To see any Fall colors, we have to go at least halfway down the hill to Grangeville

Well, Monday night was about the coldest we have ever experienced in our travels, a record-breaking 7F!!!

 

A record for here also, normally it's around 30-40F! Like I said .. all bets are off when we pull into town ..
Day-times didn't get above freezing either, so the little snow we got on Monday night took a while to disappear.

 

Something we have eagerly been waiting for it to happen, because we need to bring the RV down the hill before it really starts to snow!
Fortunately the weather has behaved for the last couple of days, some of the snow has melted and it looks like we're going down tomorrow ..

Because .. guess what? We're done! Finished, finito! Yahoo!! 
The last walls and basements were painted, trim installed, closet-shelves build, the tub enclosure finalized, and after all that everything has been cleaned up and put back into order.
We're very proud of the results, it's really a day-and-night difference!

Here's some of the before and after pictures; first up, the bathroom in the basement ..

  

Before ...

 And after .. as if you wouldn't see the difference ... !

      

The downstairs rooms I already showed in a previous post, but here they are again:

                  Than ..
                                    ... and now:

 

And the much, much improved hallway between these rooms and the bathroom!

 

        

Here's the (awful) kitchen before:

 

 And the new one in all it's glory!

Here's the butler pantry, that about fell apart:

 

 

And how about that new hallway .. the one that wasn't there before?

 
Look at that:

 
 
With a new door into into Ari's room and the (existing) bathroom ..

And Ari's room itself:

  
With a new closet and an (emergency) door into the hallway!

Last, but not least, this was the unfinished master bedroom or 'suite', when we arrived :

And now:

And it's new bathroom:

 

I like the view out of that bath (with jets!) ..
 

I'm not even  going to talk about the outside, but believe me, it also looks a lot better!

Now about those change of plans I talked about in the previous post .. we're not going to Wet Gulch right away because we've decided that we're going on a little road-trip instead!
The thing is .. there are still no house-plans for Wet gulch, and probably not for another 3 weeks, so we figured we could do with a little vacation-time and go visit James' brother in Newberg, OR,
Todd & Kenn in Klickitat, WA, and long-time friends Joe and Deanna in Coeur D'Alene, ID!

So tomorrow, after packing some last things away and the weather has warmed up a little, we'll go down to Grangeville and park the RV at a campground in town. 
The next day (Saturday) we'll drop off Ronnie's truck at Wet Gulch and take care of some small stuff while we're there, after which we'll return to Grangeville for another night.
If everything goes according to plan ... yeah .. we'll leave for Coeur d'Alene the next morning, which will be Sunday!

So ... let's hope everything will be just fine, and we'll get down this hill in one piece ... otherwise this will have been my last blog ..

 Keeping my fingers crossed!

Frosty nights ... skating!!

 

It was freezing cold outside, but fortunately most of last weeks work happened on the inside. 

There was one of the nastier jobs that still had to be done on the outside though, or better, under the outside ..

 

See that hole under the steps to the suite?

        

That's were James and Joe worked on putting up the insulation under the whole suite ..

It's a pretty lousy job to begin with (all that scratchy fiber-glass), but especially when it's above your head, and than to have only 2 feet of  'sitting-up space' makes it even more challenging!

Inside the house we've done a lot (a whole lot!) of painting ..

 .. and we're still not there ..

But other areas are pretty much done, and are looking quite nice if we say so ourselves ..

   

                             

And the weather? Well ... steady snowing through the night with temperatures around freezing, and this is what you wake up to ..

What can I say .. it's (northern) Idaho .. it's the mountains .. it's a cold Fall!

 

This is looking down into the valley in the general direction of Grangeville ..

Walking through the snow covered pine forest reminded me of Lake Arrowhead .. nine years ago .. 

 

 Wow, time flies!

It's times like these that call for hearty breakfasts, like Grand Slams:

And the delicious spicy heat of hot southern Gumbo!




Well, that about covers this week, I think. 
As for next week, we hope to be finished around Tuesday, and we might have a slight change of plans coming up for the two after that .. we'll see!