Finish Carpentry

The carpenters have been busy trimming out the inside of the house. The redwood trim corners are original to the house, the poplar trim (paler wood) is new custom milled wood to match the rest of the house. The base trim will be installed after the engineered wood floors are put down in a week or so.

Bathroom Tiling

The marble subway tile has been completely installed. It took the tile guy more than 2 weeks. The walls tiled to the 10 foot ceiling frames out the shower. This shower will have a total of 3 shower heads including a 12 inch rain shower head attached to the ceiling. The next step is to order the frameless glass shower door.

New Front Entrace

The previous front steps were torn down about a week ago. They weren't very well made and certainly weren't original to the house. What you are looking at in the picture is the basic framing made out of pressure treated lumber, on top of which the finished lumber will be built. The porch which was dismantled during the house lifting is also in the process of being put back together (including the two columns that frame the entrance to the porch). As a side note, the front doors were stripped by the painters with Jasco and once they are patched and the new mortise lock is installed, will be painted dark blue.

Painting Is Almost Done

The plastic sheets covering the scaffold was removed a few days ago. All that remains largely is minor touch-up painting and to paint the front porch and new front steps that are being built. Once that is done the scaffold should be taken down in the next few weeks or so.

Painting The House (continued)

For the past 2 months the house painters have been prepping the house for painting (the name of the painting company is Victorian Restoration). This mostly involved stripping the architectural detail with heat guns, sanding the flat areas and scraping the old dripped paint from the bottom edge of the siding. It's a pretty laborious job for 3-4 painters on a house that is about 40 feet tall (3 stories). Last week they started priming and patching the house; this week they started by spraying on the first of two coats of paint, after which they used caulk in all of the joints. The picture below shows part of the front of the house (where the scafolding hasn't been erected yet) that hasn't been touched yet. What a difference!

Tiling The Bathroom

Today tiling of our 5 x 8 bathroom with mable subway tile. All 3 walls of the 3 x 5 shower will be tiled to the 10 foot ceiling; the rest of the room will be tiled to 46 inches. The work is expected to take a week to complete.

Plasterwork Is Done

It took the plasterers about a week to finish mudding the walls. I was really quite impressed at their level of skill -- very little sanding was necessary to smooth the walls. The only plasterwork left is to install the medallions on the ceiling and to finish the detail on the arch seen in the picture below.