Baby pictures

OK, OK, I can't help myself... I've turned into one of THOSE proud mothers to be....I can't help it. He's just so cute.
I had a 3D scan yesterday and here are some pictures of our little kiddo in utero at 28.5 weeks.

Wood Stove

The ground floors came out pretty well. The 3M safest stripper worked
wonders… the trick being to tarp it overnight (with a tarp, not
cardboard – which was handy after we ran out of tarps, but very
ineffective). The floor has a quite a few discolorations that I may
have been able to sand out, but the time/ effort/ cost/ what can I
accept/ equation lead me to the judgment of ‘good enough’ and I
moved on. The finishing touch was to paint the wall in the dining room red.
This may seem unrelated to the floor issue, but when you enter the room
you immediately notice the red wall and don’t look at the floor one
bit.

I have begun work on the kitchen construction, Ilana is looking for
appliances and wood stoves and other fixtures. Burris and I decided to
start by putting some lights in the kitchen ceiling and running the
kitchen electric. After a long discussion at the building supply place
we discovered they had only one model of light that would work as a
can-light, but it was ½ too tall to fit between the ceiling joist.
Since most of the joist boards were not nailed down we pulled them up,
ripped some ¾ material and tacked it on top of the joists… no big
deal, just half a day of work.

We ended up being two lights short so I went back to the building
supply place and to my amazement they had a whole new shipment of
different lights that were slightly smaller and would have fit in the
space without needing the ¾ padding had arrived. The existence of
these lights was not mentioned two days previously. Grrrrr.

Like most of the projects in this house, the kitchen lights are taking
more work because we are implementing long-term improvements. With the
floor boards out above the kitchen we added more insulation, and
weather-proofing.




The hearthpad for the woodstove is done! Burris and I banged it out
in 3 hours on Sunday. The stove will be delivered on Wednesday,

Red Wall

We were originally going to put the red wall in the living room, but decided to do it in the dining room instead so that it would draw the eye away from the floors. I'll let you decide if it was a successful stategy or not. I love the color of red, in any case.

Burris is building our bathroom vanity out of old-growth lumber that he and Kerstin salvaged from pieces our old subfloor. He's stripped, planed and hand sanded every piece in this cabinet, which was designed with an over-hanging sink. I'm told the graceful arch above the legs is his trademark design. Very cool!

Nasty Surprise Number 3

Oh, the tar! The tar!! It was everywhere. I guess this is our third, (and by Kerstin's estimation), final nasty surprise in our new house. For some completely unexplainable reason, the previous owners decided to tar the linoleum to the wood floors in the dining room, while they simply papered over the rest of the rooms. Why they did this, we'll never know. Kerstin has been heard muttering a few choice curse words over the past few days which, I can only assume, were aimed at Herb's ghost. Kerstin and Burris have done nothing but scrub, strip, sand, and attack the floor with various chemicals all week to try to get it all off the floor. In the end, Safest Stripper by 3M was proclaimed the best product for tar removal on the market. Burris and Kerstin can say this with confidence since they tried EVERY possible method. Man, it really stank in there. I don't know if it was the stripper or the tar itself, but it had this really nasty burnt chemical smell that I could only tolerate with a facemask. So I've been staying away from the house while this procedure is going on. The tar is now mostly gone (pictures coming soon) and all the floors have been sanded, re-stained and sealed. It's looking a whole lot better now. We're hoping this is the last of the nasty surprises.... They're starting to really bring us down.

Floors Unearthed

When Aaron and Liz were up here last weekend, we unearthed the wood floors under the linoleum. It was a very dusty procedure, but what a change after all the garbage was taken out. Ole gimpy was still able to lend his good hand. What a brother!

Completed Room Shots

The master and second bedrooms are complete! Check out the bitchin' floors. These are shots of the second bedroom (aka baby Gilg's room)...



And some shots of the master bedroom...



And finally, some fun "before and after" shots to see how far we've come....

Liz, Aaron and Ben come up to help

Liz and Aaron decided that honeymooning in Montreal was way too boring for them and they wanted in on our hot painting action, so they paid us a visit. They spent the weekend with us up here and painted like fiends until the trim was glistening and the walls were pure as the driven snow.





Ben also generously donated his weekend to painting our house and although he proved difficult to photograph, he was amazing with a cut-in brush. Thanks for the help Ben!

It was really cool having both my brothers up here. I think I'm pretty lucky to have such generous and helpful kin.



Kerstin and Burris put in a new window for the bathroom. Now the deer in the backyard can't watch us while we're on the can!

Floors and Shelves Go In

The floors are coming along on the second floor. We are really happy with the quality of the wood floors. The hallway and most of the master bedroom is now done.... and Kerstin looks so cute in this shot, I just couldn't resist.



The tile around the tub is now done! Burris and Kerstin did an awesome job on this, as you can see.


Karen painted the wall in the hallway, which looks great. We are almost ready to remove all the lino and reveal the wood floor underneath!