Sealed! Finally!

Huzzah!

Knew I forgot something.

Last week, my brother got the house 'sealed' for the winter. The major exterior work is done and what's left is interior work. Just in time-December's rapidly approaching.

We went from this last fall (Go, YD! Lift that bale of insulation!):

To this:

The garage is done, finally. The side of the garage to the left of the garage door is planned to be some sort of hobby room-my sister-in-law does ceramics, and my bro wants to try making stained glass stuff. He has plenty of woodworking tools for a shop, but, strangely, he says that working with wood has lost its allure. Shocking.

I wouldn't be surprised if, at this time next year, there'd be a deck from the back entrance at left running the length of the garage.

The inside is progressing as well. This from last year:

...is changed a bit now. The upstairs room looks like this-

Still needs trim along the floor. That's a fairly easy job and one that will be done before long. This room will have a good view of the river and will make a great sitting room.

And this is the downstairs version. There's still a fair amount of trim work to be done here, but it's coming along. Most of the first floor is done up in a mint green commonly seen on institutional walls-but here it works well. They're painting in a lot of earth tones-ochre, browns, grays, greens-and it seems to work well.

I can see this room (which is bigger than it looks in the picture-about 9 feet (2.7 meters or thereabouts) side-to-side) being a game room (they play a lot of games like Triominoes and Oxford Dilemma), or a music room for bro's guitar and the Clavinova.

A lot of the summer was spent on the stairs. There wasn't a lot of room for a proper staircase and we fiddled around sketching and scribbling on wood scraps and paper before he found a plan for a quasi-spiral stair, but with a decent tread area on the inner half of the stair, which most spiral staircases don't have. It took a heap of measuring and head-scratching, but they came out perfect.

These pics were taken a month or so ago. The newel post is capped off now. And I think he's showing off a bit on the banister and details! The stairs will be carpeted, so no sense in doing a lot of finish work on those.

The place is taking shape now and one can see a lot of progress on each visit. About the only major thing that didn't get done was pouring the garage floor. However, it's usable now and the slab can wait for next year.

This project is on its third year and a few of you have followed it from the beginning framing. The goal is to have the addition livable by the holidays. That's doable, I think, if no major problems crop up. The upstairs bathroom is the current project and the shower/tub enclosure is already up there. The plumbing is run, but it still needs cabinets and a stool. If that doesn't get finished by the holidays, no worries. The house already has two small bathrooms.

The end of the project is definitely in sight, though. It's good to see.

yankeedog out.