier Lake photo was taken on a day hike into Glacier Lake to catch the alpenglow.  Catching it required leaving the house by 5 a.m. and doing most of the hike in the dark.  Most of the rest are also by Merv, many taken on Gary and Merv's backpacking trips.  But we added in a photo Paul took this fall and one we took near Devils Courthouse, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.




We are almost done with the powder room, adding a mirror we picked up in Billings this weekend.  It matches the old oak dresser perfectly.   The sink is a copper basin, made to look like an old farmhouse basin.  The hanger for the hand towel is a deer antler, which we found in Belfry last fall.


The toilet paper holder is made from a bit, attached to old barnwood, with a turned dowel and a little bit of leather.  We have more bits for other toilet paper holders in other bathrooms.

All we need is a light fixture over the sink, and we can mark this room as done.

The bit worked so well that we we stayed with the horse theme and used a couple old wooden stirrups to hold hand towels in our bathroom.  A little barn wood and leather to pull it all together.

The Beginning

Let the fun begin.  We are beginning the construction of our new home in Red Lodge this week and knew that with old brains and old bodies, we should document the progress before we can't remember how to find our way home.  The plans are drawn, the contracts are signed, the lot is staked and it's just a few more details to wrap up before the digging begins.

We have decided to document the construction with photos to show progress for our friends and family who won't be here to watch the progress.  This shot was taken by our friend Merv Coleman when he was shooting photographs from a small plane over town.

We purchased a lot in Mountainbrook just before the recession, when real estate prices were sky high and decided to step back and wait before beginning construction.  With the sale of our house in Red Lodge a few months ago, it seemed like the right time to jump back into the deep end.

Mountainbrook is an older subdivision located at the site of an old ranch that most recently grew peas for the Red Lodge cannery.  You can see the area between the irrigation ditches in the center of the photo is pretty flat, with not a tree on the ground.  We have great views up the West Fork canyon and of the Elk Rearing Range to the South.