Yes, its been awhile since Tyler and I had some great photos like these to share with you. First, the tax man cometh - it always sucks when he comes around. Once we recovered from losing that chunk-o-change, the window man cometh. Ouch again! Plus, my little boy (think horse) went off to the trainers. So, limited funds and time equaled limited progress on our house. However, as you can see that is all over.

In June we ordered the remainder of the windows and doors we needed to seal up the first floor of the house. We took a week's worth of vacation from work with the goals being to get all the windows/doors installed and to side the exterior of the house. Yah, have you heard about the Iowa Floods of 2008? This is what the weather looked like for most of the week...

Seeing pictures of downtown Cedar Rapids completely under water and hearing about the thousands of people displaced by the flood waters, Tyler and I figured we shouldn't complain about a little rain falling while we were doing windows. After all, there weren't several feet of flood water trying carry our house off. So, we spent the first part of our vacation dodging the rain drops to get the windows installed. The effort was well worth it when we saw the front of the house.

The windows didn't make it all in within a single day though. The work started Friday after work with Tyler and I demoing the front exterior. We completed the job in a couple hours.

The windows and doors were delivered the following morning. With space limited inside, Tyler and I propped the windows and doors up against every available surface outside. The front door went against the tree in the front yard. The patio door and double casement windows went against a tree in the backyard. The remainder of the windows went up against the house. When the rain would start falling, I'd rush out and cover the windows up with tarps.

Later in the morning, Joe - Tyler's friend from work - stopped out to help with the windows. While he and Tyler worked on framing up the rough openings on the front of the house. I worked on demolishing the North and South walls in prep for the new windows.

We worked away all Saturday. By the time we quit, the entire front of the house was Tyvek wrapped and two windows were installed. Even though our progress had been great, there were just a few problems - the openings for the two windows and front door. Since it was 10 o'clock at night, it was doubtful the rest of the windows and door would be going in before we went to bed. So, we Tyveked them shut - some people need bars over their windows, we just need a good piece of Tyvek to keep out the coyotes.

By the end of the day on Wednesday, we had installed all 6 single casement windows, both double casement windows, the French patio door and the front entry. Since the rains were really picking up, we decided to forgo the siding and focus on getting some stuff done on the inside of the house.