You will notice that Abbi and Evan have gone awol for a while. They are off on a bike adventure completing Abbi's quest to cross America from coast to coast in order to raise money for a worthy cause. You can read all about it on her blog: http://abbiacrossamerica.wordpress.com/ You might recall that she joined us after she met Evan in Salida, then continued on her way to just east of St. Louis where her knees gave out. She has recuperated while climbing our beams and becoming an indispensable part of our crew ... then the spirit of completing her mission grabbed hold of her again and so the two of them are somewhere in Kentucky as I write this.
Before Evan left, he did a whole lot of fancy woodwork creating a bannister for us. The straight pieces are still unsealed, but he didn't want Chris and me to topple over the edge while he was gone.
Our front door has finally been hung ... we still don't have a proper left handed door latch, but Chris isn't giving up his search for the perfect thing with spoon handle and everything.
We have some issues with melting snow drainage causing a horrid muddy squishy slimy mess so we have to bite the bullet and deal with it even though we swore we'd never ever have gutters again. Here we are working on the beginnings of a solution. The very next day ...
... it snowed ... four inches of heavy wet sloppy snow which of course meant that the ditch work came to a grinding halt. The melting/drying process was well under way after a few days ... and then it snowed again. So the machinery sits there awaiting drier conditions. Meanwhile I worked on painting trim in the basement.
The "elephant in the room" has been the finishing of the main level floor ... it wasn't quite to our satisfaction first time around and Josh the floor man has tirelessly worked to get the job done right. We knew this would be a big pain ... the wood dust is unbelievable. We tried to shield the kitchen area as best we could but, you know dust, it infiltrates everywhere.
We have been infinitely patient and knew we just had to suffer through it to get a beautiful floor ...
... This looks pretty good, doesn't it? Yes! I think so too ... but it is not the final coat yet. We have to get the baseboards up and painted around the room and then Josh comes back for the final coating.
We have had to move our digs into the basement during this time (fumes) ... into Chris' future office. The above image is a composite of six pictures ... I am standing in the opening between office and woodworking area just so you can get the full visual effect. It's not bad ... but I dearly would like to move back upstairs to the guest room.
We dragged our 5 million pound butcher block all the way from Lahaska and Chris is refinishing it for the new kitchen ... we'll need three or four strong people to help get it upstairs and set it in place.
The porches need to be oiled periodically ... here the covered porch gets its first treatment ... boiled linseed oil. The sun porch is not quite done yet, but it is coming along.
And lastly, a neat picture of Lars painting in the rafters that Chris contributed from his camera. We are noticing that all the windows are dirtier than you can imagine and that maybe we should clean them ... this will require professional equipment with squeegees on long extension poles (which we don't have yet) ... but Chris is giving it his best shot just to see what the world might look like through sparkly clean panes.
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