The Windows are Done!!!!!!

Time to celebrate!  We finished finishing the windows!  Yahoo!  It has been two weeks this past Friday since we started this part of the project and we are sooo happy to be done!  We even broke out some champagne and brie! (Some of you know what a big deal that is!)  We even used our wedding champagne flutes! It was two weeks of nonstop 10 - 12 hour days (oh, we did take two days last weekend to do other project related things - apart from each other - it was a very necessary break). We are ready to take a day tomorrow to just clean up and catchup!  The back porch will finally be a back porch again as we return the tile saw to Bob (THANK YOU, BOB ) and stack the extra wood elsewhere!  Yahoo!!!!  Now to find some furniture for out there!  (And lights, I want some of those string lights!!!)   We also washed some windows (Annie, the inside of the windows will be ready for you in two weeks!) and the patio roof.  Maybe the best news it that the other morning we pared down our to-do list from 6 pages to 5!  We're getting closer!

The old "to-do" list with some of the tasks crossed off in red.....

has been replaced with a new 5 page list!  Yahoo!  I think the font is even bigger!!!!! 

One of the doors to the upstairs deck before we finished them!  Nice
insect control with the Puffs Plus,  don't you think!  Now they
actually have door hardware that works!

And what it looks like now!  (Sorry for the night shot!) No more insects coming
in through the holes! 

We used the upstairs deck as the workspace to finish one of the
guest room doors!  Nice place to have to work!  Hope our guests
enjoy it as much.

Each window had several little nail holes that need to be
filled before the windows could be finished!  No wonder my back
hurts!  We got pretty good at it - well, we should have figuring there
were more than 1200 holes that needed to be filled! 

Man, those holes were tiny!  But thanks to a tool we found in
Alfred's tool box, it went fairly well!

This red ladder became a staple in the living room!  Lovely decor,
don't you  think!  It's gone as of this afternoon!  Yay!

We decided this benchmark deserved a celebration!  Bill went and got us
a bottle of champagne and some brie!  It tasted great!

We even used our wedding champagne flutes - I think for
maybe the third time!  Not a good record, huh?

So, tomorrow is cleanup day! This is what the living room has looked like for
the last few days.  We covered everything with plastic drop clothes to protect it
from all the sanding dust.  It will be great to get back to some sense of "normal."

LOOK!  Clean windows - well at least on the outside.  Being that we didn't
want to have to borrow "the plank" we used to climb up on the porch again,
I decided to wash the upper living room windows today while Bill finished
the last of the inside window finishes.  Well, once I got started it was hard to
 stop so....  Didn't get even half done, but Bill claims the brightness is blinding!
Our friend Andi turned us on to a product called "Squeegee Off," it works great!

Well, once I got started on the windows it seemed like a good time to clean
the patio "roof" (for lack of a better term) also.  It is plastic material that was
covered with needles and yuck before I started, now it lets all kind of light in!
Nice change!  That wood is all the cedar paneling we pulled off the interior
walls, just waiting for Bill to turn it into a kayak for 10!

And here is the contraption we set up to clean the upper windows and the patio roof.
Ladder, plank, ladder!  It actually worked pretty well.  I even got pretty good at going up
and down it without Bill's help!  He was kind enough to do all the inside work that needed
the 12' ladder . And there is so much more light under the roof now! Time to find some
outdoor furniture!  

Momma told me there would be days like this or....

It's been a while and we've had our ups and downs (hence the title), but all in all things are progressing nicely.  We've kept more than busy this month with finishing the insides of the windows (more info with the pictures below), tiling the entry way and the finishing touches in the bathrooms, installing the "closet system," trying to figure out exterior paint colors, etc, etc, etc.  After too long without a break we took yesterday "off" and limited our project work to picking up some paint samples and hanging mirrors.  It went so well we decided to approach today in much the same way.  Well, I did get to do some bill paying and bill built some steps for the dogs, but we didn't even try to do another window or door!  Yahoo!  It's hard to believe it is halfway through August!

A birds-eye view of me in the entry prepping the underlayment
for the slate tile.  It was the last major tile work to be done
and went fairly painlessly considering.  

The slate as it looked when we first put it in.  The white
hole in the back if the picture is for a floor mat that will sit
down in the tile.  That way it won't interfere with the door
opening and closing.  We'll find (or have made) a tray to fit
beneath it. 

Ta-da!  Done except for the final sealing (we have to wait
bit for that) and trim.  We still have the funky old front door,
but will probably wait to replace it until we build the porch roof
next spring.

The other tile work that needed to be completed.  Trim in the master bath.
Love all those spacers - they crack me up.  Still have to grout and caulk this .
Put mirrors up in here yesterday - what a difference.  It's a lot brighter and I can
actually see how bad my hair looks rather than just imagine it! The only
problem with the mirrors is that when we look in them we can see how bad the
side yard, which needs to be graded,  looks! 

Ah, the windows.  The thing with buying the windows the way we
did is that we have to finish the inside of each window ourselves.
Didn't seem like such a big thing when we ordered them, but!!!!!
It means taking each operable window completely apart - first you
take it out of the "frame" and then all the hardware has to be
removed - before you can start with the actual finishing.  That in
itself includes wetting it, filling holes, sanding, applying the finish
(we used ZAR water-based exterior polyurethane that was recommended
by our painter) and then repeating the sanding/finishing process one or
two more times.  We can do 4 windows a day max!  It's slow and tedious,
but they look great.  We would recommend Zar in minute.

All the hardware and weather stripping for 4 windows.  We had to develop
this layout system so we got everything back in the right place.  We didn't do
it for the first window and let's just say the project hit a low point as we
were trying to get it back in place.

So this is one of the operable windows with the "window" removed.  It is
actually pretty slick the way the window pops in and out.

This was the typical scene all week - we'd leave for a walk or a meal and lock
the front door only to look at the window to the left and see that it wasn't there!
The back of the house was wide open about 1/2 the time!  Daily habits are
hard to break.  It provided some well needed laughter!

The office windows done!  They look great!  

Can't say the same for the office!  We had to move all the desks, etc. in order
to get to the windows and it's still a mess!  Oh well!!

The master bedroom slider done!  Man that 3' door is heavy, but it looks great.
It had to be taken out and the hardware removed just like the windows, but
now I know how they work! Now to finish the 4' one in the living room - might
have to go to the gym fora few weeks first!

The left side of the master bedroom closet installed!  We bought our system
via Easycloset.com which is a handy online way get a system.  It's cheaper than
a lot of competitors, but you have to do the design and installation yourself, so....
I need more hanging space for long things, but we'll get it worked out.

Bill putting the finishing touches on the right side of the closet where all the
hanging clothes go.  We thought this was going to be the easy side to
install, but it ended up being a little longer that the space (watch those
crooked walls when you measure) and it was a painful end of a day.

Ta-da!  The closet.  Not organized yet, but at least we can
sleep on the bed (where we had piled all the clothes
during the installation!).  Nice to have a place for shoes
where they aren't buried under the hanging clothes.