Progress on the house has been a little slow this past week. We got snowed in and no one could make it up our drive, and Kaia was ill this weekend. It’s also been bone chilling cold! But, I got out there and sealed and caulked the tub today. It looks fancy!!! All the window trim is up and the stairs will get finished this week (temporary steps come out, real treads and risers go in.) Then the upstairs floor and trim can be finished and the Master bedroom will be done!!! So, we could potentially move some stuff in there, just for a little extra elbow room.

Two of the stones in our new soapstone wood stove have cracked and I’m having a hell of a time getting them replaced. Our local stove store seems to have gotten stupid over night now that we want to replace something and not buy it. I’ve been trying to get one stone replaced since mid-dec. and the other stone broke this week. Anyone else have broken stones with soap stone stoves?

Toby has done an awesome write up on our new solar hot water system. Click below to read it.
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All the trim is going up!

Here’s the design we decided on for the windows. Isn’t it classy. I think it goes really well with all the other angles in the house. For the windows, I am going to finish them with a wood finish from Eathpaint made with beeswax, linseed oil, pine resin, and citrus distillate. They are going to look fabulous! The door trim, and floor moulding are going to be painted white.

These are windows in the master bedroom. The larger one doubles as our door onto the living roof ‘patio’.

This is one of the windows in the stairwell.

Here’s the article in the paper. I haven’t gotten the physical paper yet to see what it says. There’s usually more in the paper than they put on line.

Addendum: Here’s a link to more pictures that were taken of our house.

Toby’s mom, Kaia, and I worked on finishing up the tub today! I love this kind of work. It’s instant gratification. We got the larger tiles almost 2 years ago free from some place that went out of business. The color was a bit 70′s disco orange. So, I went to the local tile place and got some marble and glass tiles (the little ones) to spruce it up a little. Came out pretty nice, eh? Tomorrow we will grout and seal it. I’ll post more pictures when it’s done.

Oh, the local paper, the Asheville Citizen Times, sent a photographer out yesterday to take some pictures of us and the house. They are doing a story on the company that makes the Earthpaint that we used on our walls and woodwork, and wanted some info from people who have actually used it. After the photographer left, I realized that I had wood glue all over my coat, Toby had soot from the wood stove on his face, and Kaia had red eyeshadow on from an earlier “dress up” game. HA! I wonder how good they are with an airbrush

Here they are, getting instructions from the boss.

And up we go!

They now sit to the north of the big house, just outside the back door. (to the right of the panels you can see the trench we dug that lead all the way to the well)

I like this pic. because you can really see the intensity of the sun hitting the panels

I don’t know how everything turned out, ’cause I had to leave for the evening. But, we should have our floors warming up soon!!

Alrighty!!! My mother-in-law came over this weekend and we painted all the walls!!!

As you walk in the front door and turn right, you see the study/office/xtra bedroom. It’s “mulberry patch” colored Yes, those are our new appliances… they are working on installing the solar water system in the mudroom, so we put the appliances in here for now.

Here are the walls in the main living area. It’s “orange pekoe” I love this color!

This is that downstairs bathroom… “Cathay Coral” color. It will go great with the mexican talavara sink!

Stairwell up to the master room

Stairway looking down

The color I was going for in the master BR was a pinky-taupe… it turned out very purple. So, luckily I have a mother-in-law who use to be an interior designer… so we pulled out some of the other paints and mixed us up a new color!

A little orange pekoe, pink taupe, and pampas grass green and you get a great bedroom wall color!

Here’s the mud room solar controls for the hot water… They are out setting up the panels as I write.