digging out

The first few storms were disappointing, leaving only 2-4 inches each. The final storm was more respectable. We awoke Thursday morning to a foot of new snow. I think my new indicator of "heavy" snowfall is when the driveway heating gets overwhelmed. The system comes on when it senses precipitation combined with low temperature. When the snowfall is heavy enough, it covers the sensor (despite the heater on the sensor to prevent this) and the system no longer detects the precip. This happened Wednesday night, so we had to get the snowblower out to clean up the driveway on Thursday. Of course we cleaned out the sensor and turned on the driveway, too! We probably have the only dry pavement around! The snowplow came and made one pass down our street yesterday afternoon, and today they came back and cleaned it up wall to wall.

We (Tim) actually thought to cut down our Christmas tree before the biggest storm, so that we didn't make it harder than it needed to be. This tree was picked out due to its location. It blocked the view of the lake from our guest room.
Knitting update:
I have finished the two Christmas projects that I had been working on and will reveal them after gifting. I finished Jamison's 3rd mitten (the match for the size that fit properly) and realized that it was bigger than the first, so I frogged it and started over. I think I must have knit the first rather tightly, because of concern that it would be too big. I'll knit the next one more tightly this time -and keep the other around as a reference so that I can keep on track. This is a risk, because it becomes something that Jack can steal, if not locked up safe in my workroom (where I don't really work that much).

I also joined Ravelry, an online knitting community, which is pretty great. If you are a member, you can see the secret projects there.

Winter has come to the Sierra Nevada!!

After a dismal winter last year, we have been hoping for a big snow year and some good skiing this winter. We had several coatings of snow early (September-October) and it got our hopes up. But then there was nothing. The area was totally dry and ski resorts were having to make snow. Below is a picture of Homewood a few days after Thanksgiving:
Pretty depressing. The patches of snow are man-made. Finally, the winter storms have begun. Our first real winter storm came in on the 6th. It wasn't huge, but was enough to cover the ground and with a good thick coating and begin our base. It also brought the beloved sound of snowplows scraping the roads (indicating significant amounts of snowfall). Here is the bottom of Homewood after that storm:
Now we have a series of storms coming at us. We are currently in the midst of the second storm in a series of 5. The first only gave us a few inches, but today's system is supposed to give us around 10". The winter storm warning for the area says that the storms behind this one may drop an additional 1-2 feet by late Thursday, but that may be at higher elevations. Hopefully we will get a bunch here at lake level! Here's a glimpse of the current conditions:
In light of the power outages in the East, you may think I'm crazy for wanting so much snow, or you may wonder if we don't have a problem with losing power out here. Actually, we lose power a lot in the winter. While that is a part of life here, we have a backup generator, so it won't be too big of a deal. In fact, the electrician installed the transfer switch just yesterday. Our generator can't run the whole house, so we only have selected circuits connected to the backup power. We will not have power for the oven and dishwasher, some of the outlets, some of the lights. We will have the heater, partial lights, internet (and wi-fi), TV and more. We won't be roughing it in an outage.

Trying to get this going again

If anyone even checks this blog anymore, I am going to try and get it going again. September and October were difficult months for me, and then in November, I was so embarrassed about the long dearth of posts, that I put off dealing with it.

Basically, I have been spending a lot of time working on the paper/thesis. In order to focus on it, I have denied myself most fun activities. Without fun activities, I don't have anything interesting to blog about. You would think that the paper/thesis and defense would be done by now (I did), but unfortunately, they aren't (which is rather depressing). My adviser does not seem to be in any hurry at all. He has caused quite a bit of delay as he changes his mind about the discussion section and how to analyze the data. Most recently, I have been the cause of delay, having come down with a terrible cold on my last trip to Seattle and having to come home early. I'm still recuperating, although I head back up to Seattle tomorrow. I have been going up to Seattle every few weeks and staying 3-6 days at a time. Someday, this thing will be finished. My blogging will probably not be that frequent until I finish the PhD. I will, however, try to post regularly. I do let myself do fun things sometimes, so there are some things to post on, other than my science writing.

The long slow writing process has been pretty depressing and hard on me, so I have been trying to include more fun in my life. I have been doing a bit of knitting, for example and some natural dyeing. I currently have 4 knitting projects on the needles:
2 are Christmas gifts, and they are halfway completed, and that's all you get to know about them.
1 is a simple pair of socks in lightweight STR which are a good traveling project for the plane flights
And there is the lizard ridge blanket that I started this summer. That has been on hold ever since Jack decided to get out the skeins of yarn and play with them. I had to move the project basket out of the living room, so it isn't very handy anymore and I need to clean the blond hairs of the skeins.

My Cabinets are in

The cabinets for my workroom finally arrived... and filled the room.
Then we Tim installed them on Wednesday evening...

...while Jack supervised.
Thursday, we picked up a counter top in Reno. Yesterday Tim installed the counter top and I have begun to move in.

Now the room is a disaster area, but it is destined to be a great work space!

We've Got Curtains!

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago, but I have had a technical problem. I can't seem to take a decent picture. The pictures I have taken of the curtains keep coming out with poor focus. I've tried taking them on several occasions, varying the parameters that I can, and finally just decided that they are blurry curtains, and that I can not photograph them properly. Hopefully, the size of picture here won't even show how bad the pictures are:)

Tim's mom, Barbara, made us these lovely curtains while she and Loren were here visiting at the beginning of the month. I am very pleased with them!

First is my workroom:

I am trying out this cool table, as a desk.

Below are the curtains in our bedroom:
Note that we have proper bedside tables now, instead of the boxes. Actually, We got our new bed, so I'll get some pictures of that up soon.

The Fire is Out

The "Washoe Fire" near Sunnyside was 100% contained at 11pm last night and this morning we can't see any smoke at all. It looks to be out, and apparently it is now just a mop up operation. Local fire crews responded quickly and put up a huge effort yesterday to contain the fire. They were able to keep it to under 15 acres, with only 5 homes lost. It could have been much worse. One of the factors in minimizing the damage from this fire, was the fuel reduction the US Forest Service had recently performed in the area.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) is a bi-state (California and Nevada) regional planning agency created by the federal government in 1969 to protect the Lake Tahoe area. In order to remove a tree from one's property, permission from the TRPA is required (at homeowner's expense). They have a reputation for being rather stingy about it, too. They have been more amenable to tree removal in the last 10-years, but many believe that it is "too little, too late". We now have a basin filled with fuel just waiting for a fire. This week, at the 10th annual Lake Tahoe Forum, US Senators considered declaring an emergency in the area in order to allow the Forest Service to bypass TRPA's control and clean up the forest to reduce fuel. Rumor has it, Senator Diane Feinstein was among the Granlibakken Resort guests who had to be evacuated because of yesterday's fire. While I think she already understood the fire danger problem here, this experience may help underscore the severity of it. Fortunately, the winds blew yesterday's fire towards the US Forest Service land that had undergone fuel reduction work. That is when the fire behavior changed and the firefighters were able to contain it.

I understand that TRPA is concerned about people cutting down too many trees to improve their views. I also get their concern about soil erosion with larger projects and how the run-off could effect lake clarity. I just think that they are being rather short sighted. A large fire in the basin will do way more damage to this area than I can even comprehend. Hopefully the two fires this summer (so far) will encourage the TRPA to be more reasonable and property owners to take action and responsibility for taking care of their land. Myself included.

Another Fire

There is another fire in the Tahoe basin. This one is much closer to home, but not too close. Initial reports put the fire in Meek's Bay and even in the Homewood area, but those were incorrect. The fire is about 5 miles north of us. We've been listening to the fire trucks coming up from the south and watching the helicopters and fixed wing aircraft do their thing all afternoon. I I took this photo from the kitchen window. I don't think we are in any danger from this fire, but this is very close to home. Highway 89, the main road to get anywhere for us, is closed because of the fire. In the last hour, it appears to us that things have improved, so hopefully that is the case.

Spin Day

One of the many reasons I was looking forward to moving here, was to spend more time on my hobbies, especially the fiber activities. There is a spinner/weaver who has a booth at the local Farmer's Market (she has been there for years) and Valerie said she lives here on the West Shore. When I was in Auburn buying Noro Kureyon for my Lizard ridge (yes it is progressing) the shop owner mentioned that she thought there was a spinning guild up here. Or was it Judith McKenzie McCuin who said that at Madrona? Somebody said it, I'm sure. Well, I went to the first Farmer's Market this summer in search of fresh veggies and a spinning contact. I had spoken to her (and bought something) years ago, but didn't really remember her. Pat is a blast! She told me that there is no guild, but that a group of spinners get together once a month at her house and call it Spin Day. The Spin-Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR) has been held at Granlibakken Resort, not far from here many times in the past, including last fall. The Spin Day group took a field trip and went to the marketplace together last year, so that is probably how the whole guild rumor got started. Judith McKenzie McCuin was teaching at the 2006 SOAR, so maybe she was the source...

I was unable to go to the July Spin Day, but I did get to go to the August one, which was on Sunday. Pat makes a living selling her homespun yarn and her woven goods. She also does something with printing. She has a gorgeous (brand-new) studio with 4 looms and her printing press along with all the goodies that go with them. The attic above the studio is called the Candy Store, and contains her stash (which I got to see). Her husband, Erik, also spins and he bakes goodies for Spin Day. Three other ladies, besides myself and Pat and Erik, came to spin. They brought their dogs to play with the resident chocolate labs. I'll spare them my dogs until I'm in good :) It was really great to get to know these fun people and to get some spinning done. I hadn't used my wheel since we moved into the house in June, as my work room is not ready yet and all my stuff is in boxes. That isn't a good excuse, because the wheel isn't in a box, and my un-spun fiber stash is one of the few things that has been organized and put away and is accessible. I have had a lot of other stuff to do though. I decided to finish up the red stuff, as I had two full bobbins and the third was 1/4 full. I was able to fill up that final bobbin at Spin Day, and then began plying it last night. This is my first attempt at 3-ply, so it was a little trickier than 2-ply. I am quite pleased with the yarn I have made though.

Even though I don't have a Local Yarn Store, I do have a local fiber source, as Pat gets stuff wholesale from Ashland Bay and stocks a fair amount of fiber.

Unfinished Spaces

Here is our bedroom. Note the bedside tables (a matching set)! We bought a new bed for this bedroom, because it is big enough for a California King, which is big enough for Tim. First we tried a tempur-pedic mattress, which we didn't like, then we got a traditional mattress and boxspring. We were waiting to get a bedframe, depending on the type of mattress that we ended up with. Now that we've settle on the mattress, we have ordered a bed and matching bedside tables, that are made of wood rather than cardboard.
We also have makeshift curtains. The moon was shining in to our eyes, so Tim nailed up some old blackout curtains that we had. We looped them up during the day to get air to flow in.
Fabric has been purchased and proper drapes are being made by Tim's mom, Barbara. It should look like a proper bedroom soon!Below, is my work room, and the fabric I bought to make into curtains for this room. I haven't been able to get settled much, because we are waiting for the cabinets that we ordered to cover one wall. The room is basically a box storage room these days. I am very happy to have access to most of my stash, though!

August Views of the House

There have been requests for pictures of the hose, all settled. Not all of the rooms look settled yet, but here are pics of rooms that are.So there are some pictures of relatively settled rooms. The last one is a spare bedroom, sort of overflow guests or whatever. This room will probably change as we continue to settle. Stay tuned for upcoming pictures of the unfinished/settled spaces.

I'm a slacker...

as a blog author. Well, there are more important things to do... like wake boarding. So, blame my dad for the nice birthday present! Actually, I hurt my knee that first day, and it hurt quite a bit for a couple of weeks ( even went to a doctor), so I waited for my knee to get better before I let Tim drag me behind the boat again. It's better now and we've been having fun playing in the water!

This blog is supposed to be about progress, and well, there hasn't been much of that. I have been working on the paper, which will be most of my doctoral thesis, but that isn't so exciting to blog about. For example, I went to Seattle in July, to pow-wow with my adviser, Dan, and it went quite well. I'm flying back up there next week, so there is real progress there. Who wants to hear that we've switched back to EndNote to manage the references? Dan wanted to use something else (web-based) that he thought was better, so we were using that, but then he realized that it wasn't as good as advertised, so now we are back to EndNote. I've added a bunch of references to the EndNote library for the paper. Whoop di doo. Are you fascinated to hear that when I was up in Seattle I got some info from my lab notebooks, so I was able to increase the detail on construction of a particular plasmid in the "Materials and Methods" section? And we've got a lot of data analyzed. Aren't you glad I haven't been blogging on this stuff? Most of all, writing a scientific paper just doesn't really make for good pictures.

The house is almost done, but things have been slow. I hear that is how it is at the end of a project. We finally got our front door, which was kind of a big deal, but I haven't got a picture of that yet. Now it is time for some decorating, which is happening slowly. I promise pictures of that soon.

Festivities

I felt like a kid on my 40th birthday (last week). My dad came over in the morning with a gift that couldn't wait until we had dinner together that night. It was a wakeboard to go with our boat! You can see me trying it on, while trying not to damage any furniture with it's fins, or vice versa.
Well, we had to go out and try it so Dad, Val, Tim and I went down to the boat and gave it a try. I don't have any pictures to prove that I actually was wake boarding (for the second time in my life -the first was ~10 years ago), you'll just have to believe me on that. The wake board is totally girlie, as you can see from the photo below:

We have had friends in town visiting for the 4th and related festivities, so we've been busy. There were fireworks on the West Shore on the 5th, and we had an excellent view right from our deck!

Once again, the Lake Tahoe basin is filled with smoke from a wildfire. This time it is the Plumas County Fire up north towards Susanville. It isn't so unusual to get smoke from wild fires sitting in the basin, but it is unusual to have them so frequent. Hopefully the whole summer won't be like this! My eyes sting a wee bit from the smoke, and I just kind of prefer the nice fresh mountain air that we usually have.

Pretty Kitchen

Fire Update: It is now 44% contained. The weather today was a bit breezy, which greatly improved our air quality. We were able to see the shoreline out the window again and very little ash rained down today. It seems like the fire didn't completely behave itself today, which added to the concerns of those down in South Lake Tahoe. The real concern is that the fire will move east (away from us) which could endanger that community. I am still convinced that this fire does not threaten us. Geography and wind direction are on our side.

Now it is time to start catching up on all the house pictures that I took, but wasn't able to post until DSL came back. The tile guys came to finally finish the kitchen tile. The accent tiles finally came in and they are pretty. I really like the way it all turned out.
here's a close up of the tile:

The painters are coming tomorrow to finish painting. They plan to repaint our bedroom and bath, and touch up a bunch of stuff. Painting our bedroom will be a big step. We have been waiting for this, before we settle in. So, after tomorrow we can do just that. Really settle in.

After paint, we still need the electricians to finish their thing. We are also waiting for our front door and some of the door hardware. We passed inspection for everything except the fireplace. We have to install the glass doors on it for code. I drove down to South Shore last week (right next to where the fire is now) and picked up the glass, so we will probably get that done in the next few days. It is a good thing I got it last week, because now the road is closed!

Knitting Catch-Up

I have been busy moving in and working on the house in general but obviously not posting on the blog, however I have managed to knit a few things.

I knit a pair of pedicure socks for Annika out of Blue Moon Fiber Arts(BMFA) heavyweight Socks That Rock(STR) in "Backstabber" (which I could not find on their website), however I forgot to get a picture before I gave them to her, so you'll just have to trust me on that. They were basic stockinette socks, without the toe, and about an inch of 1x1 ribbing on each end.

I also finished the toe up socks using Wendy's pattern that I showed ages ago. For those I also used BMFA STR. These were mediumweight in "Fire on the Mountain". That name seems so apropos today! These were for me and I love them, because they are so soft and comfortable. I was a little annoyed with the pooling on the leg part, but I'm pretty much over that, cuz they are so snugly.

It took me a while to obtain the yarn for my Lizard Ridge afghan. Since Kureyon can be so variable, I really wanted to get it in person, which is hard to do when there is no local yarn store (no LYS!!! how sad). I went to Jimmy Bean's in Reno, but they were phasing out all of their Noro yarns, and had no Kureyon. I eventually bought a bunch of one colorway in Auburn when I was down there last month on a paint errand. I was thinking I would just use one colorway, but it was a little too blah, because I was using a colorway with a lot of earth tones and light colors. So then I got brave and ordered 3 more colorways online, getting colors that would fit with my earth tone plus blue and green plan, while adding more contrast and personality to the piece. They arrived while I was down in the Bay Area a week ago, and I promptly got started. I'm very happy with it now.
By the way, I had to wipe the ash off of the ottoman before laying my knitting on it. Maybe it is time to close the windows? My eyes are stinging from the smoke.

With this afghan, I plan to bring together the colors that I have put into the blue room our guestroom. I'm not totally sure about the color we painted it. I think I was a bit tired from all of the decisions on the house when I decided to paint the room light blue. I wanted some color, but I didn't want to paint it yellow, which seems to be the "in" color in the mountains these days (or is that the case everywhere?). I also didn't want to paint it in "coffee house colors" like sage green. I thought blue would be relaxing and soothing for our guests... like a retreat. I think there is a chance that I pull it together, but the room needs some help to make the color work. So... the Lizard Ridge, which I really wanted to knit anyway.

Fire

I finally got the DSL hooked up, just in time to leave town for several days of family get-togethers. And then once I got back, I was pretty busy with house stuff. So, sorry for the dearth of posts.

You may have noticed on the news, there is a big fire burning in the Tahoe Basin. The basin has a lot of very dry timber, and we fear that we are at risk for a devastating fire, which makes this particularly scary. Fortunately, we do not appear to be in any danger. The fire is down at South Shore, and we are on the West Shore. The winds are generally to the East here, which should encourage the fire away from us, rather than towards us. The winds have calmed down considerably today, helping the firefighting efforts, so hopefully this fire will will not threaten anyone for much longer.

Sunday afternoon, we heard a lot of fire engines going by, all afternoon long, and we figured that something was going on. We got the details from the news and knew where to look as we drove toward the North Shore for our dinner plans.the entire south and east shores were covered in smoke (it was an absolutely cloudless day).
On Sunday, the winds were quite strong as well as gusty, which kept the smoke heading east, and most of it was going over the Carson Range and beyond the Tahoe Basin. This morning, the winds had mostly died down , which is great for fighting the fire, but the smoke began to settle in the basin. It is hazy with the smoke, and I've seen a bit of ash floating around. Tim took the picture below from the boat as I drove north to pick up some friends for a cruise.
For those who have expressed concern, thank you for thinking of us. We are fine and do not appear to be threatened at all by this fire. It does remind us of the danger of living on the edge of the wilderness.

Updates:
-At a press conference around noon, it was anounced that this fire is only 5% contained. Officials feel that they have two days to get it contained, because the wind is forcasted to kick up again on Wednesday.
-The calm winds that I thought would help firefighters are good and bad. The smoke is sitting in the basin making things hazy and the lack of visibilty has kept the tankers and helicopters out of the mix today.

Moving Day at last!

Today we moved our furniture and the rest of our stuff in to the house. It was snowing! As I write this, I am sitting on my couch, which I haven't seen since January. I really missed this couch. We have a dining table again, too! yeah! Maybe some of the boxes will yield silverware, glasses and plates!

Just in Time

We got a functioning toilet by Friday afternoon! I think all three are hooked up, but at least two are all set. We also have working faucets in the bathroom and kitchen! The kitchen appliances are all hooked up and working, except for the stove. It was all unpacked and we realized that they sent us the wrong version. We ordered sealed burners, and got open ones. We ended up deciding to keep the one we got, but it isn't hooked up to the gas line yet.

We began moving our stuff in on Friday, June 1st, as threatened planned. The house is definitely still a construction site, but oh well. I had begun cleaning the construction dust on Wednesday and had gotten all of the kitchen cabinets thoroughly cleaned out. Normally they bring professionals in to clean just before the owners move in, but there was no time left for that -and they weren't done yet. Once the workers left Friday afternoon, Tim and I cleaned the great room floors. This took hours, because 1. there were many different kinds of construction stuff on them and 2. they had to be totally clean because we were about to "seal" them. I used dilute muriatic acid (HCl to most people -masons still call it by the old fashioned name, it seems) to remove the drops of cement and grout from the stone and rubbing alcohol (isopropanol) as well as goo gone to remove the plumbers caulk. On Saturday, we treated the floor. It was not so much a sealant as an impregnator. The floor looks really pretty now. We got all of our stuff out of the rental and in to our new home. Today, we installed a dog door into the back door, so we are no longer required to be the dogs' butlers. Tonight is my last night in the rental. Tomorrow our new bed arrives at our house and I will sleep there for the first time. Tim is working nights, so I'll be christening the new house/bed all by myself. On Wednesday, we will move all of our furniture in. It isn't very comfortable at the moment with all of the stone floors and no furniture:)

It took two electricians and a pilot to install the light in the stair well on Friday.
This picture doesn't accurately demonstrate the height of this endeavor. Tim is standing on the upper landing, while the ladder is on the great room floor.

Still hoping for a toilet...

We officially move in to our house tomorrow. I think we will be cohabitating with the plumbers. They have a lot left to do throughout the house. I'm still hoping to have a functioning toilet by tomorrow. Here's the one in the master bath, all assembled. I was all excited to see it until Denver looked closely at the plumbing. She found that it isn't hooked up to the water supply yet. Jonas was unable to get that yesterday.
Denver didn't have to look very closely at this toilet to know it was not hooked up... it is out in the hallway/landing.
Yesterday we got a phone line and satellite TV, but there is a delay with the DSL.

electricians and painters and plumbers, oh my...

EVERYONE was at our house today. There were painters, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, heating guys, tile guys and granite installers. And those are just the ones I saw in a brief visit! The subs have to finish today (although at 1pm we had 0 toilets installed). Tomorrow the carpenters do their clean up and Thursday is carpet day. The we move in on Friday.

Here's what I estimate will NOT be done before move in:

1. Tile -There will still be a lot of tile to finish, both in the master bath and the kitchen, due to lack of tile (back order, ran out etc.).

2. Paint -I had a little trouble getting more paint for the master bedroom. I drove 1 1/2 hours (each way) to Auburn to get the paint (special designer stuff) and despite my calling ahead, they did not have the proper base paint. They will be delivering our paint tomorrow, I hope, but I don't know when they painters will put it on the walls. Also, there are a few areas that need to be fixed, paint-wise.

3. Some lighting -There are some light fixtures that I haven't seen yet. Not sure what the deal is on those

4. Plumbing fixtures -I'm quite sure they won't be done. I am still hoping to see a toilet installed, but will be surprised if we get more than one before Friday. Other fixtures are still lagging as well.

5. Shower glass -The glass guy was supposed to come last week to measure for the showers, but he cancelled. I haven't heard anything about rescheduling, but I know that they wanted us there, so I don't think he's been by yet.

6. External stuff -All the new windows have to be trimmed out on the exterior and in some cases, the siding has to be replaced. That is taking a back seat until the interior is done.

Oops, that was dumb!

In anticipation of occupying our home, I called the phone company to set up our phone. We are transferring our current phone number and service that I set up at the rental to our house. During the winter there appears to have been a conflict between our phone drop and a delivery truck or something. It has been clear for some time that the phone company will need to install a new drop (line from the street to the house) in order to get service to the house. Because it may not be as simple as activating service, I decided to get the phone switched over early -on Friday in fact. That would also give us time to test the new internal wiring, which has all been re-done. What I forgot was that our broadband connection is DSL (not cable modem like we had in Seattle). We lost our internet at the rental! We are a tad dependent on it. Oops. Unfortunately, it gets worse (but the rest isn't my fault) Even though I told the phone company ,when I set all of this up, that we would need a new drop, we didn't get one. It does not appear that anyone came out to verify service, which was supposed to happen. So we don't even have any phone/DSL at our house either. I messed up our internet access for NOTHING. Oh well. Don't try calling our phone number for a few days:)

The painters have been hard at work spraying finish on the woodwork. They have cleaned and re-stained all the beams and have sprayed the ceilings with a flat finish along with the satin finish they have been putting on all of the trim work. The house is all papered and taped, and filled with a nasty chemical cloud. I don't even want to go in there yet, because they were working yesterday.

We don't have any working toilets yet. The plumbers spent quite some time trying to figure out why they couldn't get the new toilet to fit properly in the guest bath. It turns out that the toilets are for a 12" rough-in and that bathroom has a 10" rough-in. Yes, I would think that professional plumbers should have considered that and gotten their measuring tapes out in less than 3 hours. You'd think that the symptoms would be pretty clear. They installed the rough-ins for the two upstairs toilets, which are 12" rough-in, so they may have had it in their heads that all of the toilets in the house were 12". The layout of this bathroom was left as it was built, so this is the original 1965 rough-in and therefor different from the others. Hopefully they can get a toilet installed in at least one of the upstairs baths!

What I hear is that all the subs have to finish up on Tuesday. Then the house gets cleaned up on Wednesday and carpet is installed on Thursday. We move in of Friday. Hmm...

So Much is Happening!

The painters have been lacquering the trim. They have finished the first floor and most of the upper floor. In the picture below, you can see where they stopped at the landing. The color of the alder is nice and rich with the finish.
The kitchen appliances arrived on schedule. The fridge, oven, microwave and range have been installed.The microwave drawer is pretty cool. It is great because it doesn't take up above counter space. It opens up like a big drawer and the food is placed in from above.
The electricians have been busy. We got some of these:
and some of these:
And we got our hot water heater today! When they were done with that, the plumbers turned toward the toilets! Unfortunately, the toilets are more complicated than most, so they didn't actually get one installed today. I do have high hopes that I we will have toilets by the time we move in.

House Update

We took a boating class over at the coast guard station this weekend. We learned a lot of important stuff -like the laws on boating, but then we were totally exhausted.

On Friday, all the doors in our house got together and had a little convention downstairs in the guest room. I couldn't get a picture, because they taped plastic across the doorway. Now they are all nicely varnished! The granite/tile folks were also busy. They installed 3 of 4 vanities. Below is my vanity and below that is the 2nd bath upstairs

Also, here's an update on the tile in the 2nd bath. It is done except for grout, I think.
Moving downstairs, into the great room: they started on the chase above the fireplace, which is being being built of alder plywood.
The busy granite/tile guys started on our kitchen backsplash. Unfortunately, the accent tile is on backorder until mid June! They are just leaving open spots that will be filled in later.
The basic tumbled marble look really nice with the counter top.
The big news is that the appliances are supposed to show up sometime today! They probably won't be installed until tomorrow at the earliest, but it's going to look like a real kitchen in no time!