First signs of spring

Melissa planted some bulbs in some old plumbing fixtures (sink and tub) and installed them in our lumber yard / trash heap of a back yard. Now we're reaping the benefits. She and Daniel Talstra also pruned the peach tree last fall and I think the new shape gives a Japanese aesthetic to our garden.

Dan pretends we live a normal life

We're suddenly feeling ahead of (our revised and extended) schedule. Our upstairs tenants don't move out until May 1st so we can't move up until then, no matter how soon we finish the bottom two floors. So we are making a few tentative forays back into our social lives. Here Dan bakes a d-licious cake for our oktoberfest celebration. His drywall skills were applicable to the icing procedure.

the spiral stair dance...try it at home!

sylvia!

tonight, sylvia came over and brought us dinner and helped us work. thank you, sylvia! in the bottom picture, cindy is painting the new doorway into the 3rd bedroom. behind her is the new kitchen pantry we built this week (pantry door provided by our friends ryan and janell from philly).

new living room fan!

this really made the room look better. we also added the medallion above the fan. mood lighting galore!

cleaning the walls before painting...

drywall and jean!

thabo's mom came to visit us, and brought encouragement and helped us get a bunch of stuff done, including painting and pulling nails and old flooring off the last bedroom floor to be redone. it was really nice to have her visit.

our kitchen, so convenient to cook in...

where's cindy?

our relaxing, and feng-shuied living room.

more work.

cindy caulks...

dan insulates...

thabo hangs a door.

thabo cuts a new door hole in the wall with his teeth.

aarrghh!!!!

more work.

pic of the floor/stairhole. here i was working on building back a small corner of the stair opening, since every inch counts in a new york apartment. the part i was working on are the boards that aren't stained.

the half-wall that we built at the top of the spiral stairs, in the middle of drywall mudding.

melissa painting in the living room. this particular section of wall almost broke our spirits. the reason had to do with shades of white paint that didn't quite match, not remembering what we painted the room, many trips for paint and many shades of white, lots of head shaking, and finally, a close match. whew.

sunshine...

staining the floor, more staircase

first layer of poly put down on the living room floor (before we realized it went down just as well and about 5 times faster with a roller). and a pic of thabo and melissa installing the spindles and handrail to the staircase.

staircase, part IV

staircase, part III

staircase part II

staircase arrival...

sorry for the major delay in poostings; somehow whole chunks of days and weeks go by without having a spare minute to download photos and get them posted to the blog. so, the next few blogs will be an attempt to get up to date with some of the action around here. some of which was the spiral staircase! above was the start to the project...actually we've been shopping around and researching for months, and then ordered it, then my family picked it up and delivered it to us, so there was a lot of legwork before this point. anyway, the top pic is the stair opening, with thabo putting up some of the last drywall. second pic is the stair kit (some of it), and the third is melissa with a plumb line, finding the center of the opening to position the staircase.

mason is an awesome guy.

here's why:
1) he worked really hard on our house today.
2) i'm pretty sure i'm his favorite uncle.
3) he's fun to hang around, and he's thoughtful and nice to people.
d) he worked really hard on our house today.

that's him in most of the pics, suited up for serious battle with a wall. the plaster didn't stand a chance.