Snow brightens everything

Evan has been waiting months to be able to start tiling ... any tiling ... seems he really likes doing tile work. The first tile task is the guest room shower. But, not so fast, it had to first be inspected to make sure there were no leaks in the exit plumbing. Since there are no edges around the shower we had to rig up a temporary ring dam that could hold water while the pipe below was sealed with an inflatable bulb to see if water refrained from doing any leaking. All went well and the inspector gave the go ahead.

Meanwhile, Steve has been working to get as much of the window trim done as possible before he takes a several week hiatus to disappear on a raft trip down the Grand Canyon with his wife. Seems the wrong time of year for that sort of adventure to me, but they are the hardy outdoorsy type.

We enjoyed the second snow whiteout of the season a few days ago. Not too much accumulation, but a real muddy mess as it started to melt the next day. The lovely surprise to me was how bright and light the interior of our house became with all that whiteness outside. It was truly extraordinary!

The garage apron was finished with the second concrete pour and now we are thrilled to have a nice flat pad to transition from exterior to interior on that bottom level.

Alpha Plumbing has come to our rescue not a moment too soon ... here they are soldering and cobbling together the copper ends for the heating manifold (the thing that guides water to the different heating zones). They wear two hats: heating & plumbing. The first set of contractors we had for h & p dumped us without explanation nor clue ... just didn't show and didn't return phone calls ... Chris was pretty peeved and finally just gave up. The guys at Alpha are showing up and doing a great job for us!

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Gyp-crete is the material that goes under the Saltillo tiles in the mudroom, kitchen and pantry/laundry. A company from Denver came down and poured the soupy mix for us. Their rig outside mixed the slurry on site with a pretty elaborate setup. Gyp-crete is the material that swallows up (imbeds) the radiant heating tubes in those areas. Watching the guys do their thing was fun ... I especially enjoyed the raised stilt shoes of one of the fellows. And they were quick ... it took only maybe an hour! Another hurdle passed.

While all these other exciting things are going on around us, we are forging ahead on our long term tasks. Me with painting: the last two garage doors here ... and Chris on his never ending task of spackling and sanding. He's quite dusty every day. In third picture he jokes around in the shower.