rounding the bend, finish line in sight...

Ok -- so it's down to the wire -- Ed and crew are wrapping up their duties and Hector has sanded the floors to prep them for stain and poly. You can see here that the kitchen hood is in which was the last of the appliances to be installed. A couple things remain to be done -- one is attaching one of the old beams from the second floor to the LVL along the peak of the kitchen -- it will give the look of an old beam. They guys notched it out so that they can fit it around the LVL and attach it with timber locks. That should happen on Monday but they'll have to do their work in socks because the floors have been sanded and if moisture or foot prints get on the floor it will show once it's been stained. Another view of the kitchen -- the plywood on the island is not staying -- it's just there to keep it out of the way for Hector. We plan on using some of the floorboards that were in the attic to make a counter top for the island. We're going to do this in my uncle's work shop -- the plan is to plane them down, biscuit join and glue them together and then treat them with something -- any suggestions for what to use to treat the counter? We don't want to use anything oil based like poly. Thoughts? The two pendants you see here will actually have two big glass globes on them...we just did want to put them up until the beam was installed.Here's the mostly cleaned out study -- I cleaned the ceilings yesterday. Lots of spider webs and 1700's stuff still up there.

Looking from the study into the dining room and kitchen beyond. May have mentioned it before but it will have a rectangular linen shade on it -- for now it's just there for people to walk into.

We're looking at the pantry in these photos -- you can see to the right of the fridge that Gus has done an excellent job creating a counter top look. Because the cabinet company didn't make 24" deep 36" tall cabinets we need to improvise to get the old fashioned pantry look over here. we bought base drawers and 15" above fridge cabinets and then we added some cabinet doors. For the "counter" we used birch plywood, like you see on top of the island. There are two pieces glued together. And to face the cabinets, Gus attached two pieces of pine. We're planning on painting it white to match the cabinets. The doors will then have glass in the open space.

Yesterday I had a little problem getting the fridge to sit flush with the cabinets like it's supposed to -- after all it's a counter depth fridge that is supposed to look built in -- BUT it was sticking out half an inch beyond the cabinets -- for various reason -- the ice machine tube, the plug, a couple of bumps on the back of the fridge. All of these things were more than half an inch deep. So what did we do - we cut out the sheet rock and plaster and voila the fridge fits -- the lucky thing was that as a practice Ed applies plywood to all kitchen walls that have cabinets attached. So we're in good shape.

So that's it for now...Leigh and I are going to head over to the house to move some wood out of the way so that we can have the storage trailer taken away next week. Fun stuff.