Our interior doors arrived from New Mexico on Monday. I found the door company, Grand River Supply, on the web last year while working with Todd Jersey Architecture. The company makes panel doors out of knotty pine, and I thought they coordinated well with the Southwest elements of the house design.

Ordering them long distance and sight-unseen has been nerve-wracking for both me and Kai, so it was with a huge sigh of relief that we unpacked the doors and found them to be attractive and of good quality.

They were shipped in these boxes. (The little boxes hold the door knobs.)

Here are two doors laid out by the painters for staining. They disassemble the door from the jam and take off the hinges. Next, they paint the door with a stain conditioner. Then they put on a coat of stain and after a few minutes rub it off. Then they rehang the door in the jam and set it up to dry and tackle the next one.

The doors get two coats of stain and then two coats of clear matte sealer. For each coat the painters unhang and rehang the doors which is a huge amount of work. I was asked why they don’t just take them all off and then put them all back at the end. This is because each door fits in the jam it was hung in and may not hang properly in another jam. The same process was used for the casement windows as well.

Here are some other items ordered from Grand River Supply. In the shrink-wrap are parts of brackets which make up part of window shades to be installed over all the western and southern facing windows. The brackets will be installed above the windows and there will be a row of pine sticks spanning them which will shade the windows.

Some of the windows—the large living and dining room windows and a few others—will have electrically operated storm shades to protect them from weather and to keep the house cool in the summer. The housings for these shades will be on top of these large brackets disguised as part of the sun shade structure.

Here are some of the doors after the first coat of stain. I liked the way the stain on the exterior doors and windows came out, but the wood used in them is yellower than this beautiful white pine.

In real life, the stain color is just wonderful, like copper patina turquoise washed over the pale wood. The doors look exactly like I envisioned—which just never happens. I am so thrilled with how they are turning out. I hope I like the wall color as much as the stain.

Kai had placed the pattern for the bathtub on the bathtub deck. I was amazed to see that they give you a paper pattern, shades of Buttrick or Vogue for the sewers amoungst us.

The blue writing under the big word “Toto” is a list of models with arrows pointing to the proper silhouette. We have a Toto airbath—which is sort of like a jacuzzi but not quite so bubbly. I hope we like it. It is just goofy to buy something you will live with for the rest of your life from a low resolution photograph on the internet, but there is no other way. No one carries very many of these items—even the big, fancy bath and kitchen places. Dispite that, I do wish I had had a chance to do more looking in person before I got on the net, but oh well, too late now.

I took this picture from the rose garden area. Up on the hill, right below the top ridge of rocks, there are some white speckles. These are daffodils that I planted with my sister-in-law Karen’s able help 3 (?) falls ago. They come up in the spring when the weeds are still short and look so pretty.

Daffodil bulbs are poisonous and so gophers and deer don’t bother them. They naturalize (which means they spread on their own) and seem to tolerate the heavy clay.

Their one down-side is their sprawling leaves after they bloom, which can start to look a little unsightly, but I forgive them because of their early-year wonderfulness.

Here is a view up toward the dining room from the middle of the daffs.

There will be a lot of garden news this week and next so don’t miss the updated garden page for today.