Septic is a messy business

Interesting title for a post, eh? Well, it goes likes this: Tony and I have been really busy, working on the house. The response to the blog posts has been overwhelming. Thanks so much for your wonderful comments! I would give anything if I could post daily, but once a week seems to be all I can manage, except when we had a bunch of rainy days there a while back.

This past week, we've been busily getting the roof completed. I'm happy with your progress and it's really starting to look like a house. Mike came down again over the weekend. Tony and Mike work well together - it's a guy thing, ya know? Only men can grunt and speak in one word sentences and know exactly what each of them mean! Me, I ask too many questions! Anyway, here are some pics of the roof progress:

The front porch needed to be constructed before we could put the metal roofing on. Once it is complete, it will be completely screened in





Next, we moved to the back of the house and started putting on the black paper and then the metal roofing. I would mark the sheeting for screws and place tacking on the back to attach it to the next sheet, then Tony would take it up the ladder and I would help set it in place from the stepladder below. Here you can see Tony up there on the roof, placing over 1,000 screws bit by bit. You can see my ladder below





Here is a pic of some of the insulating material that goes under the edges of the metal roofing to keep it airtight and keep us warm. My job was to place this as we went down the row



A view of the completed roof on the back of the house



The front was more challenging. Each piece of metal roofing needed to be cut because the long piece coming down to where it meets with the porch, along with the porch itself, had oddball measurements. That took quite a bit of time and a lot of work. Thank goodness Mike was here to help with that.

A view of the front with completed porch, before metal roofing



The view from the front



I left for a little while and came back and Tony and Mike nearly had the front roof done. No pictures, but Tony put me up there (boy, was it hot!) and I helped him complete it, helping to join pieces of the top roof with the porch roof. Here is the finished product!





Now, back to the story that gives this post it's title. We needed to get a septic tank. The only place to get them is in Fairbanks, about 110 miles and 2 hours away. The one we needed was about 800 lbs, 8 feet long and 6 feet wide and about 5 feet high. It's not gonna fit in our pickup truck, needless to say. We reserved a trailer in Fairbanks with the intention of driving in early, getting the trailer, loading the tank and some other goodies on it, then driving back to Delta Junction. When we got to the trailer place, the trailer was all wrong for the job, not to mention the fact we would have had to have purchased a new transmission for a truck because the thing was huge! After several calls, we found a place, but this put us behind schedule. We left Delta Junction at 6:20 in the morning and by the time we got the trailer and the doors we needed for the house, it was almost noon. Tony left me in Fairbanks to shop for windows and other goodies as he dashed back to Delta Junction, dropped off the tank and doors, and made it back to Fairbanks with the trailer to drop it off at 5:00. We ate dinner, then went to Home Depot, picked up our windows and loaded them in the back of the pickup, grocery shopped at Walmart, then headed back to Delta Junction. By the time we got home, it was almost midnight. Needless to say, we are TIRED!! What a day, but we got it done! Yes, septic is a messy busines and we haven't even broken ground yet, but we have the tank!



Six windows loaded in the back of the pickup. I have no idea if they made it in one piece. We just went straight to bed last night without unloading



My front door, very close to it's final resting place. Once we get all the doors and windows in, we'll place the subflooring and then we should be able to move in! It will be a shell, but definitely a step up from the shed!



On our way home last night, I saw 2 fox run across our road near our house. I'm sure this wasn't the same one, but here are some fox tracks on our property





Also, some other little critter was visiting, probably another shrew



I've stayed away from posting about "giant squirrels." That's Tony's code word for bears! We went walking when we first got to the property and found some scat, aka bear poop. I said, "that has got to be from a bear" and Tony, trying to ease the concern he heard in my voice, said, "nah, giant squirrels!" Even Mike has gotten into it. He heard something outside his tent one night (turned out to be a moose) but all I heard them talking about were "giant squirrels." I haven't ventured onto that part of the property again, but wanted to see what other berries we had so gun in hand, Tony and I took a walk the other night. It didn't take us long to find more scat, and it was pretty fresh. Yippee?? I have berries and bears. Welcome to Alaska! Sorry, I neglected to take pictures of the poop. My bad.

I was at the RV park last week and a caravan of 31 Airstream motorhomes pulled into the park. That was an interesting site! I saw one said "Ohio" on the side of it so I went up to the guy - turns out he lives in Columbus, Ohio now but raised his kids in Xenia, Ohio, where I was born. It really is a small world



We went to the Deltana Fair on Saturday. Very small, but very cool. Smokey the Bear was there with the US Forest Service



There was a rodeo and it was mostly girls and women, shooting balloons off barrels while galloping on a horse - really impressive



There were even some guys who tried their hand at ax throwing!



There were small goats (and small children!)



And Yaks!



Well, gotta run. Until next time folks!