Finished staircase

Final touches on the staircase:

Holy cow it's stairs.

I really grew attached to the double 2x4 treads that served as temporary stairs along with the 15' 2x4 nailed across the loft area to keep you from falling into the living room. So needless to say, I was quite surprised when I showed up and saw the following:


The clamps you see were actually pretty interesting. They rip the hand rail into 5 approximately .5" pieces and proceed to smash it between 2 pieces of hard plastic and bend it to the exact radius of the stairs. So they start halfway up at a straight part, then bend the wood to the shape it needs to be. Once the wood takes on the correct shape, they reglue all the pieces together and it looks like one nice bent stair rail. Pretty cool!

How 'bout a snag?

It's really no fun building a house if everything goes right. Right? A couple problem areas with water popped up creeping into the living room/kitchen area and the front door. They weren't too bad in that none of the interior walls got wet (or insulation) and didn't do any damage.

Let's have a painting party!

With the walls primed and the ceilings painted white it was time to break out the brushes and rollers. It's painting time! (And there's a ton to do...)

"Eggnog" for the kitchen!


"Ocean something or other" (Phoebe's going to kill me) :-) in the dining room.


"Grasshopper" for the living room (to match dead animals going on the wall) and a khaki-ish "Wheat Bread" for the halls.


"Sonata" for the master bed/bath.


"Golden Buttercup" for our little buttercup.

Approaching Level 5

The mudding and taping and sanding (repeat a bunch of times) has finally completed. The final wall surfacer (which also doubles as a primer for paint) was sprayed on. Boy they're smoooooth.

More concrete work

2nd section of driveway and the start of the 3rd section down to the street were poured along with the front porch! The suggestion of our concrete contractor to have the brick guys make a footing around the edges really turned out nicely.

Evidently a Level 5 finish is a LOT of mudding...then sanding, then mudding, then some more sanding.... you get the idea. This is about the 4th or 5th round of mudding and sanding.