Reno update

Blogging has been a bit difficult lately. I haven't been taking many pictures of the house, which is fine because honestly there's not that much visual progress. We've concentrated getting the kitchen and the master bedroom set up, so that's nice, but both rooms are still a mess as we've had to revamp storage solutions. The kitchen in the house has much less cabinet space than our old apartment — we had a galley kitchen, which was lined with uppers; this kitchen, while larger, only has two upper cabinets (on the other hand, it has an immense window, which I love and am willing to give up upper cabinets for) — and the bedroom likewise has less closet space (plus we lost the hall closet). So there are boxes of things lying around while we try to figure out where they go, and/or wait until the space where they go is set up.

So that is what I have been doing. I have not been knitting, nor have I been crafting. I think I know what to knit — something really, really dead simple, like a Log Cabin blanket in Cascade EcoWool neutrals — except that I stuffed random bits of my stash (including three giant skeins of brown EcoWool) into random boxes of books as filler, and ... I can't find them. I found my Malabrigo stash, because that box had a label describing the books and the yarn, but apparently I found my EcoWool stash not important enough to identify. And I have a lot of boxes of books.

Anyway — it occurs to me that I haven't actually posted a lot of the pictures I uploaded to Flickr, so I should work through those. Here are some from the veritable paint-a-thon we had about two weeks ago:





A lot of people showed up, and it was really fun. It was also around the same time that we got the new toilet:


It's one of those efficient dual-flush low-flow things, and I'm very fond of it. I missed it very much when they took it out to do the floor.


I'm not sure why it's showing up pink. It's a very light grey/white marble. They had to fit everything before the adhesive stage, which is why the tiles are numbered in painter's tape. It's like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse.

Pierre's father actually finished tiling most of the bathroom the morning of the move. (In addition to the floor, we wanted a subway tile backsplash for the tub.) Unlike the floor, he cut the pieces of subway tile as he went, so the wet tile saw was going on and off for about three hours while the cats were in the next room. The cats were not impressed.


This is Tuesday literally squishing her head as far into the cage as it would go. (Freja, on the other hand, decided that she felt safer inside the litter box. It was clean, new litter, but still.)

I think the insane noise of the saw (and of me using the shop vac in the other room) made them get used to the furnace right quick, though. They don't seem to mind it at all.

And this is what the bathroom currently looks like, give or take:


We've installed the tub and shower fixtures, but otherwise it hasn't really changed since the move. The subway tile still needs to be grouted, and the walls primed and then painted. We are replacing the broken blind and I plan on eventually not having the toilet paper holder hang from the window crank like that. The glass partition for the half-wall probably won't be ready until later this week or early next week, our sink/vanity has been backordered, and there is a giant hole where the medicine cabinet is supposed to be. Good times.