1 month since last post, 1 week until move-in!

Holy poo, I can't believe it!  The end is nigh!  Neigh!

In the end of March, dad and I worked on rail installation.  We didn't know our bums from holes in the ground.  Now we do. 
Sometimes, thinking didn't work so well...when working on cutting and installing a very important railing (this railing had been in Craig's grandparents' house), I cut all sorts of wacky compound, double bevel, mitred things. 

So, I really, truly, GLUED IT BACK TOGETHER!

We only had just enough of Grandmother and Grandfather's railing to do what we needed to do.

I glued, taped, and clamped my way to a thinner me!  ...no, just to two complete rails.

The garage has a long stair run to the unfinished room above.  Again, dad and I had to piece things together to get the total length.

Also, since I have very particular tastes in railing profiles (odd, I know), I bought old railings with profiles I liked and gave them a new life in our home.

After the rails:

Unfortunately, at some point a worker on a ladder lost his balance, fell onto and cracked a long windowsill.

These things happen.  This is the windowsill in the process of stripping down for repair.

I decided that perhaps this stumble/clay crack happened for a reason...it provided an opportunity for me to rethink that windowseat!  Straw removed, prepping for Idea #2.

Bookshelf/bench!  TAA DAA!

Ever the diligent worker, Ben vacuums the floor.

Not 100%, but getting there after Ben's vacuuming, the guys painting and caulking, the carpenter carpenting, the excavators grading, and Dad "Papa" and I moving all of the clutter out of the house.

See below:

Ben and Papa sweeping the porch.

YAY PAPA!

Can You Believe It?

We're STILL not in the house...but we're closer!  Thankfully, I'm a bit of an eternal optimist...but I do get tired...

This will be our house...it looks finished doesn't it?

Nothing that says you can't have a beer and enjoy the view before getting your Use & Occupancy Permit!

At least the bees are already enjoying their house.

Yesterday I installed this mesh grid that's called a Queen Excluder.  Apparently, this'll keep the queen in the bottom of the hive - she's the only bee that's too portly to get through the bars.  

I held this frame up to the light so you can see - the dark sections are where they've already filled the cells with honey.

These cells are filled with honey and capped off with wax.

After the cells are capped, the honey thickens up.

We're bees, doing bee things.

This is the hive.  The two bottom sections are called 'brood supers.'  Those are pretty much left alone so that the bees can reproduce there and all that jazz.  The next thing up is the side of the queen excluder.  The top two sections are called 'honey supers'.  You guessed it - that's where the bees store the honey, and then we steal it from them because it is delicious.

I've decided that theft is the sincerest form of flattery...and felony or misdemeanor (depending on what was stolen...)

Progress, such as it is... ;-)

Yesterday dad took all the tools and things out of the attic.   We're getting there...

See?  Niiice.

This afternoon, dad felt the need to 'cut the pew'...if you know what I mean...

He decided to actually cut the pew down to size.

Craig and I got an old pew that Highland Presbyterian (where we were married) was getting rid of because it was in disrepair and unused.

It's like twelve feet long, and at the 2/3 mark was a broken support...



So dad cut it down to a more manageable eight feet or so.

We put the end back on and put it in the library temporarily so it was out of the way while we were working.

While dad worked on the pew, I was working on mudding the wall...

 with natural clay plaster from our yard (clay+sand+water).

A view from the corner showing the relative spaciousess of the space without a twelve-foot pew in the way!

New Photos, No Captions Yet

The below photos show miscellaneous progress dad and I have made, and also quite a few cute pictures of Ben (yes, I am biased) from when I let him help me paint, etc.