Let's review

You may recall our house:




It's cute and quaint but too small. Two bedrooms, one bath, a full basement. Less than 900 square feet of living space.

That's an apartment, for crying out loud!

After years of debate and house searching--should we move? should we stay? move? stay?-- we took the plunge. In late February, we hired a contractor.




Less than a week later, this happened:




A positive pregnancy test!

What were we thinking?!?!

Then started a series of delays.

First, our contractor fell off a ladder and broke both wrists. We stuck with him.

Then, the city required us to create a drainage system for our house. So, we hired a geotechnical engineer. This guy spent not one week, not two weeks but four weeks coming up with a drainage plan! And it didn't pass city approval!!!!!!

We were miffed. But we tried to forget it all when Grandma and Grandpa Huns took us on an Alaskan cruise.



We had a great time. We caught salmon, saw whales, kayaked a glacier-fed lake, watched a glacier calving, ate like royalty and thoroughly relaxed in our balcony rooms.



By then, Sarah had started looking pregnant.



We returned home mid-June. The engineer's second plan failed again. We fired him and hired another one. This person, Craig LaVielle, had experience in Lake Oswego. He came out the next day and finalized a report that passed the city within a week.

Our contractor, his wrists at 85%, started work.



That's our contractor, Doug Gaylord, on the left. One of his early assistants is standing in the back. And that's "Nacho" drinking the soda.

When we first met Doug, he spoke about his assistant "Nacho" quite often. "Nacho" this. "Nacho" that. "Nacho's a good painter," he said several times. We kept wondering: Why does Doug call this guy "Nacho?" Was he being insensitive?

The day the project began, we finally met "Nacho." We asked him his real name.

"Ignacio," he said.

"Is Doug the only person who calls you Nacho?" Sarah asked.

"Everybody calls me Nacho," he replied. "I'm the original Nacho. I was Nacho before Doritos."

Nacho it is, then.

The photo above was taken Aug. 5. Doug & crew actually started around July 13th.

They abided by Lake Oswego's tree-protection ordinance and fenced our towering cedar.



They ripped off our back porch.



They dug the foundation and set forms.



A subcontractor poured cement Aug. 5.


(Hard to believe that was two months ago!)

Then, Nacho and Doug started the floors.



Then the framing.





Meantime, we bought a baby swing. We don't know whether a boy or girl will be sitting in this. We declined to know the sex ahead of time. We prefer surprises. As you can tell from this undertaking.



Our cat Moppet enjoyed exploring the new environs.



She often hid in the woodpiles.



Our dog CeeCee may be 12 years old, but she caught two squirrels this summer, and promptly burried both.



Our new bedrooms started taking shape.



They started on the roof Aug. 29.



The roof proved difficult. It took Doug longer than he expected to measure and cut the joists and challenging angles to proper lengths. He did a great job, though. Wasted no wood, he said.





By Sept. 2nd, the back porch was taking shape.



Sarah's parents visited Labor Day weekend. Grandma Bettie felt the baby kick.



Grandpa Brad and Brent went fishing out of Astoria. There's the skipper and Grandpa Brad with a sockeye salmon grandpa bagged in the Columbia.



Finally, time to enclose the house.



Sarah packed up the kitchen for demolition. Check out those overalls.



Our existing spare bedroom got ripped down to the studs to make way for our hallway and new bathroom.



The kitchen demolition revealed original fir floors underneath, but not quite enough to preserve.



Our dining room became our kitchen, as it remains today. What a mess!



Doug & crew came to finish the kitchen demo on a Saturday.



We took off for the coast and one last childless three-day weekend, this time at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport.



The Sylvia Beach is a B&B that names and decorates each room after authors. Hemmingway. E.B. White. Agatha Christie.

We stayed in the Sigrid Undset room. We'd never heard of her.




Nice room, though.



We spent an afternoon at Yaquina Head ....



....watching whales....



We came back to a kitchen twice the size of our old one.



We were flabbergasted and thrilled.



Doug gloated.



That was Sept. 19. Bad news followed. Our kitchen cabinets, we learned, would not be ready until December! That was confirmation of our greatest fear -- that the house would not be ready in time for the baby.

We learned this while Doug took three days off to go hunting. We also scrambled on a rainy Friday morning to keep our basement from flooding, since there were -- and are -- still no gutters on the house and since most things we own are now in the basement. Water crept across about one-quarter of the basement floor, but we saved all but one baby item from getting wet.

So, we moaned and groaned for a few days and eventually got used to the idea of feeding a baby with no kitchen.

Late last week, we learned that Tureck Wood Flooring, two brothers who finished our fir floors a few years ago so perfectly, would not be available until Dec. 15 to finish the fir we're installing in our bedrooms. Trouble is, we can't bring ourselves to go with anyone else. The Turecks are too good and reliable.

Progress on the house slowed visibly the final week of September as the electricians and plumbers did their stuff. Yesterday, however, we took another leap forward. Doug and Nacho began siding the exterior.



They also built some much appreciated steps to the mudroom, where we access our basement.



They removed the sink and remaining appliances in preparation for the drywallers ... who failed to show up today as expected.



The excavator did, though, to the delight of Jack, who was visiting his grandmother across the street.





The excavator, also named Doug, went to work digging trenches for our drainage system. Whatever it is.



Grandma and Grandpa Huns arrived in town last week to help us out. They've cooked us meals to freeze, helped clean up around the house and walked CeeCee midday. This morning, we took them to the Portland Farmer's Market.





Grandpa Huns tried out a glider for us at Segal's for Children furniture store.




We returned to more mayhem and madness....





There's a lesson somewhere in all of this. Maybe we'll figure it out by the time our child goes to college and we've paid off this addition. Until then, we'll keep you posted. Remember, the drywallers are supposed to come Monday.