Day 217

I realized with some sadness this morning that the last post on the progress of the house remodel was on day 146. I'll let you do the math.

Things are at a standstill with the remodel at the moment. Did I tell you about the problem with the tile? The last pallet of floor tile has a different sealer than the first three pallets. It looks shiny and nice like the other tiles until it is installed and grouted and cleaned. And then all the shine is gone, every last bit of it. I didn't realize this until I had installed 70 of the suckers.

John, the manager of the local Dal Tile, has been out to the house twice. He agrees that the tile is defective. But we are in a bit of a predicament because he hasn't been able to contact the manufacturer of the tile in Mexico, and he thinks they may have gone out of business. Because we probably can't get a new shipment of tile to replace the last pallet, John has been trying out several different sealing products in an attempt to find what will work best on the defective tile so that it will match the shine of the other tile. So tiling is on hold for the moment.

But yesterday we did take one tiny step forward, and now I feel like I can show you the first true before and after of the house (please excuse the fact that I still don't have covers on the light switches or outlets, and please also excuse any dog snot that may be visible on the glass door. Argh!).

We finally got our new woodburning stove yesterday after two long months of waiting for it. YAY! I already love this chunk of cast iron almost as much as my printing presses! It is so much smaller and less obtrusive than the last one. I'll be firing it up today for the first of three "break in" fires, and hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll have it blazing away and Sadie will spend the rest of this winter like last winter, with her head under it baking her brain.


On a related note, between real work and all the printing I've been doing lately, I am behind on my smut. So, I will probably put the house and garden smut features on hold until after the holidays.