Limei wants to know when she can start cooking in her new kitchen.  Oak flooring samples in the foreground.

My arch nemesis, the paint sprayer.  I thought I would knock out the eaves in a couple of hours, actual time being 4,
but that was not the case.  I got maybe 15% of the job done in the whole afternoon due to ladders, mud, and this
clogging sprayer.

Halfway through the day I was coated in mud.

Drywallers get to have all the fun.

Here's the finished eaves after I called in the professionals today - they did a nice job, and it only took them a
quarter of the time.  Lesson learned?  When you're running out of time, bite the bullet.  Love the color, the black
has a slight green tint to it, and it really makes the natural wood pop out.

Oh, and our interior doors arrived.  Jesse upgraded us to the "shaker" doors that don't have a
beveled edge around the interior panels.  A little more modern design that will match our cabinets.

Loving the way this room looks, it gets so much light in the afternoon even though there is no direct sunlight.

And finally, our front door.  Hung backwards.  Ooops, someones gonna have to fix that.  Not it!

Gettin' My Hands Dirty

These ceiling sheets of drywall were huge and a lot heavier than they look in this picture,
I'm glad I wasn't the guy installing them.

This is Ted pretending to work.  Literally.  He will have a lot more real work
to do when he comes to help install and finish the oak floors.  That's right,
I said oak.  Apparently there are a bunch of reasons not to use bamboo.

This is me actually working.  I did a lot more actual work than Ted did pretend work.

And this is what we were working on.  This was the easy part of the pine tongue & groove porch ceiling. We would later come to regret having to start on this end, but they were carrying drywall in the front door.  In hindsight we could have taken some
measurements to check for evenness, but as always Captain Hindsight was a little too late to actually help.

Meanwhile the drywallers were hauling ass.  The spots are from the flash
reflecting off of dust in the air.

The finished product.  This took Ted and I the better part of a whole day, but it was worth it.

This shot along with the above cleverly hide the gaps (pointless now that I'm telling you about it) from it not being installed perfectly straight.  We've got just a couple of more pieces to cut at an angle to fill in those gaps, some trim to install around the perimeter and then it's done.  The porch ceiling, not the house.

Really Back to Work.

Things are getting really busy for me at work and on the house, so here's a quick picture post.  On Thursday I'll start getting my hands dirty with the porch roof, running speaker wire, and putting in the microwave vent.

I hired my friend Ted to help out with some oddball projects in addition to helping us w/ the flooring install, here's
his first project:  a built in bench for Limei's bay window.  The top will swing open, giving access to a nice storage area.

A pocket door was added to the original design so that we could close off the laundry/mud room
from the rest of the living area.

Limei couldn't figure out why they were putting pink cotton candy on our walls...
She said that it tasted old...

Hopefully this will be our new floor.  The price is right where we want it - more expensive than a
cheap laminate, but less than a pre-finished oak.  Looks like good stuff, a nice solid bamboo.

Back To Work

So.  Early.  Don't let our big coats fool you, it was actually above 30 today.  When it is below zero just a few days prior it's hard to break out of the habit of bundling up in the morning, especially at the ungodly hour of 8 AM.

Electricians and plumbers are now at work.  Limei and I were at the job site bright and early to go over the electrical plan today.  We had to decide basically where all of the lights would be and switches for them.  Our contractor and the electrician were quite helpful, there were a lot of decisions to be made.  Hopefully they all seem like good ones after we've lived in it for a little bit.

Here's a sample of the colors we are looking at - dark green for the main color with black trim.  Limei things they are too close, so I would like to go darker with the trim, so we'll see.  We might look at a dark brown for the trim too.

One more mixup, I told them over and over I didn't want the shower in the garage but these things have a way of slipping through the cracks.

Twas a Merry Christmas

Aww, look at the happy couple :)

Limei loves here Ferrero Rocher.

The mysterious box from Holland contained chocolate letters.  Thanks Patrick!  If you're in the mood for some
cranberry buffalo jerky bites, just say the word :)

Chad with the traditional Christmas Sushi.

It was a relief to find that the tin from Dakota Treats didn't consist
entirely of candy.  Thanks Mom and Dad!

Crab!!!

Crab!!!

Peace to you and yours.