For the last few weeks we have been working on the front hallway.  We have scraped, sanded and painted the trim around the doors, and the floor.  Brian took the window out so I could re-glaze the stained glass and paint it.  That is a big project. Just very tedious!  Will be glad to get it done. We ordered the flooring and it just came in a few days ago, so hopefully we can start getting it down tomorrow.  Today we finish painting the walls and then will be all ready for the flooring. Brian had to do a lot of work on the old floor to get it ready, it had to be reinforced, repaired and leveled before we could even think about putting the floor down. 

And the kitchen floor is done and it looks great!  We installed the kick board and the transitions yesterday and today we will get the rest of the baseboard up, after it dries.  I stained it and now it has the last coat of varathane on it.  I think that might be the last item in the kitchen to do other than finish decorating...wow...that has been a long time coming.  We moved in 7 years ago this month, who would have thought it would have taken this long to have finished the kitchen. So what project should we start on tomorrow???

We did finish the stairs in January!  They look so nice!  We still have a few more of the spindles to do on the top landing, but we are so pleased with how the stairs turned out.


Monday we started putting the floor down in the kitchen.  We are using the same flooring that we used in the upstairs bathroom.  It goes down pretty easy and looks good.  The one we chose for the kitchen looks like an old wide plank pine floor.  I like it.  As we started on the next section this morning Brian cut the first two cuts wrong.....he is SO pissed at himself, so we are taking a break.....back to it soon!!!

And the stairway is still the project!  We have the lower part all done and the railing installed all the way up the stairs.  Going to take a break from it for the holidays...but hope to still get a little bit more done when we have time.  It creates so much dust!  We spent today trying to clean and get all the sawdust off just about every surface upstairs...what a mess!  Brian also hung the Celtic stained glass in the lower window in the hall.  My Mom gave it to me a few years ago and am so glad to finally get it in place.  Trevor will be here in a few days and hopefully he will not think the stairs look so spooky anymore! Brian also got the trim around the doors finished in the downstairs bathroom, so that room can be crossed off our list as completely done!!!  YEA!

Still working on the stairs!  It is never ending!  We have all of the lower steps, railing & newel post sanded, stained and 2 coats of varathane on. Brian installed the 3 spindles we had made last year.  It makes a big difference.  I have been painting all the little details on the spindles and it is looking great.  Hope to finish the lower section this week!  Besides that, Brian finished making the other bracket to go up by the pocket doors.  He did a great job of making them!

November?  Really?  It has been close to 4 months since I last updated the blog.  Well I guess not a lot has happened.  We had grand kids here most of the summer, so that was fun, but did not let us accomplish much.  Then we went on vacation for 5 weeks.  But we are back to being busy.  Brian has done a lot outside to winterize the house and yard, always a big job.  Inside we are working on the stairway.  Gees what a job.  We have been scraping and sanding for hours and there is still so much to do, but at least we are making a dent.  I painted most of the lower part of the walls a pretty green, and I really like it.  Also painted an accent wall in the entrance hall the same green.  We are determined to get the stairs and hallway done before Christmas.  My cousin Trevor told us that it is spooky in there and feels like a haunted house!!! He is coming to stay for a week over the holidays so we are dedicating all our time and effort into getting it done...

   The time has just flown by recently, I cannot believe it is July already.  We took a few weeks off for a road trip in June, but no more traveling until the fall.  Too much to do!

    The bathroom upstairs is complete except for the floor and some trim, and we will get to that soon.  We had some insulation done and had to take everything out of the attic and it is all stored in the bathroom for now.  We need to build a new floor in the attic so we can put everything back up. In the meantime I have been going thru all the boxes and totes and getting rid of a lot of Holiday stuff we do not need, so there will be much less going back up there.  We also had the outside wall of one of the bedrooms upstairs insulated and also the crawl space under the house.  I have a feeling it will be a lot warmer this winter!  Yea!

   Outside we have been working in the garden and also working to enlarge the firepit area.  We put more gravel there and started putting the bricks around the edge.

  The girls and their families were all down over the 4th of July weekend and helped us do some jobs in the yard.  Jahn got the rest of the bricks in around the firepit.  It sure looks nice.  Adam helped us clean out the woodpile area and later we will get some fill dirt and more gravel in there to finish it off. Hope to make it a new parking area.
   We were also given a hot tub by one of Brian's cousins and the kids helped us move it onto the patio.  Now we need to figure out how to get it plumbed and wired in so we can use it!  Will be nice to have a warm tub to soak in.

   Brian started working on restoring the front door.  We were looking at buying a new to us "old" one, but the cost is way too much so will just see if we can save this one.  So far he got the hardware off and we have cleaned it up, looks better already. We also finished a lot of the interior doors downstairs.  They all required a lot of scraping, sanding and refinishing, but the time spent was well worth it. You can see some of the pictures on the website.  http://www.dahliahouse.com/