the light at the end of the tunnel...

That light is getting nearer and nearer.  This weekend we tried to make a list of what is left to do before we start installing the floors and doors...  It's all little stuff now.

This weekend we continued to work on the dining room and master bath...We would mudd one and while waiting for it to dry we would paint the other...then back and forth all weekend..

We got three of the four walls in the dining room painted before I realized we had used Hi-Gloss paint... I asked, made, insisted that Rich take off to Westlakes and get the same color in eggshell.   See the difference? It's Hi-Gloss on the left...Eggshell on the right... I like it much better...

 While I was sanding and mudding the bathroom, Rich installed the sconces in the dining room.  This is not a design element we would have thought of, but the wiring was already there when we bought the house.  All we had to do was put on the sconces and now I really like them. (oh, we also had to figure out which of the millions of light switches were wired to them.. That was a feat in of itself)   We have an old Oak Hutch that will sit between them and an Oak plate rack that Rich made will hang on the wall between them.  

And back to the bathroom to install the shower doors. 

The bottom track is just taped on...

Then you add the side tracks....

And then you snap on the top, attach the rollers to the glass doors and the handles and you are done....It took about 2 hours from start to finish and the instructions were fairly clear..  What you can't see is that the frosted part of the door is really really small polka dots...and yes...I used that towel to shower and the step stool was my "vanity"...lol  (the blue rag is just that...a rag! I used it to clean the shower of all the drywall dust while I was taking a nice long hot shower...)

Let's lay out the floor and see where we end up...   Apparently when Rich builds a wall it is straight..and when he installs a shower it is straight cause all the tiles just lined up there as pretty as you please... We got all the tile laid.  He does all the cement stuff and I trim and cut the tile to fit.  We were a pretty good team..and then we had to let it dry for 16 hours so we took off and had dinner at T.G.I. Fridays...  and bought some more bathroom stuff...

This is the vanity..

This is the black granite top.. No left side piece will be used.

This is the faucet.  Holy Moly these are expensive. The counter top we picked requires a faucet set with a 8 inch center.  They don't make a whole lot of those and they are ridiculous in price...but it IS pretty...

Rich installed the overhead light...and added the cover to the fan after this photo was taken.

Rich also installed the vanity light.

 

Mixing the grout..with the drill and some attachment that looks like a cake mixing beater...

And it is all grouted and shiny and needs to dry for 24 hours so we came home...

In between doing the tile we trimmed and  painted the dining room window, trimmed and painted the kitchen window, painted the hall bathroom door, painted a lot of crown moulding for the living room/kitchen,  trimmed the master bathroom window, swept the sun room and our son came out and (worked for payment of his cell phone bill)  cleaned all the "junk" out from underneath the deck.  We now have a huge pile of trash for the trash man. 

We used the attic fan for the time this year.  The temp outside was 81 and with the fan on it was 72 inside. 

And we saw our first act of Mother Nature..  We have muskrats in the pond.  They are a nuisance.. They will dig their tunnels into the dam and it weakens the dam and your pond can drain.  We are allowed to either shoot the muskrats or live trap them and move them somewhere else.  We do have a .22 and we don't have anywhere else to take them.  So Rich has been watching..and watching...and over the past few weekends he did get a couple with the .22. This weekend we saw one a few times, but he wasn't lucky enough to get a good shot.  Friday night I happened to look out the kitchen doors and saw some movement on the other side of the pond.  It was a fox and quick as a wink he grabbed the muskrat and took off .  Guess he had a nice dinner... I was so excited I started yelling and Rich got there just in time to see the fox run over the hill...