This is the glass block for the shower stall. Unfortunatly, after it was installed, we found out it was the wrong glass block (wrong color). So as beautiful as it is, it's all got to go (and there is no nice way to take it out -- it's going to be destroyed in the process).

More of the block, showing the entrace to the shower stall. Note the top of the wall on the left isn't done -- they ran out of block before they were able to complete it.

Wall near the entrace to the bathroom that seperates the vanity from the toilet. Again, the back part (two blocks wide) didn't make it up to the ceiling (ran out of blocks). The front most three courses are intentionally stopped short. There is a small shelf which a piece of glass is going to be installed on top of the block.

Another view of the toilet divider wall.

At this point, much of the trim paneling was in place, though the battens and cap pieces weren't yet there. But you do start to get a feel for things and the space. Note the support under the bench is temporary.

You get a good feel for the overall space the booth is in at this point.

And the general outline of the bookshelf that helps define the booth space.

This is the soffit over the book case near the booth. The soffits were completed before the walls, in part because it's pretty fussy stuff and being related to the sloping ceiling meant everything else was going to have to shift around to accomodate the soffits/ceilings.

West wall of the kitchen soffits

Kitchen soffits looking south east (booth is behind the cabinets).

Soffits looking at the north east corner of the kitchen.

This is the stairs before we started working on them. The original plan called for a small amount of wainscotting, basically over where the hole in the wall is (that is where the touch screen will go). We decided to instead take it up the stairs. You can also see the plastic covered stairs and under the plastic is the nasty green carpet. In order for the trim boards to work, it's going to come out too.

Once the plastic and green carpet was up, we found this really hideous yellow/brown stuff. We had to take a few minutes to clear our heads of the dizziness this inspired before we could continue. Yecho!! This is amongst the worst things we've found in the house (and that is saying a LOT).

Here's the wainscotting we decided to put up in the stairs. It looks great from the top (and the bottom, of course). The black stuff on the floor is some of the backing from the hideous yellow/brown carpet (gone by this point). Beneath that is some lineoum tiles and under that some paint. We'll get to stripping the rest of it up soon, but the areas around the wall have been cut back enough to allow the base boards to go in on the actual floor.

This is a pretty good view of the wainscotting viewed from the bottom of the stairs. Yummy!

The completed mudroom space. There is high wainscotting on the bench side and lower wainscotting on the south/exterior side. This gives the bench the feel of a builtin in piece of furniture (vs just being a bench in the same wall as everything else).

View of the booth space trimmed out. The only thing missing is the table, which will be permanently installed, but is out being stained/finished at the shop.

And the book case, as viewed from the booth. Again, you can see the wainscotting for the bottom of the stairs and a bit of the mudroom behind it.

Here's the view of the sourth east of the kitchen. You can see the windows have been trimmed, the columns and base at the end of the soffit is complete and the band that caps the tile backspash (not yet installed) is on the wall. You can also see the granite countertops and sink that have been installed. The counter tops are just beautiful and gave a dark, slightly green tint (which will absolutely go along with the Motawi tile backsplash). The cabinet doors have also been installed (though the hardware hasn't been yet).

View of the west side of the kitchen. Not a lot changed here, except the door to the dining room is trimmed out and the backsplash cap over the counter top is in place.

South view of the trim, letting you see both sets of columns that define the entry to the booth. Sitting in the booth space is pretty cool -- feels cosy, yet you have easy view of the rooms surrounding you.

View of the trim looking south toward the mudroom. Note the hyper-fancy door lock (the board wedged up against the back door). The door is the wrong door and so they don't want to cut it up and install a lockset. However, we already have the correct door, but it's out being stained.

View of the north east corner of the kitchen. You can also just make out the dishwasher in place (to the left of the sink). After being pushed around for the past 6 months, it's finally got a new home and better than that -- it works! No leaks (big concern).

View of the stair case wainscotting from the back entry.

This is the "missing" wainscotting (are you sick of me saying "wainscotting" yet? No, well you will be). We really should have put this in before during the first major phase of renovation, but didn't think of it. The big empty gap of wall has been bugging me ever since. Now, I can sleep at night again!

After all major nasty work is done on the house, we decided that trying to fix the lawn up (heavy damage) was going to take a long time. Considering we still have to paint about 9 rooms in the house and the entire exterior, it was tough imagining where we'd get the time. Of course, getting this done would be expensive -- or so I thought. We found a company that would do it for less than the equivilent of 8 hours of my time. I've also wanted a sprinkler system for years and with the last major part of the house renovation complete, this seemed like a good time to do it. Here is the old lawn, as viewed from the front. While it looks good at this angle, you can't see all the damaged spots up here, the 47 different varieties of competing grass and the unkillable creeping chickweed. This is an "idealized" version of the old lawn -- it never really looked like this.

Another view of the old lawn from the east/park side. You can see some of the larger scale damage here. Construction machinery, materials stored on the grass and lot of other problems.

And the ugly, ugly back of the house. This is so messed up it would have taken a week to dig it out and level it.

They stripped the old lawn (what was left of it) with a fairly cool machine that let them roll up sections of it. It's the same sort of machine that sod farms use to cut their sod up for delivery.

At this point, all the lawn that had survived the winter has been cut and rolled up and is ready for landfilling.

The seemy underside of the lawn.

All debris has been cleaned off and the yard roughly graded. In addition, the sprinkler system has been installed (yeah!).

Theres the sod (in the background), ready to be delivered. Of course, the delivery forklift wrecked the out lawn. Sigh.

Here the sod being layed out. As you've probably heard, this took about 6 days to complete (no, really took about 2 hours).

Okay, I understand the city needs to be able to use the street for storing stuff in the ongoing renovation of Pauline Blvd, but this pretty much honked my hooter. No reason to kill my grass other than sloppy dumping. This eventually was cleaned up, leaving a lovely half-moon of dead grass in it's wake.

Mark starting the exterior priming of the new space. Since we're getting to the end of the Equity line, looks like we'll be painting the house ourselves again! This starts the long, tedious process. There is still a lot of priming, sanding, scraping, masking and of course, painting to do.