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).