The winter has closed in. We have had 13 snow storms in December, close to a record. Golf season is definitely over.

I ordered some wallboard delivered and unloaded with a forklift. Delivery cost $65 but I figured it was offset by the cost of gas to drive my pickup to Spokane several times. I ordered 120 sheets of regular wallboard, 10 sheets of green waterboard, and 5 sheets of cement board for the shower area. I made the mistake of having it stacked too close to the wall so I can't put any up behind the pile. I guess I'll do that part last.

Here is another view of the piles of board.

It's starting to look more like a room with the walls solid.

This is the shower area before.

This shows the cement board in the shower area. It looks a lot different than the "before" photo above.

This is the laundry room before wallboard.

A view of the laundry room with green board on bottom, and white board above. The end wall has OSB where the water heater will mount.

Yule is upon us so we put up a tree. It's nice having a tall ceiling. Logan climbed up to the mezzanine to decorate the top half of the tree.

Here is a view looking north down the hallway from the bathroom. Comparing this picture and the next picture gives you an idea of progress.

Wallboard is now all hung in the hallway and bathroom. So is the utility closet above the ceiling. There is a high efficiency propane gas furnace in the utility closet.

Our plan has open ceilings in many rooms, with partition walls only about 8 feet high. The master bedroom is in the NW corner of the building. When occupied there will be distance and visual impediments between the public spaces and the private areas, but not doors. We like leaving rooms open to the high ceiling.

There are 2 walk in closets off the hallway, his and hers. On the other side of the hallway is our back outside door and a coat closet. A heat vent is in the ceiling. Despite our general no-door policy, these closets get closable doors to keep dust off the clothes.

In the bathroom we are making a raised platform for the Jacuzzi tub. The tub is raised high enough so a bather can see out the window. The eleveated platform gets a tile surface.

The pile of wallboard is getting smaller. The piece of wall sticking out will eventually connect to the divider between the library and Brad's study. It won't get wallboard until we do bay 3. It was framed now because it connects to the divider wall between bay 3 and bay 4.

One of the bathroom windows cracked last year shortly after it was instaled. I have ignored it. This winter it's collecting condensate at the bottom. I guess I'll have to deal with it in the spring.

The lavatory sinks in the master bath will be on this wall. It puts them off by themselves so that someone there is not standing right next of someone else taking a shower or such. If you are comparing the floor plan from Page 1, we added a linnen closet which can be seen to the right of this photo.

I finished hanging the wallboard for bay 4, the west 1/4 of the building, on January 10, 2008. Here is a view of the wall between the bay 3 and bay 4 from the south end of the wall looking north. We eliminated many doors to save cost and work. This opening to the laundry room has an archway instead of a door.

I ordered 120 sheets of wallboard plus 11 sheets of green water resistant board and 5 sheets of cement board. I had 3 sheets of wallboard left over from doing the ceiling. I ended up buying 3 more sheets of green board, and I used a sheet of OSB in the laundry room. That makes a total of 143 sheets. I ended up with 6 sheets left over. That makes 137 sheets used on this part. I'm threw all the bits and pieces in a heap until spring. There is a landfill west of the community of West Plains. Old wallboard makes good landfill.

Next up will be corner tin on all the corners, and then tape and mud. That will take a few weeks, but maybe we can get to painting in February.

Here is the middle of the building looking toward the divider wall between the finished bay 1 and the unfinished area. The pile of left over insulation has shrunk a lot. Tools and other stuff is piled here and there.

We have been getting a lot of snow this year. Here is a view of the front of our building on a sunny January morning.

Here is another view of the front of our home in midwinter.

Our pavillion has seen better days. It needs a new canvas perhaps.

On the north side of our building the snow has drifted up against the side. The snow here is about 3 feet deep, only about a foot below the window. Out away from buildings the snow is not quite up to your knee.

The next day the snow got deeper. It's now piled up above the bottom of the windows on the north side of our home. This picture shows the depth of snow is about 6 inches above the bottom of the window in our living room. The insulation must be fairly good. That is an electric baseboard heater right below the window and it hasn't melted the snow against the building.

A little farther down the north side of our building there is a sliding glass door. Here you can see that snow is piled up against the glass for a couple of feet. When we were first designing the house we originally thought about having the main front door on the side instead of the end of the building. But snow slides off the roof in winter and makes a side exit both difficult and dangerous. It would take a lot of shoveling to use this door for the next few weeks. Our main front door is in the gabled end of the building for this reason.

Snow has been sliding off the roof whenever it warms up a little. The standard building comes with a 1/12 roof but we had it raised to 2/12. The extra slope helps snow to slide off.

Here is a look at our driveway in winter. I hope the propane driver can make it up the hill.

Our neighbors to the south have been 600 acres of pasture with occasional cows. This fall the owner has begun the process of dividing it up into 10 acre lots which may be sold next summer. One survey stake appeared just south of our home, The fence may not be exactly on the line.

That's all for now, This year we will finish Bay 4, and Bay 3, and put in a hot tub. Happy New Year to all.