Various finishing details

The finish work continues, with changes big and small all over the place.

Sheetrock is complete, including the wall over the tub in the downstairs bathroom

and the next step is putting a skimcoat of plaster over most of the new walls. Upstairs, they sprayed on a coating of plaster, and then ran trowels over every inch to give it a smoother, hand-applied look.

Here’s Hyla’s room with the new plaster:

We’ll be priming/painting the whole thing eventually.

The same treatment was done to the upstairs hallway, the guestroom, and our new room.

Downstairs, they decided to put the plaster on by hand rather than using the spray method. This is probably because it’s too difficult to cover and protect all the beams in the downstairs room. It might also be because they have to use the trowels anyway to get the right effect.

In the kitchen, one of the heat vents was moved so it’ll be under the baking table rather than in front of it

and then they were ready to varnish the kitchen floors!

This is the view from the old living room, into the kitchen:

and other view from the new living room, into the kitchen/dining room:

When they’re done with the plastering, they will sand all the existing downstairs floors and then apply a new coat of varnish over everything, so we’ll have a pretty consistent look. They’ve even matched the color of the new boards very well to most of the existing floor.

As you might be able to see in that last shot, the appliances have been delivered:

as have the kitchen cupboards. Now that the first coat of varnish is down in the kitchen, they can install the cupboards. They’ll put the next coat of varnish on after the cupboards are installed.

In the new living room, the replacement beam is up in the end wall, and it looks perfect:

Another detail: where possible, we’re reusing old doors from the house for the new rooms. In most cases, the old doors were odd sizes and, since the new door frames are standard sizes, the carpenters have done a great job of resizing the doors by adding or removing wood to make the doors fit perfectly. Here’s an example of a door that was made a little taller:

On our way in to the house, Michael noted the curve of the new clapboards at the corner of the front of the house:

Just a reminder that, as much as we’re doing to this house, it’ll still be our funky, uneven farmhouse.