Main Doors & Painting - 10 April 2012

Dennis finished all of the top coating on the second floor today and I managed to do the same to the small bathroom on the main floor.  Brad was working on the handrails, but he also came to shave some edges off of the main doors.  I thought they were perfect, but he just wanted to take off a teeny tiny bit more.

It was a beautiful, sunny and relatively warm day.  Even the birds liked the curlicues of shavings from the doors.

Painting - 8 & 9 April 2012

Undaunted by a slight change in the paint trim colour (we couldn't get an exact colour match), Dennis has been putting the top coat on the trim on the second floor.  It looks great. Crisp, clean and very bright white.

Floral Cottage - Spring 2012

Plants are sprouting early this year, as we have had so little snow and relatively warm weather.  These crocuses were up and blooming on 19 March.  

 But nature has a wonderful way of keeping us from becoming too relaxed or smug.  

Here are the day lilies on Easter Sunday morning, 8 April.

Caulking & Cleaning & More - 5 April 2012

My darling husband, the primary owner of the Firehouse, has taken to working in it like a duck to water.  He spent the whole day there today finishing all of the caulking by taking care of above the main doors and along the beam. He also got down on his hands and knees (the only real way to clean a floor) and, along with Mrs Murphy and her famous wood floor soap, washed the collection room, upstairs bathroom and bedroom floors. This may sound pretty straightforward, but keep in mind this is the first washing for these floors.  They still had quite a bit of drywall dust and general building dust on them, even after their installation and several coats of varathane. Even Will didn't realize how much work this was until he changed his clothes after the fact and realized he had blisters on his knees.  He also did some more touch up painting and cleaned windows.

What a guy! I'm so glad I had errands to run all day and was able to leave him to it. I think the true "sense of ownership" is growing stronger every day.

Doors and Trim - 4 April 2012

A little bit of caulking, a little bit of touch up paint, some nice work on the main doors and the interior doors.  The boxing of the drain pipe from upstairs looks really good. It sounds minor, but it took the whole day.  But we are getting so close!

Doors & Trim - 3 April 2012

We finished almost all of the caulking today, just the beam to get up to tomorrow.  Will cleaned paint off the glass in the main doors, oiling hinges, and changing a plate on the boiler.  Brad worked on the handrail and then came over to the Firehouse to put hardware into the downstairs interior doors.

Trim and Latches - 1 & 2 April 2012

Will and I sanded all of the main floor trim, dusted them down, vacuumed up all the dust and then primed every little bit of them.  This was all in preparation for Mark Fleming coming back to visit with us today and do as much of the caulking as his 11 hour day would allow.  He almost finished it, too.  I was beginning to worry he would stay to the very end of the job and miss his classes tomorrow. Brad chipped in to help with the caulking, too, in between adding the interior latches to the main doors and chiseling the lock spaces on the interior doors. The latches are absolutely stupendous. They match the strap hinges and the whole doors so well and they really look like the doors have been around for ever.

We are so blessed to know hard working people who are also intelligent about so many topics and creative in everything they do.