July 2, 2008—All Trades Day
By the end of the day, the tile setters had almost finished in the bathroom. The tiles we are waiting on for the shower should be in next week.
We had to raise the medicine cabinets in here as well as in the guest bath. The reason for this change was to accommodate the chair rail at the top of the tile. It came out looking terrific and I am glad we went to the expense—chair rail is extremely pricey.
Kai has started to install the corbels with their biscuits. Everyone assures us that this installation will be perfectly safe and permanent. They look great, although they will need to be caulked a bit between them and the beams above.

The trim is up in the living and dining rooms. The picture rail really changes the room a lot and it will take a little while to get used to the new look after the starkness of those empty walls. The little white dots you see are spackle over the nails in preparation for painting.

I wanted the picture rail to actually hang pictures from so I wouldn’t have to put so many holes in the walls to hang art.

Kai finished the trim over the front door. He had to cut down quite a wide piece of lumber to get this arched piece. I decided I did not want the head trim on this door to match the rest of the trim after I drew it up on my computer and saw how ugly it would look. This door is different than any other door in the house, so it gets its own special trim.
Here is a tantalizing look from the guest bedroom into the library at the finished shelves.

Because of the late afternoon sun, I had to take this picture close to the wall, otherwise the shutter closed down and everything looked very dark. As you can see, the shelves look great. They are stained the same vague green as the kitchen cabinets with plain maple interiors.

Originally, I had planned to have them stained the same as the dining room hutch, but changed to this color during the month I was afflicted with Fear of Bright Colors. I am sure they would have looked good that way as well, but I am quite happy with the way they turned out.

Looking into the courtyard from the library, you can see the rest of the shelves. The trim around the door still needs to be painted. The painters couldn’t get in here today because of the bookcase installation, but will get to it soon.
New shelving was also installed in the cottage kitchen to replace the stainless steel shelves we had been using. These new shelves are maple to match the cabinets and has been finished with the same oil/wax finish. They will give us a lot more space to put things, and also camouflage the most ugly items behind the side pieces. I will post another photo when I get everything put back.
Here is another photo of our boiler. You can also see the water tank off to the side which will hold our domestic hot water. In the future, I would like to install a solar water heater as well. That would save us on propane during the summer.
All is quiet at the end of a long day. You can see the fog is gone as well as all the workers. No new page until next week because of the 4th of July holiday.
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