Siding nearly done; insulation started; phone trenched; mud everywhere

Days of rain last week turned the ground around the house into a mud pit. Has been quite the adventure trying to walk around the house, but it is finally starting to dry up.

So whats been going on? In no particular order...

- Siding is nearly complete. The shakes look really nice...so nice we've decided to add them to the small peak over the front porch. Siding should be done early this upcoming week

- Phone line has been trenched in

- Had the propane folks out to place a tank...but it was so muddy they were afraid their truck and line trencher would both get stuck. So they will come back when it is more dry and/or frozen.

- Gutter guy has drawn up a plan and talked us through it.  need to make some final decisions on placement and color.  Will be meeting him again this week.

- Insulators were hard at work this week, and it looks like all of the spray foam has been completed. We had them spray foam the downstairs area below the master bed/bath in order to deaden noise. Not sure how much that will help, but it was worth a shot. Drywall should start this week and take about 2 weeks. Drywall on the ceiling below the master bed/bath will be mounted on resilient channel also as a sound reduction measure.

- will be finalizing paint colors this week

- met with the carpeting guy and are 90% decided what we are going to go with

- cedar tongue and groove in the screen porch is nearly complete

- Spent the better part of an afternoon making sure all my low voltage cabling was how I wanted it. Some of the HDMI cable was awkward. Had to move a couple cables, and preemptively attach some of the wall plates as it was easier to do now rather than after drywall.  Also took dozens and dozens of pictures of every square inch of walls and ceilings to have as a record/map/reference of everything before the drywall goes up.

- Got the driveway "ready" for plowing by putting up some stakes along the edges. Last thing I need is to get the new tractor stuck out there before we even move!

And here's some updated pics...again, in no particular order:

Ninjas in my driveway:

West side of house:

Breaking ice from all the rain we had:

Front porch...will be putting shakes in the peak:

Rear deck view.  Debating putting shakes in the window peak:

Nearly-finished screen porch interior:

Spray foam in downstairs ceiling -- hopefully providing some sound protection for sleeping beauty upstairs:

More downstairs spray foam:

Foyer:

Garage:

Great room peak:

Master bedroom: