Paint, paint and more paint.

The day before we closed on the house J and I made up a huge master schedule of all of the projects that needed to be done and the dates we allotted ourselves to do them. I think we were off-schedule by day three.  And according to the schedule we should have moved in last week. Yeeaaaaaaah, not so much…

Some projects have ended up being huge time-sucks that we did not at all anticipate.  For example, I decided I wanted to whitewash all the tongue in groove ceilings throughout the house to lighten up the inside a little bit.  We figured this would take one weekend.

Ha. Haha.  HAHAHAHAHA! Silly naive do-it-yourselfers.

We had four of us painting all day last Saturday, and we got one, yes one, room done.  Since then we have had several other people to come over pretty much every evening last week to help us and we are done with the upstairs and about 1/3 done with the downstairs. I soooo did not anticipate it taking this much time, but it is so pretty! The pictures don’t really do it justice.

J is nearly done with figuring out the wiring in the house.  He has chased all the wires back to the electrical box and we only have two mystery wires. Not bad. Figuring out how to run wires in a home where 90% of the walls are solid logs has been a bit difficult but J is handling the challenge with impressive skill and creativity as always. I certainly don’t make it easier on him when I tell him I want a four-way switch at the entrance and exit of every room either.

I’m working on the vanity for the downstairs bathroom.  I found a beautiful copper vessel sink that we’ll mount on top of this as soon as I finish painting and sealing it. We did something similar to this with a buffet in our last house and I loved the character it added to the bathroom.

In other news, our ANR finally got pushed through the planning board. It took a month and a half and three mildly contentious meetings but this means that our property is back to one lot rather than seven and when we file for an abatement next year our taxes should go back to a much more reasonable tax rate. That was such a headache and a big lesson in town politics. Our neighbors were so supportive though and we had about 20 of them come out in support of us at one of the meetings. I’m really thankful for the people we find ourselves surrounded by at our new house. The first month we constantly had people pulling in the driveway to introduce themselves, share a story about the house or the property and offer assistance if we ever needed anything. I love our new town.

We also sat before the conservation commission to seek approval for our plans with the front of the property and although we were anticipating a fight, they pretty much approved our plan with no problems whatsoever. Yay!

So that means work on the new driveway starts tomorrow. T was pretty excited about the big equipment that showed up over the weekend.

Nights are getting a little chilly in the camper so we are chomping at the bit to get into the house in the next few weeks. As soon as the painting is done we will spray a sealant onto all the interior logs, put down hardwood floors throughout and put together the bathroom. Then we’re in! We’re almost there!