Evan had a birthday which needed to be observed, so we got a cake and called the neighbors over (Dom & Wendy) and sang him the proper tune ... then we got back to work.
We now have running water in the house, that is to say, in one tap in the basement ... it is an incremental improvement. Chris is still spackling and sanding. Here he is in the buttery ... I wanted to be sure to show you how high the peak is and how he's risking life and limb to get to the top. I made him order a new taller ladder so he doesn't have to stand on the tippy topmost level.
Evan is working on the basement bathroom, creating the shower stall, getting wallboard and cement board up. He sent Chris and me to Colorado Springs with the admonition, don't come back unless you have tiles in the truck ... so we did ... and now he's mixing "mud" and tiling to his heart's content.
I'm in painting mode. Wall primer and wood trim primer. The trim in this room (den/library) will be blue. It has been tough to select the wall color ... we knew we wanted a simple warm off white ... and I got some that I thought would be fine ... NO WAY ... it was much too yellow on the actual wall. So I got smarter and got a whole lot of samples and painted splotches on the wall and now we have narrowed it down to a much better warm white.
Meanwhile, winter is setting in. The wood porch has been put to its intended use and the Tulikivi is fired every day and doing its job just fine.
Yesterday I went to Denver to shop for soapstone slabs for the kitchen island and counters. To see the graining the slab needs to be wetted. I kept this lady busy wetting and rewetting one slab after another. Finally I settled on the left one for the island and the right one for the peripheral counters. This is a little scary actually ... very hard to visualize the final outcome.
At the moment our whole house stinks with some mystery solution that the floors are being sealed with. Both the main floor and the upper level are being sanded and sealed by pros who do that sort of thing. They fill the knot holes and cracks with mystery goo and when they are done I suspect the floor will be gorgeous. Their machines and mystery substances are all from Sweden so I'm hoping that's in our favor. They put two coats of sealer on, then we go about our business finishing everything inside ... when we are pretty much ready to move furniture in, they come back and do one more light sanding and then apply the final coat, after which we stay away for several days while the whole shebang cures.
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