Winding down

For the past 6 weeks, since my last post, it has been pretty chaotic at the house. Our 'drop dead' date, of course, was the arrival of our french exchange student on Aug 20th, and we were working right up until the minute she walked in the door. I took two weeks of vacation prior to her arrival and worked 18 hour days almost every day. Wendy took some time off as well and worked equally long days (including a couple of all-nighters). In that time, we got everything on our "to do" list done except the front porch and front door

Here's a before & after shot of our dining and living room:





We are finally starting to relax a bit now and enjoy our half-finished house. We actually have a decent dining room that we can eat in, and a functional kitchen to cook in. Here's a shot of our kitchen - it took two days to throw together:



Of course, we're by no means able to sit around doing nothing! We spent our summer fixing up the inside and doing very little outside, which means we now have about a month to get the outside waterproofed before the cold wet weather arrives. In that time, we have to install the new front door, build the new main floor back deck (or figure out some other way to waterproof that area) and put up some of the missing siding.