Yay for tile!

The tile is starting to go up! Jason (of Cox Flooring) came by himself on Thursday to cut and lay the cement board, then the crew came this morning to get started on tiling the wall behind the stove. It looks really nice, I think! It complements the stove well. They'll be back to work on the floor Monday and Tuesday and should finish up Wednesday.

And you remember we said we'd MOVE IN when the tiling was finished?! Well, we'll see if we can move in exactly when the tiling is done. I need to have all the "stinky work" done before we move in -- staining and varnishing for sure, and the more painting of trim that's done the better. And then we need to clean everything -- the windows and really almost every surface are filthy from drywall and sanding dust. And THEN perhaps we can start moving!


I finished sanding the railing last night, working into the wee hours since I knew I wouldn't be able to work this morning while the tiling crew was here. Then I started staining.

I welcome comments on the color -- it matches the old wood fairly well colorwise, but it's got a different tone. The old wood has a warmer tone, a little bit of reddish color to it. I'm going to experiment with the oil-based polyurethane -- it "adds a warm golden glow," according to the label, which might be just the thing to get the new wood to look more like the old. And if I don't get it to match, I'm not going to stress about it. It'll be just another aspect of our "hand-crafted" look!


Here's the promised photo of the trim in the kids' room! I think we did the right thing going with painted trim -- there's a lovely contrast between the old wood beams up high and the glossy new look of the painted trim.

I know there's supposed to be a chair rail piece of trim where the different colors of paint meet, but I'm not sure if I'm going to put any up. I even bought a piece for that, but I'm not sure how to do the transitions -- it would meet other trim in odd places on two of the room's windows. Dave also says that if he hits a wire nailing in a non-necessary piece of trim ... well, he left the threat open, but I'm sure it would be bad. That's why we took pictures of where all the wiring is, right? ... We did do that, didn't we? Hmm. I'll have to check on that.

... Back out to work again for me tonight! I'll work on finishing those stairs and painting some baseboard trim. That's moved up on the priority list, since we're contemplating getting some of the baseboard heaters installed this weekend and it's easier to put the baseboards up first. We need to do that because the tile will need some heat in order to set up correctly. The backup plan is to set up our space heaters out there for a few days, so I guess we don't need to panic about it.

Move-in day is quickly approaching!