Burst of activity and camera is fixed

For the camera, all I had to do was reformat the memory card.

This week was a burst of house renovation activity. Most days, we had between seven and nine people working here: two to three painters, two to three contractors, and two to three high-school students cutting down trees.

The contractors were McKernon folks, finishing up various details inside and out before the final grading and outdoor work is done (next week?!). The painters are folks we hired to do the 22 new windows and 9 new door frames — exacting, detailed work that would have taken us at least a year to do on our own. As it is, it’s taking the painters 2-3 weeks, nearly full time to do it for us. The high-school students are a neighbor’s son and his friends who love to clear trees during their spring break. Coincidentally, all three of these very tall, polite, meticulous young men are named Nathaniel….

Some photos:

Inside, McKernon has been doing finishing touches like sealing the slate tile (on the vanity top and under the Jotul wood stove), covering the downstairs bathroom vent with a nice, handmade grate:

It’s a small thing, but nice to see it done. Also in that room, the barnboard around the tub is done, and the tile, and the grout, and the caulk and… well, all that’s left to do is a little more painting!

Here’s what the tub looks like now:

In the upstairs bathroom, Eric brought some nice cherry to put on the walls next to the tub to finish things off there:

That yellowish swath of paint over the cherry is the new color for the bathroom. In the photo it looks tan, but in reality it’s a fairly pale yellow. Aside from painting, this room is pretty much done, too. For both bathrooms, we still need to find and install details like toilet paper holders and towel racks, but nothing that can’t wait another year… 🙂

While we’re upstairs, I can show you the final touches on the paint job in Hyla’s room:

This is Michael’s smart solution to the uneven edge we have at the baseboard because of old plaster — it’s nearly impossible to paint a straight edge because the plaster is so bumpy and uneven. So he thought of the waves to eliminate a straight edge, and, besides, it looks pretty cool. These waves currently go around the entire room except for the door; we’ll add them to the door when we finish repainting the rest of the door white.

In the new living room downstairs, the Morso wood stove installation wasn’t to code because the ceiling beams were too close to the stove pipe. McKernon moved everything back so that they are now a legal, safe 6″+ from the pipe:

And they also added a mantel made from one of the original, leftover beams:

We still have a small stack of old beams on the porch to use in other projects or sell. We also have scraps of extra “barn board” (mostly floor boards from the second floor of the original ell). This week, Brian put some of those barn boards to work finishing off the entry way to the new living room:

Things are moving along outside, too. Eric put a nice facing of brick around the two chimneys:

And Eric, Brian, and others finished priming the new clapboards:

Meanwhile, Brian built us some porch and deck steps. This one is off the short end of the porch:

And this one is in the corner where the porch and deck meet:

They also put the skim coat of plaster over the Eco-block on the foundation to give it a more permanent finish:

I’ll publish this entry now and update you with another one about the tree clearing after lunch…