It's not easy being green (or cheap)

In an effort to make this project house have the best re-sale value possible, we have had no choice but to try and make various aspects enviro-friendly. Honestly, it's not the first thing I think of - but it's what all the "kids are doing these days". One of the big things we decided to invest in was a tankless hot water heater. They came on the market a few years ago and received less-than-perfect reviews. However, they have come a long way since then and (thankfully) so has the price. While they are still slightly more expensive than the standard hot water heater - it's reasonable. An added bonus is that they are now about the size of a shoe box (we have a 250 sq ft basement....space matters). The unit mounts to the wall (which is kinda' cool) and requires more electrical juice than anything in the house (not clear on how this makes it a green item, but I don't make the rules). According to Trent (Mr. Researcher) this name brand of tankless heaters receive the best reviews and are the cheapest.

My husband....MacGyver

We have been planning on having the yard completely torn up, leveled, re-seeded, and looking beautiful. We knew we would have to hire a portion of it out. We had a dollar figure in mind (which seemed reasonable to us). The work was started this past week. The actual dollar figure started to grow. About 25% of the way into this project we decided we would take care of the rest of it ourselves (even though we had no idea how). I spent the weekend pushing dirt around, cutting old roots, and picking up debris. Yesterday, Trent and I stood looking at the yard (aka: dirt hole) trying to come up with any ideas to get the yard smooth enough to plant grass seed. Leave it to my husband. He pulled out one of our 4-wheelers and attached some chains to the back of it. Then he took what was the back porch, flipped it over, and fastened it to the chains. Viola! Initially, the idea looked ingenious. However, once Trent started cruising around the yard (in circles) with an old porch attached to the back of our 4-wheeler.....well, I wasn't certain whether I wanted to claim my husband or not. Either way, the job is done and grass seed is being planted today.

On track

We are on track for the house progress (at this point). The exterior work is done! The lawn is being completely scraped and re-planted today, so we should have nice, pretty grass within the next few weeks.
As for the interior, I will post more photos this weekend (as we plan on spending most of our holiday weekend working at the house). The framing is all done, the plumbing is started and should be finished by this weekend , and the heating and cooling should be done by next weekend. Woohoo! We are moving along.