Planting Rosemary, removing the dying old cactus with Mom's help

landscaping day, Matt building stairs, mom cleaned the porch

Pictures of things being painted etc.

arch trimmed out, office closet door in

Expensive finishing touches

Updated below
It's difficut to be super excited about all the finishing touches that are going in to our house right now, on account of how amazingly expensive they all are. This project has gone WAY over budget. But here are some pictures of things that are currently being installed, like ceiling fans, bookshelves, butcher block kitchen countertops, and kitchen shelves. Also we recently had the AC unit moved into place beside the house instead of in front of it, and our interior designer friend Tense (and her dog Frito) is helping us select paint colors.

UPDATE:
Actually, we got two very inexpensive finishing touches, the kitchen hanging pendant and the kitchen door outside light (pictured: uninstalled on kitchen counters).

two more coats of polyurethane later...

floors with first layer of poly

here is a side-by side of the floors just after having been conditioned, and after the first layer of polyurethane. I think with one or two more layers they will be perfect, but we have to wait 72hrs for the first layer to sink in and dry enough.

paint samples, floor finishing

Updated below

We are in the process of selecting (exterior and interior) paint colors right now. This picture gives an idea of the general palette - cool greens and blues inside, most likely pink on the outside.

Also, Matt has utterly and completely removed every scrap of anything from the entirety of the wood floors inside, and sanded, swept and dusted them clean in preparation for finishing this week. I like the little warning sign he made for the front door. Today he is going to condition (with mineral spirits) and then finish (with oil-based semi-gloss polyeurethane sealer) the whole house, and in a couple of days (since it's going to be rainy and that first coat will dry slow) put down another coat. They will look so great!!

I just hope they dry and cure in time for the next round of subcontractors to come in - electric, plumbing, HVAC and carpenters - to do all the finish work. You'll notice the little space heaters in the picture - we have to have those because we aren't allowed to turn on the gas to heat the place until we pass the final mechanical and plumbing inspections, but we can't pass those until electric is done, but we can't have electric work done until we finish painting, but we can't even BEGIN painting until the FLOORS are done. I don't know how people usually do it, but in my experience scheduling all these various trades and inspections to flow together smoothly has been a confusing jigsaw puzzle at best, and a waking nightmare the rest of the time. But onward we go, in a wet and rainy week, hoping for the floors to dry fast enough for work to resume next week. SIGH.

UPDATE
"Waking nightmare" is actually a little overstating things. It's more like an "expensive heartburn".

Countertops, drawer fronts and shiplap

I had been looking forward to yesterday for a looong time, because it was the day the countertops were to be installed, and we'd finally get to see what our bold color decision on the kitchen island looked like. Well, we got to get a SENSE of it, but it was a letdown because the Austin Countertops people didn't cut the right shape hole to fit the sink. You can tell from the pics here that it's straight in places where it should be curved. Anyway, much stressing out later (about whether they were going to gracefully admit their mistake and eat the cost of re-doing it or not), once they came to look at it today they realized that it indeed needed to be fixed, and are going to do it for free. Whew!

You can see here also is the bathroom countertop - which they also kind of messed up because they cut the depth too short - but they have fixed that for free as well, and are installing that right now. Come to think of it, I should probably go check in and see for myself, to make sure it's right.

One thing that is not stressful is that Amanda is doing a beautiful job of installing the wooden shiplap faux-wall, which will form the kitchen backsplash and go behind the refrigerator. Also Bill and Bob are installing the drawer fronts, and they look pretty damned sharp.

porch and kitchen progress

Matt just finished doing an excellent job installing the porch decking, and now will move on to final sanding/finishing of the interior floors. Bill and Bob are busy installing and finishing all the kitchen cabinets/shelving, and Amanda is cladding the North wall in shiplap as well (behind refrigerator). Right now we are making all the color decisions for the interior and exterior paint, and the countertops (kitchen island and master bathroom vanity) are going to be installed on Monday. Progress!