Day Two-seventy-five: rolling along

We've gotten into a productive groove these past few days. As we settle into the new place we're still discovering and deciding where to put things. This has increased our trips to the Container Store significantly, somewhat crowding out our HD time. We wonder if the orange aprons miss us.

Otherwise there was progress on a range of fronts. We started with plaster (and not "of Paris"). This is our first real foray into the drywall world so we started small by finishing a wall in the basement. Today we got to play with compound and drywall tape. Aside from wearing about 1/4 of whatever we tried to apply the experiment was a success.

It went so well on the practice round that we moved onto a real project--the shoe cubby. It's all sealed up now. Next is some trim around the opening, paint on the inside, and stain for the wood floor to protect it from what we'll track in on our shoes.

As a reminder, this is what the wall looked like pre-cubby all painted and theoretically finished. Why does it seem as though we do every project at least twice? Ah well.

Speaking of which....so remember the whole door issue? We resolved that by replacing the offending door with a nice standard issue one from HD. We even discovered that we preferred a French door to a slider. What we also learned is that we don't like a grid on the door or the low-e glass that gives the sunlight a greenish hue.

So today we had the glass replaced and the grids removed (they would have taken them off anyway to get at the glass, we just saved them about 3 hours of putting them back on). Once we woodfill a few small holes in the trim and stain it we'll have one good looking door. As it is we already like the extra light we're getting in the studio.

In other news we're moving into the "how do we live here" phase. This is a rug that a local store made from a remnant. It will go under an office chair to protect the original hardwood floors.

The last big project was to build a new return in the basement that's closer to the floor. It's been a recommendation from several people as one way to increase airflow and hence keep the humidity level down in the basement. We've closed the registers in the return on the ceiling and in the left side of this place:

We put this. We took the old panelling down long ago and will replace it with drywall now that the return is done.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary how does your garden grow? Glad you asked. It's doing quite nicely actually. So well that we've created a overflow garden to keep on the deck, closer to the house.