re:pose

the wood floors in the family room / office / powder room are finished! we are conveniently going out of town for the weekend, so they'll have a few days to cure and then we can finally move into the family room! yay!



[i love that you can't even tell we had to infill some flooring]




the floor guys also prefinished our stair treads for us, so anthony and i are going to attempt to install them ourselves (along with the risers, trim, etc). this is no easy DIY task - so wish us luck!

re:location

it was a productive saturday! (with others doing most of the work - even better!)

the guys from the city's department of urban forestry finally made it over here to grind out the stump of the tree out front. it took them a few hours and was pretty impressive to watch...






(see the termite tracks through the center of the stump...??)


they left all the wood shavings for us -


so anthony relocated most of them to fill in our low mud-prone driveway.




i suppose we'll use the rest as mulch (or is this a bad idea for some reason i'm unaware?).

the wood floors guys also came today to sand and stain the family room, office and powder room as well.








the whole house smells strongly of wood stain right now, so we have windows and doors open and fans blowing to clear it out by bedtime.

they will apply the first coat of poly on monday, and hopefully get all the coats down before we go out of town next weekend, so they can cure while we're away. then we can finally move into our family room! we have our new 46" LCD still in the box ready to go up on the wall, and some furniture being delivered in about 3 weeks.

re:fill

our wood floor guys got to work today on the family room! they staggered in new boards where the old bathroom used to be and filled in a couple holes that were former supply registers.



i'm not sure if a sanding crew is starting today or tomorrow. stay tuned for sanding and finishing!

re:pair

minor catastrophe this morning.


we were digging holes to plant some loropetalum (plum delight) shrubs in front of our porch and hit our water line. oh, not just the water line, but the corroded old secondary shut-off at the house (that we didn't know we had). it was just a few inches under the ground. and we couldn't find the shut-off in the meter at the street. super! we had water gushing into our yard for almost 45 minutes!



the water went all the way to the backyard...



our neighbor was very helpful and used a wrench to turn the underwater valve at the house (it had no lever/knob) to shut off the water, but there was still a slow leak because the water wasn't off at the street.

turns out there was a separate hole that our shut-off was in - the cover was completely buried with grass, so we couldn't find it.


i can't believe this would be buried just a few inches under the ground like that. there was grass over it and everything.


we got an emergency plumber out to get rid of the corroded valve and install a shiny new shut-off valve to the tune of $289...


...and we put a much more conspicuous cover on it so we (and any future owners of the house) will know it's there.


and we finally got our shrubs in the ground.


we're very lucky it wasn't a greater catastrophe, but it was stressful when that water was flowing fast and we had no idea how to turn it off. are we the only ones who don't think to check with all of our utilities when we do some minor landscaping?

re:morse

i picked sherwin williams 'wheat grass' for the powder room downstairs and adjacent office, and fairly immediately regretted the color choice once it went up on the wall. the paint chip looked so neutral compared to all the colors around it in the paint fan, but with the sunlight and the overhead light at night it ends up looking a little too electric-chartreuse for my tastes.

these pictures actually look nice - but that's the dim indirect morning light (or maybe it's growing on me?)




i'll try to update with bad-lighting pics. the color is actually similar to the 'lemongrass' we put in our laundry room and upstairs [guest] bathroom, but the lemongrass has less gold so the light affects it differently.

now i'm trying to decide if we suck it up and paint the adjacent office the same color, or pick yet another color. we also painted the family room this weekend - sherwin williams 'tony taupe.' pics to come later.