trim and paint.

Okay. Seriously. You may have thought that our house already looked good. But it's going to look ridiculously good, because finishing work is where these guys excel. I mean blow the competition away. These window and door trims are so gorgeous that I want to spend time with them. Eat from them. Use them as pillows. Okay, I exaggerate a little, but they are SOOOOO beautiful. And, they're not really even done yet.

The window trim is a little different from the door trim, but it's all out of the same wood, so it coordinates without being matchy-matchy. The window trim is kind of Adam's "signature trim" and I came up with the door trim after seeing one of Adam's idea sketches and changing it a bit.

The scaffolding was still up in our master bedroom, so I climbed up there to take this photo.

And here are the paint colors. Yes, paint colors! I was finally able to move past primer white and ceilings in cream. The orange (guest) room is done, but the bathroom and Ava's room still need another coat each.

This is Ava's room. It's a really cute, bright, girly blue. It doesn't look it here, but the ceiling is cream colored.

This is the other back bedroom. Kind of a pumpkin color... Andy doesn't really like it, but once the whole room comes together, he'll come around. Plus, how much time is he really going to be spending in the guest bedroom?

This is the main bathroom color. It's very similar to Ava's room color, but lighter with a touch more green-gray.

The adventures of the Ava-Bird!

Since turning 1, Ava has decided she's a big girl. She took her first steps on Friday, April 17 at Cousin Ellen's house. Second Cousin Emily and her son Ben were visiting from Truckee, so we all had dinner together.
(Funny story: Andy and I were on vacation only a couple of weeks into my pregnancy with Ava when we visited Emily, Tim and Ben in Truckee. Emily asked us about our plans for having kids and we had to skirt the question carefully because it was way too soon to tell anyone were we expecting. She was pretty much the first person we had to "lie to" about it.)

Last week was spent bent over, holding Ava's hands, while she walked everywhere. The most steps she's taken in a row is still about 6, but it increases almost everyday. Of course, she wants to walk the most when she's tired, which causes her to fall over and hit things. It's a learning period, for sure. (The dress was a gift from Auntie Britt, thank you!!)

Ava visited me at work on Tuesday evening. (We wear Hawaiian shirts in Production to lighten the mood on our most hectic day of the week.) She had a great time, I think.

Today, we went to Owen's 6th birthday party! It was held at a gymnastics facility just around the corner from our house. Ava got to walk, crawl, climb, fall down and it was all good. Except when she was frightened by the rambunctious older kids...

...or got brain freeze from sticking a tennis ball-sized glob of ice cream in her mouth. Now that she tasted ice cream on her own birthday, she can't get enough of it. So, we don't eat it around her, we wait until she's asleep. :)

All in all, it was a great time.

Zeke, Owen's dad, took this one with his nice big camera. I like it a lot. Thanks for inviting us, Smiths!

So busy. So tired. So many things to blog about.

Man, oh man. I am so behind. The last two weeks or so have flown by again, and I wish I had blogged more and taken more pictures.

It's crunch time for me at work - our busiest time of year, with the exception of Christmas - so I've been working a lot and not been able to visit the house and work on it much. Here's an abridged list of what has gone on recently:

- The plaster is done. Thank goodness! It really does look good, though.
- The ceiling is complete and it looks really nice. (Pics below.)
- Painting in the bathrooms and kid/guest bedrooms continues.
- Trim is being put up around the interior windows.
- Interior doors have been ordered.
- Cabinets have been ordered and the boxes may arrive sometime this coming week.
- Appliances have been delivered and await cabinets for installation.
- We found a set of 2 teak chairs and matching table at an estate sale and ate our first meal out on our deck last Wednesday night. It was heaven until the fog rolled in and nearly froze us.
- Tile has been ordered for the two bathrooms. Some serious design changes have happened there due to budget constraints, but it'll still look good.
- Exterior paint has been purchased and Art will start on that soon, if he hasn't already.

I'm sure there are other things to tell, but I just can't think of them at the moment. Here are those pics:

Ava's still on the job and should be walking around on her own, barking orders, before too long.

This is the ceiling in the dormer window in the living room. We are so thankful for Art and all the work he puts in around our house, even when he may not agree with our choices. :)

This is the ceiling in the master bedroom. It's going to be such a calming and cozy space, I can't wait to wake up on our first morning in that house, in that room, knowing that we're in our "forever house." (Let's attribute that quote to Mike D. Thanks!)

Last week's progress.

I took last week off work so I could work on the house. Thank goodness the guys were able to get stuff done, because all I did was prime. Regular primer, then sanded primer. Ugh. All prep so the guys could put on the American Clay Plaster.
This is what the walls looked like after a coat of regular primer and sanded primer.

Adam, Aaron and Andy are doing all the plastering. Here's what that entails:
- 1 coat of regular primer.
- 1 coat of sanded primer.
- Scratching off the loose sand.
- Applying the first coat of clay plaster with a trowel.
- Scratching off the loose plaster.
- Applying the second coat of clay plaster with a trowel.
- Spraying down the walls with water and burnishing the plaster with a clean trowel.
This is turning out to be a crazy labor intensive process. They really like the way it looks, so they seem to be happy doing it, but it's driving me crazier. There's just so much of it, it feels like it's holding up progress on the rest of the house. It would have been a fine DIY project for a smallish room with 8' ceilings, but we're doing it in the master bedroom, closet, main hallway and great room/kitchen. The biggest spaces in those areas have vaulted ceilings close to 16' at the ridge.

This is in the master closet. The weather on Monday, when we were all working outside was HOT! It got up to 85, which I certainly wasn't prepared for. The rest of the week was crap; overcast, raining and cold. We set up a kerosene heater in the house to help dry the plaster. We are waiting to have the boiler, electricity and gas hooked up, so it was pretty cold in the house as we worked last week.

Well, I guess I did accomplish more than just priming... On Monday I finished up my rock post. Once Bob was in town on Friday, he helped me finish priming and we moved on to colored paint; cream colored paint. Maybe tomorrow or Thursday I'll actually be able to put some teal, orange and mint colors on the walls. (Those are really basic names for the colors I've chosen; they actually look a lot better than they sound. Somehow, Sprout 01, Petal 01 and Water 01 aren't very descriptive.)

I'm headed out there right now to drop off Ava with Grandma and take pictures of the plaster at a more completed state. :)

Ava is ONE YEAR OLD!

This year has passed by so quickly! I imagine it goes just as fast for first-time parents who don't have a million and one other things going on, but it seemed like Ava and everything else kept us so busy that we didn't realize how fast it actually was speeding by. (I also imagine I'll say something like this every year around Ava's birthday... OMG, she's 14! Where does the time go?!)


This is her latest funny face. She squishes it up like a pirate and squirms from left to right. It's hilarious. She also eats anything, but especially wants what's on our plates. She's got Grandpa's mashed potatoes here.


Here's the three of us after she finished her first cake and ice cream. She loved the chocolate cupcake and vanilla ice cream. We're going to have to make sure we eat our dessert after she goes to bed from now on...


A tree on Art & Ann's property died recently, so they thought it would be nice to replace it with a tree for Ava. We (Art, Ann, Barb, Bob, Ava & I) planted this morning in our backyard by the other apple trees. I really hope it survives. I had kept the placenta from Ava's birth until now, and we put it in the hole just before putting the tree in. I hope it nourishes the tree as well as it nourished our girl.

Two things of note.

1) I've missed the last 3 weeks of LOST. I have some serious catching up to do, but I'm way too tired to stay up and watch old episodes on the computer.

2) Andy and I just had a conversation that wasn't about babies or houses. Incredible! We discussed the difference between mono and stereo recordings. It was riveting.

The Internet: the refrigerator of the 21st century.

Every parent puts their kids' stuff on the refrigerator so that everyone can see it. Apparently, I'm not putting photos of Adam, our contractor's work on the Internet often enough for his Dad. Hi, Craig! This one's especially for you. :)

So much has happened lately! Siding is done, Ava's still making sure everyone stays in line, exterior details are beautiful, insulation has been put or sprayed in, the deck has been built, trenchs have been dug and filled, then more have been dug, the water tank is finally set up, along with a hydrant and the drywall is just hours away from being finished.

I have several projects of my own going on... in addition to the usual quilting/sewing/crocheting/etc. I'm working on replacing the pieces of colored glass in some old stained glass windows that I bought years ago. They'll be put into the buffet cabinet doors when I'm done. They came in broken wooden frames, and I popped them out of those by painstakingly chipping out the old putty. I broke one pane. :( Then, I desoldered the joints around the outer lead so the glass panes are exposed around the perimeter. The next step is removing more crusty putty and desoldering more joints to release the areas with color. Don't know when I'm going to get to that.

I am on "vacation" this week. Ha. I'm not at my regular job this week, I'm working on the house. Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but I am soooo tired. It's very different from the usual sitting-on-my-butt-in-front-of-a-computer-for-8-hours tired. Last Wednesday, Saturday and today I worked on surrounding the post at the entry of the house with rocks from the creek. Today I got to work on it without having a squirmy 22+ lb. baby on my back. That was nice. In the pics, make sure to check out the beautiful work Dustin did, carefully scribing around the contour of the rocks and fitting the deck around them. So pretty. This house is turning out so well thanks to Adam, Dustin and Aaron; it makes me want to cry. But that's not my style, so I won't.

Speaking of the squirmy baby; she'll be ONE YEAR OLD on Sunday!!! Amazing! It's really flown by. I need sleep, so I'll post the pics and be off to bed. Good night!