shower doors

We were at the habitat thrift store. I had a stainless vent hood in my hands, ready to check out. A very nice lady told us that she had just brought in a broan vent hood, with better lights. She suggested we take a look at it.

We went to the back. Her hood was very nice, but was beige so we didn't end up getting it. However, J noticed the 48" frameless shower doors that were being brought in at that very moment.

Before:



After:


And here is the "new" range hood. We still need to replace the panel above the hood. But it is so nice to have a functioning hood and light over the stove!
We also got a second coat of stain on the hot tub and the first coat on the deck. Two more coats!

beautiful, heavy things

A while ago, I had an idea for the back deck on McKenna. When I told Pat, he said he would only install the 1" thick pieces of glass as railings if I was there to help install them.

I definitely like stone as a material. J makes fun of my "marble table collection." Five marble tables is hardly a collection.

So, when J found 120 sq. ft of slate in Leesburg, we had to go get it. I had just finished a ~25 mile bike ride, so I was a bit tired. We took the ferry across the river, and filled the truck to the suspension's capacity (and maybe a bit beyond). We unloaded the slate, then got a well deserved burrito.

We put the path out to the hot tub. There was another load of slate to haul. So we went back across the river Wednesday night to get the rest of it.



Most of the stone was 2 - 3 inches thick. The second load wasn't nearly as big, but there was a decent amount there.






I think it was Wednesday that J mentioned there was another advertisement on craigslist for more slate. She e-mailed an offer, but no response. A couple of days later she got an e-mail. Offer accepted. Fortunately, this stuff was only about 10 minutes away. We got about 50 sq. ft. more. We stacked this, since we had spread the other load out and again ran out to get something to eat.

Moving heavy things makes me hungry. Today was a gorgeous day, and we spent a little time in the yard.








We still need to level and install the patio around the hottub.
But we've got plenty of stone to do it.

















We re-organized the walkway, integrating some of the rectangular pieces from the second load with the longer rectangles from the first load.

J got sick of the kitchen floor

Since we're going to redo the floor when we vault the ceiling, we just removed the linoleum and painted the ugly ass paperboard that was under it.

I pulled up the tiles, and then sanded the floor.



We had a mistint paint that we were calling "kermit" and decided to use it.



So there's kermit, spread all over the floor.





Whoa.



Next, J forged a star.


Then I stenciled the shape onto the floor, and J did the hard part of painting them.



So, here's what we got.

Fireplace ready to burn

The Chimney Master came by, and told us we can have fires in the fireplace. We've only had one so far, and we didn't get a lot of heat from it. But it sure was fun.

mycologists have more fungi

I have been waiting to use that line since 1994.


I bought a Shitake mushroom block online. Here are the first little mushrooms emerging.






Here they are just a couple of days later:



Mushrooms for dinner next week, for sure.

The block will produce for a couple of weeks, then it goes dormant for a couple of weeks, then it produces again. I think we'll get about 3 months out of that. It will be spring by then. We'll use the rest of the block to innoculate some logs or a tree trunk that we have in the back yard, to get a shitake colony going outside. I'm excited about it.

Your table has arrived, sir

We thought we would never get a better deal...

So, how can you beat a $2000 door for $200? A $1400 door for $75, that is how!

J stopped by Lowes, just to look. She mentioned to me that there was a full light double door, one fixed. Right orientation for the slider that we wanted to replace, and probably the correct dimensions, too.

So we went by and bought it. Exactly the right size, right swing and everything.