Interior painting almost finished!

All the tape and plastic are down.  The walls, ceiling and trim are in their nearly-finished state.  It won't be long now until we are finished with everything.

The microwave is in.

The window seat is now a crisp white to match the rest of the trim.  Still to be installed are the trim pieces on the windows that secure the panes.

The bathtub is in.  The kitchen sink and bathroom sink are still being re-finished.

The french doors between living and pool room have been sanded and are being stained.  They were painting the other interior doors yesterday.  These will be the only doors that are stained. 

The high-gloss paint on the ceiling really helps brighten the dark wood walls.

This week will see electrical finish-out, and maybe tile in the bathroom.  I'm not sure when the floors will be done.

That's all from Wisteria Bend for now.

~Christy

Walls and ceilings..and a giant copper flying pig

I haven't posted much over the last few weeks because the progress wasn't photogenic. The guys have been sanding and caulking which is so important for the finished result, but doesn't convey well in pictures. But now I'm excited to see some progress and share it with ya'll. 

All the walls have two coats of poly-acrylic so they have a nice sheen but don't look stained or overdone.

The bathtub arrived.

I don't know how much it weighs, but I do know I will be worthless to try and move it.

Last weekend, the guys primed the ceiling and trim.

They also started priming the cabinets in the kitchen.

While they were working, I tried to stay out of the way--by heading to the antiques festival in downtown Fayetteville and Round Top.  I found a cute towel rack for the bathroom and acrylic footrest, among other treasures.

By the time I got back, they had moved on to painting the ceiling, thankfully wearing safety gear.

We decided on high-reflective high-gloss white on the ceilings to brighten up the dark walls.

This is still wet, and I'm not sure how glossy it will be once it dries.

The electrician is supposed to come on Thursday to start installing light fixtures, so I took the first car load of light fixtures.

I have to admit it was intimidating to head down I-10 with a trunk full of crystal chandeliers.  But it turned out OK.  Whew...

Now as a complete aside...I found one more treasure at Round Top that I'm keeping for myself.  Meet Ziggy Piggy.

Round Top...because you didn't know you needed a giant copper flying pig until you saw it smiling back at you!

That's all from Wisteria Bend for now.

~Christy

Backsplash and other miscellaneous

Kitchen backsplash is in on both the old side and the new side.

Since burning the leftover cheesecloth threads was such an epic fail, the team is just pulling all the nails.  

So it looks like nothing is happening, but this is tedious work that is going to mean a far better result later.  They had finished the smaller bedroom when we were there on Sunday.

The interior of the windows in the master bedroom were being prepped to spray the trim and ceiling paint.

The bathroom floor is finally complete.

The tub "should" be delivered Tuesday.  This will be the third promised delivery date....

And finally for the interior, the mudroom has been sanded.

 For the exterior we FINALLY finished weeding and mulching the cistern paddock.

And decided to keep going with the chicken coop paddock.

Clearly, we still need to kill/remove the hackberry stumps, but those buggers are their own project for another day.

We couldn't finish because the poison ivy had started filling back in and we have to wait for it to die from the spray.  Also because we got too tired.  Like a complete idiot, I must have taken 3 trips before realizing the wheelbarrow had two flat tires.  That made me run out of steam a little early.

That's all from Wisteria Bend for now.

~Christy

Countertops!

The countertops arrived on Saturday and were installed on the new side of the kitchen even before we arrived.  They were still working on the old side.  It was so neat to see the stone while in process of being cut for the countertops. You could see some slight veining while they were cutting the pieces.

We chose soapstone because it was available in the era the house was built.

But once the guys got them installed and applied sealant to bring out the color, I absolutely fell in love.

 The sealant gave them an amazing sheen and made the veins pop.

But, alas, for the time being they will be covered with plastic while the work in other areas continues.

There is a lot of sawdust.  Larry claims he has no idea how this happened.

This week the refrigerator arrived. We are keeping it at Mom and Dad's house until WBC is further along.  To save money we skipped delivery and Mom and Dad picked it up themselves.  Miraculously, they avoided every thunderstorm between Houston and Sealy.  However, we still had to figure out how to get it out of Dad's truck and into the garage.  Easier said than done with two retired people, a shrimp, and someone who recently had back surgery.  We wound up sliding it down two boards that sat on the tailgate.  Mom and Dad were walking it along the skids; Larry and I had a rope at the top of the fridge to keep it from tipping over.  (If you've ever watched the Smithsonian documentary on the secrets of Easter Island, it was kind of like that only scarier).

We managed to get it down safely, but let's just say we are paying someone to move it to WBC.

Finally Larry and I made more progress on the cistern paddock. With the rain came a litany of weeds to pull.  Larry calculated 515 shovels full of mulch over 19 trips with the wheelbarrow.  The new mulch we added is darker because it was wet.

And while we were at it, we found a new friend, who we named Sampson.

Sampson is a 2-foot long checkered garter snake, who we hope goes far far away and doesn't return.

That's all from WBC for now.

~Christy