We are so close to being done with the house. We ran out of wood for the floors late Friday night and couldn't get more until yesterday. We've got about 50 sq ft to lay and we're done! The carpet is going to be laid tomorrow and the excavator will be there sometime this week and that's it. I can hardly believe that we're almost done. Hopefully we'll at least move in the appliances by this weekend.

My sister beat me in the race of baby vs. sweater. She had a girl, Kelsie Nicole, yesterday morning. How exciting. It's hard to imagine that my youngest sister has two children. My mom is a grandma twice over. Amazing.

We've had beautiful weather the last few days so Bill and I went to look for Morels. We found five (I found three and he found two. Ha!) very tiny ones. Too small to eat, so we left them. Hopefully we get some rain this week and the mushrooms will spring forth bountifully and we will collect and eat many. :-)

Here's the baby sweater I've been working on. The top part is a hood.

And the wood floor we're installing. This is going WAY slower than the tile. I thought it would go faster. We worked on it over the weekend and Bill took yesterday off and worked on it. We're farther along than this picture, but still have more than half the floor left to do.

Once again, it was a boring weekend of working on our house. No we're not done. No we're never going to get done. Saturday we made pretty slow progress with the wood floors. We made three trips to Home Depot to pick up some tool or another that would make our lives easier.

Saturday night I got inspired to dye my hair. I thought I would put some blond highlights in and then dye it red, resulting in some cool red highlight and then darker red hair. For the record, I wore red hair for about three years, but have had it natural for the last two years. So I bought some of that demi-permanent type dye (lasts for about 4 weeks) which works fine when you already have red hair. No so good when you don't. My highlights turned out orange and my hair was barely red at all! It was very late by the time I was done, so I decided to deal with in the morning. Next morning I went to town and discovered Wal-mart is closed on Easter, but luckily Meijers is open. I got some Feria and it did the trick, although my hair has gotten so long, I wish I'd had two kits! Time to make an appt for a hair cut. I guess it turned out all right, but I don't think I really like the way the highlights look and probably will never do highlights at home again!

We went to my mom's for Easter dinner yesterday. Twice in one month! That's some kind of record I think. Plenty of food was had by all. We only spent about 2 hours there because we had to get back and work on the floors. I think we got about 1/4 of it done. Which is actually not bad considering we probably only got about 5 hours of actual work in.

And I actually did knit this weekend. The baby sweater is probably about 1/2 done.

I have acquired baby knitting fever. I never thought it would happen, because I'm not a "baby" person. But my sis is about to deliver her second baby (approx 2 weeks!) and I have the sudden urge to knit all things baby. Went to my LYS last night and picked up an easy top-down hooded cardigan pattern and some strippy/variegated Plymouth Encore. It's more pastelly than I wanted (a lot more!), but I thought maybe she wouldn't like the orange and lime-green sweater I wanted to do. Maybe the next one...

I've seen some cool birds lately. I'm not a bird watcher or anything, but these couldn't be missed on my hour-long trek to or from work. Last week I saw bald eagle! It was less than 50 ft off the road. I actually turned the Jeep around and watched it till it flew away (that was like 2.3 seconds with all my commotion). This was the first time I ever saw an eagle. They are enormous.

This morning I saw a pheasant. These are very beautiful birds and I don't see them that often. Maybe once every other year or so, but it's not like I go looking either. I didn't take the picture below. It's just to show you what they look like.

I was knitting at the bookstore last night and just when I was thinking of leaving, it started to hail. It quickly turned to deluge of rain, but, wow, I haven't seen real hail for at least a few years. It also got back down into the 30s, where it had been in the 80s these past two days. Makes for big excitement with the knitting ladies and the old man. He crochets and is making his first sweater. I think that's kinda neat. And, actually, he doesn't much react to anything.

I mailed off my tax payment early yesterday morning. Due to the fact that I was either unemployed or self-employed for half of last year we ended up owing both state and federal taxes. It could have been worse, but I had the foresight to have a little extra withheld from my paycheck when I finally got a job.

This is getting boring, but we worked on our floor more on Saturday. Big fun. We also went to our local Kmart to see if we could snag any deals before it closed. Nothing too exciting. Got a bunch of those energy efficient long lasting light bulbs for $1.19 when they usually retail for about $5. Also scored some shower organizers and other miscellaneous junk.

On Sunday we went to my Mom's for dinner. On the way down we drove through Tustin (a blip on the map) and saw a Dodge Charger all painted up like the General Lee from Dukes of Hazard. Very weird. I told my husband it was like "Mullet Spotting" except anyone can have bad hair, but you gotta really work hard to get a car decked out like the General Lee. You gotta be dedicated!

Thank you for the book recommendation Bess! I've been browsing at Borders for a few weeks, but I couldn't decide on a book. There's just so many to choose from!

Not much new going on, but I finally got around to getting these pictures up! The tile shown here doesn't have the grout in yet, but you get the idea. I made the larger room shot pop-up pics so you don't have to wait for them to download. Aren't I nice?

Here's a close up of the tile in the kitchen

And here is a shot of the entire kitchen. The open space at the end is now filled in that's just where we happened to leave off for the day.

This is the master bath tile

And a shot of the room

WooHoo! They installed cabinets, trim, doors and many other things yesterday! It's starting to look complete. Last night we went and bought all the lights & ceiling fans so they could install them today and we start installing the wood floors this weekend. Won't be long at all and we'll be moving in.

Bill's mom and dad are leaving today for their bi-annual vacation. They go gold prospecting twice a year in Georgia. Not that that is the only time they prospect. They do it all over the state of Michigan too. Sometimes they even find gold.

A couple of weeks ago we were thinking we'd be ready to move in this week. It's a kind of a good thing we're not because that way we can take care of the cats. They have three cats and we have three cats. Makes for some interesting cat watching.

So, I'm thinking of starting a garden. OK, maybe more than thinking. Perhaps I already bought some seeds. Mostly a large variety of hot peppers. Anyone reading have a vegetable garden? It's not like we don't have mounds and mounds of poop to make compost. Hell, much of it is probably already composted just from being in a pile. Poopy cows produce a lot of poop! I've never really had a green thumb, but I've never really educated myself on what plants need. I also want to get some houseplants. Hopefully, the cats don't decide to used them as cat boxes.

I had a few minutes before Kuntaw class, so I brought the regia socks in with me. Just a few rounds, but it felt good and my wrists didn't hurt at all. We have our class at the local college gym that hosts many other activities in the evening. I think it embarrasses the guys just bit in "We're macho martial artists" kind of way because they always get some weapon or another out we're waiting to get into our room if I'm knitting.

There's big excitement going on at the TV station where hubby works. Occasionally conditions arise that cause the TV tower to be covered in ice. Sometimes it warms up just enough for the ice to fall off the tower. Big ice. Car crushing ice. There's actually "Watch for falling ice" signs at the station.

So we had an ice storm Thursday and Friday and ever since ice had been falling on the station. A brand new pickup truck got caved in. They've moved the newscasts out of the studio and into a place that has a foot of cement for a roof. Yesterday, Bill was moving the weather center computers around and large monitor size chuck of ice fell through the ceiling about 10 feet from him. So he's takes it all in stride and moves all the studio computers to a location with more cover. Me...I'm a little freaked out.

Friday was our 11 year anniversary. It's hard to believe that we've been together that long. We didn't do much. Just went out to dinner and then over to a friends house. Not much point in having a romantic evening at home when you're living' with your in-laws, is there?

Saturday we finished cleaning up the tile in the kitchen. It turned out great after much scrubbing. It took most of the day, but we got it. I also sealed the tile in the three small rooms.

Bill promised me I could have Sunday off while he finished running the gas lines for the stove, drier and hot water heater, but I was feeling energetic (and maybe a little guilty as he would be working all day). I got up early and went over to the house. I don't know why, but we didn't tile the closet in the master bath, so I laid out and cut the tiles to fit in there and also did the big area in front of the front door and closet that we never got to. That way when we have a few hours, all we have to do is mix up the mortar and lay the tiles. I also sealed the grout in the kitchen. Did I mention it looks awesome? Later in the afternoon I got inspired and unloaded the trailer of all the wood flooring. Mostly because I think Bill's dad wanted his trailer back :). All in all it was a good weekend and Sunday was relatively relaxing.

I'm still around. I promise :) We've been working on our floors every spare minute that we've got and some that we don't. We both took a week off of work last week to install both the tile and hard wood floors we purchase. Ha. We even gained 2 days because my step-father painted everything for us with his super-duper painter (he's a drywaller). We should have had an indication that it would not go as fast as we planned when on the first day we only got 1/2 as far as we expected.

Saturday
When you install tile you first lay down a layer of thin-set mortar, then you lay down cement board. You screw or nail down the board every 8 inches. We got about half of the board put down. But hey, we're learning. We were lucky that Bill's brother came all the way up from down state to help us. He was only there for Saturday.

Sunday
Ugh. Not much done because we went to friends for a Sushi, Saki, and Saporo party. We were kinda hung over. We did move all the materials into the house from the garage and trailer it was stored in.

Monday
My forearms are screaming from carrying all the heavy tile boxes the day before. We bought a lot of tile (410 sq ft)! We finished laying the cement board down and finally tiled the guest bathroom. And we originally thought we would be laying tile down Saturday afternoon. Silly us. We had planned to do a checkerboard pattern with some white tile and a white with a gray marble we had bought on clearance a year or so ago. That's when we discovered the white tile was too thick! All the tile was supposed to be the same thickness (1/4") and the thickness of the tile and cement board added together is as thick as the hardwood. We had enough of the clearance tile to do that one bathroom, so we did it just to get something done. I learned how to run the tile saw so layout and cutting tile became my chief duties for the rest of the week.

Tuesday
We went out to the flooring place to exchange the white tile. Unfortunately, that's the only tile they keep in stock. I suspect that it's only in stock because it's too thick to match up with any other standard sizes. The owner was on vacation, but his son was nice enough to dig around in his leftovers and he found us enough to do the master bath. It's really cool too. Way cooler than that plain ol' white shit. So we go home and get another room done.

Wednesday
We when back to the flooring place hoping he had found enough of something to do the mudroom with. No luck. So we went to Home Depot and bought some cheap white tile (kinda like what we had planned on using anyway) and did the mudroom. Notice a trend here? One small room = one day. I did get started on the layout of the kitchen/dinning room.

Thursday
We need to bust ass! We have to finish the kitchen/dinning room today because Bill had to back to work on Friday. It's about the 2x the size of all 3 of the other rooms combined. And it seriously has to look good. And this is the expensive tile. And we discovered we screwed ALL the cement board down with screws that were too short when Bill read the book and it said to use a different size screw. We were a little concerned cause not all the screws went in level to the cement board. After our first big blowup at each other which kind of ended when I started crying we got down to business. For the first time since I quit smoking in January, if someone had one nearby I would have smoke it. I'm glad no one was nearby! We only managed to get about 2/3s done. Oh well. I could finish it the next day without Bill.

Friday
I get an early start and decide first I’m going to put down the cement board by the front door and in the closet there. We got sidetracked and this area never got done. After watching Bill cut this stuff, I managed to get it all cut correctly. I then mixed up the mortar like I watched Bill do all week. I did get the cement board down and finish the tile in the kitchen, but I didn’t get to the area by the front door.

Saturday
We kind of planned to go and work but we went shopping and generally goofed off instead.

Sunday
We went over to grout and discovered our big mistake. I should have cleaned up the tile Bill laid on Thursday before I did anything else on Friday, and we both should have cleaned up the tile I laid on Saturday. See the mortar is still relatively soft early the day after the tile is laid. You can clean up all the oozed out material from the cracks and scrub off drips from the tile. But by Sunday this was a rock hard mess. So we sawed it out with stupid little grout saws. For six hours. Then Bill conceded that the roto-zip might work (his dad suggested it several hours before). It did a pretty good job, although we still had to do some clean up.

At this point I'm freaked out. The cabinet people are supposed to show up Monday and install all the cabinets. And we have many hours of work left to do. Bill plans to take another day off sometime in the following week to finish the tile, but I feel like I can't ask for another day. I just started this job, after all and I told them before I started I would need this week off, but I feel guilty asking for another day. Bill thought his other brother might have a day off so he could help. I think to myself that it's his fault that we're in this mess! I was thinking I might want some Pergo or some other laminate flooring. He talked Bill into hardwood and tile. Oh yeah, we still have the wood to install.

I called the builder and told him we weren't ready for the cabinets and I did end up asking for a day off because Bill's brother had to work all week.

Tuesday evening
We finish cleaning up all the spaces between the tile for the grout and Bill cuts off the inch of cement board that needed to go (this is VERY MESSY! Dust everywhere). We worked for about 2 1/2 hours before we caved for dinner and showers.

Wednesday (April 2)
We get to the house early and finish cleaning up and finally mix up some grout. After looking at it we decided it was too light for the kitchen (a dark grey stone looking tile) but it would work for the other lighter tiled rooms. We did the 3 other rooms first and decided the grout would look just fine in the kitchen (save a trip to town), but oops, we don't think the one bag we have left is enough grout to do the kitchen/dinning room because it took 1 bag to do all three of the other rooms. So off we go to town to pick out a darker grey because that's what I thought I had and that's what we wanted. We also decided to go to grain store at this time rather than later in the afternoon so we wouldn't have no time limit (had to get grain by 5 pm and needed to do it that day).

So we picked out a color called charcoal. I was hoping for charcoal grey, but this stuff is BLACK. Very Black. But it was that or the same grey we already had. This stuff doesn't clean up very well. We ended up with a huge mess that hopefully some judicious use of chemicals will help clean up. We gave up trying to clean the tiles around 7:30 pm and will try to find some "Grout Haze Remover". The builder stopped by and laughed at us. He's done the black grout bit before. His only comment was that it was a real bitch to clean up.

So that brings you up to date. Needless to say, I have not knit a stitch. My wrists and hands are aching from all the squeezing, scraping, wringing and general abuse I've inflicted upon them in the past week and half. But you know what? It's worth it. When we get it cleaned up that kitchen will look awesome. Really. I would post some pics for you, but I can't upload them until Bill figures out what he changed the password on the server too. Hopefully sometime this week.