Busy day today!  First thing this morning we met with Uwe about the Tulikivi soapstone stove that will be going in the house.  He has to make sure to get our stove ordered tomorrow so that it will be loaded on the next shipping container, as they container are 3-5 MONTHS in transit across the Atlantic.
We had our first inpsection today, so that the concrete can be poured tomorrow.  The inspection went just fine, no problems.
And the last load of logs went out this afternoon.  We had to choose a couple extra trees for Pat to take down in order to make a full load, so we have even a little more light coming in from the South now, which is really great.  The trees were down by the barn, so it doesn't make the area around the house feel any less forested, but more light will get through, especially in winter.  We ended up with four truckloads of logs that were sold to the mill.

Today we got some news we were NOT hoping for: the addition is going to mean that we will definitely have to upgrade our electrical service.  The 200 amp service that we have been doing fine for the last 13 years with will not be adequate to run everything we have now, plus the addition. So we will have to add another 200 amps!  Ouch.  Our electric company was here today, as well as our electrician, so we all talked about what our options are.  We have to look into whether we want to run trenches, or have a boring machine push the pipe through, and we have to decide if we want the huge service box and meter on the house, or if we want ot put it over at a pole.  The responsibility of the electric company stops at the meter, so that's one reason to put it on the house, but there are a number of things to consider when making the decision.  We have to get some estimates and then decide how to proceed...

There easily could have been no entry for today, as nobody was here working on-site, and we were spending the day recovering from digging, and whatever else made us so sore from yesterday. But in the evening we got it together to call the old owner and builder of our place.  They had returned our call yesterday, but since we had finally found the one-inch water line, we didn't feel the urgency to call back last night.

It was amazing to talk with them!  He told us that the water line comes out of the well-house exactly where we had dug the deepest; we just hadn't dug deep enough.  It's about 3 feet down, he says.  We learned that they were quite sad to have had to leave here (Jim got sick with a rare disease that has left him unable to speak clearly, so Judy listens and then speaks for him).  At one point Jim said "Do you know that you live on the best five acres in Oregon?"  Yes, we do.  We assured him that we love the place tremendously and that we appreciate his incredible craftsmanship every day.  They said that it sounds like we are the right people for their old home, which was so nice to hear.  We updated them on lots of things that have been done here on the place, as well as neighborhood news.

Here are a few pictures that illustrate the care and skill that went into building this very special five acres.

And spent a good portion of the day searching for the location of where the water to the house exits under the concrete of the well-house.  We embarked on this search because we will need a one inch water line coming to the house once the addition is complete, and we could only find a 3/4 inch line coming in...