AUG. 10 UPDATE: A view west

First, here are the pictures of the new chimney that I didn't get posted yesterday.


It should keep the smoke out of the house!


Don and Dave worked on putting in the combination window on the second floor's west wall. That's the one window that's a little tricky to do, being bigger than the other windows and on the second floor.

Here are a couple views of the finished window.


So, eventually, the railings on the west and east sides of the open area will be walls, and there will be walls that line up with the railing on the north side. The bedrooms upstairs will need some privacy (or at least we will need some privacy from the kids, who will eventually be teenagers, living upstairs!), so the walls were needed, but I want to be able to get a cross breeze upstairs as well -- so the solution is, there will be windows on the interior walls as well. They will line up with the exterior windows, so a person could look in the east window and look all the way through the house, to the view out the west window. We'll look for some old interesting windows for the interior walls, I think. We could even put window boxes below those windows. I think it will look really nice!

... Don and Mary left to return home this afternoon, Don after coming to work two weekends in a row, and Mary after staying for the week, helping with the cooking as well as spending a lot of time with Sofia and helping however else she could while I got used to having my hands full with a newborn. Thanks so much for all your help, Grandpa and Nama!