tile floor range

We have appliances in place. They're not hooked up yet, but they are in place. Looming there, waiting to be used. It's pretty painful to use the crappy electric 2 burner and the fancy toaster oven in our little apartment knowing that a real stove and oven is just a phone call away from being used! I can't bring myself to do it too soon. The counter tops are not in and there is no water hooked up yet. I'd be up and down the stairs making food mess on the job site. It is so close, but it is still a job site.

We made decisions on carpeting for the upstairs and some of the last paint choices this week. The carpet was painful. We settled for a simple (aghmm... cheap) wool carpeting that is okay. I really wanted this fancy wool carpet that was not only very pretty, but it had no glue or other toxins. The price for no chemicals is about four times higher and as it is we are $1200 over budget with the cheap stuff. The carpet we got is labeled "non-toxic." The saleslady assured me and said "there's nothing bad in this like there used to be." I don't suppose however that 20 years ago the carpet and furniture that is now considered to have been made with carcinogenic chemicals was sold as 'toxic' with sales pitches like "It'll kill ya, but don't it look pretty." Okay, so I am quite cynical here, but I have become paranoid about chemicals used in the home and I think with good reason (I am embarrassingly worse about food).

Did I just mention food... gets me thinking about that range... a real stove. It has been a very long time since I used a real stove. We have been living with the set-up here for a year and a half and before that for six years we had a mini apartment sized stove (not too bad, but you cannot cook a turkey). Must stop thinking about it.... must wait... new floor not made for dropping hot turkey dinner on.

Tilt and Dad put down the hardwood floor last week. It looks great. It makes me want to move in some furniture. With the floor comes doors. The main floor doors are in. Officially we can pee with privacy (unless the five foot tall window creates any shyness). The floor in the upstairs bathroom is almost done. We have come up short in tile so we are waiting on an order. I am almost done with the mosaic tub surround. It is starting to take shape and I have become faster at the process. My fear of the tile saw has subsided a bit (with help from Tilt). Using it is so much faster than my snip and dremel set-up. With a couple unexpected days off from work this week, I think I will have it finished and ready for grouting at the same time as the floor. I wonder if we paint first. We have trim to paint upstairs and trim to oil downstairs.

Speaking of downstairs, that refrigerator sure would look good with food in it?

floor trim inventing

While we have not done much skiing or snowboarding, the new warm ski helmet came in really handy for a bike ride to the beach this February. K and I were lucky to spend a week at the Cape while Tilt had time to focus on the house.

Just before we left he finished as much trim as he could without the doors. We trimmed in the downstairs with oak boards that were cut off the longer lengths of the timber frame beams. It will be oiled whereas upstairs we decided to paint the trim. It was overall less expensive to buy doors to paint rather than oak doors. It was not our plan initially, but I do like to use paint. It can be changed when the colors lose their appeal. We have more than enough wood surfaces in the downstairs. Especially since the cabinets are going in.

Tilt has built the cabinet bases using ash because we also have ash boards that can be used for the doors. It is a paler colored wood than the oak and the cherry which I expected and a lot of grain which I didn't expect. We have decided to oil them. It will darken over time, the ash beams upstairs have.












The kitchen floor is done. It was a longer process to put the design in it, but it looks good. I have looked at the design on paper and on the floor for so long it doesn't make me say "wow" when I look at it, but I still like it and that is a good sign. Tilt's knees didn't seem too fond of the job, but he is pleased with it.

While Tilt builds, K is inventing things. A big cardboard box has been a hardware store, a trash compactor, a paper recycling plant and a week or so ago Tilt helped him build a marble run out of leftover thin strips of wood. The only downfall to K's building inventions is that small tools like squares, clamps, tape measures and hammers go missing now and then. Oh and the bucket of marbles spilled on the floor is not exactly safe job site practices.

The doors were delivered this week and with some neighbor help we got them loaded into the house. Next up there is tile to do in the upstairs bathroom. We have it all here and ready, though I have a crazy design to figure out of the mosaics first. Then there's hardware, faucets, counter tops, painting and oiling... yikes! It feels so close to move in time yet there is still so much to do.

night lights

In the evening, I go to the second story and turn on and off lights and check out the rooms. Living for a year in this house and not being able to do anything upstairs without plugging in extension cords makes this simple new connection seem like a luxury. Last weekend we had a bunch of electrical work done with help from Tim and Mark, the electricians and from Dad. Tilt put a sensor light in the hall and its great fun to watch it go on when I reach the top of the stairs.

My festival of lights this evening let me see the finished paint in the hall and bedrooms. We continued a neutral medium toned color called 'Oat straw' up the stairs and into the hall. That one feels a bit dull, but otherwise the colors are bright and fun. K's room is not finished because he would like his walls striped. So far his room is painted a color he chose called 'Blueberry.' And whoa, is it blue!  K did some amazing roller work to start it off. It was really hard to paint over his crazy yet balanced painting design to get ready for the stripes. We decided to leave it in the closet.

I have designed a slate pattern for the kitchen and mudroom floor. Tilt helped me get it from my small paper drawing to actual size template using thin cuts of wood for an edge. It was brilliant. Otherwise I'd have been drawing for days to get the lines curved the way I liked them. The slate is here and ready to go. So I think that is next on the agenda. We have ordered tile for the upstairs bathroom, interior doors for the first and second story and birch flooring for the first story. There is much to do yet and so much to see each day (and at night with our new lights).

fixing-it snow time

I am missing the snow this winter. There are no birds at the feeders, no snow covered hills for sledding, no snowshoeing, and even no ice skating (yet). There is plenty going on around here though. Tilt is super busy sheet-rocking, mudding, tiling, designing, and generally organizing it all. I am busy too, sometimes helping, sometimes working, sometimes designing, and sometimes shopping for various home and building supplies. Between school, daycare, gymnastics and playtime Super-K is  always at hand for "helping" also. This "help" leads to additional clean-up time, or additional fixing-it time, or additional time in general. It is greatly appreciated help, albeit in a completely different way.

The second story rooms all have sheet-rocked walls. The mud process goes on and on, fortunately the end is near. Paint (primer) by the end of the week is the rumor. Many small rooms and closets makes for many corners, corners, and more corners. I gave mudding some corners a shot. They needed some 'fixing-it time'.

The hallway upstairs is one of my favorite new spaces. We went through at least 4 different 'final' plans in our design. In the end the hallway turned out to be extra wide. It was a tough design choice. We had to get four rooms and a staircase out of a 24 x 36 space with half walls. It is so nice to see a drawing on paper work as it was envisioned. Not all of them have (mud-room and stairwell placement -to name a couple).

I am still not sure how the bathroom will feel when its done. We ordered some tile for the tub surround and the floor. Such commitments are hard to make. It's expensive so I hope I will still like looking at it in 20 years. The people at the tile store were generous with their time and patience. I visited 5 times with a preschool aged child ...large orange glass tile in little hands-"...this one is so pretty mommy, here you go."

I put out Christmas tree out by the bird feeders. Maybe is will draw a customer or two before it snows. Maybe they're waiting for the house to be completed.

Unrelated video of the King on Christmas morning (also can be seen as a tour of our studio apartment space).