The greatest neighbors ever!

Big changes every day now! Sara, Peggy and Loretta - our truly wonderful neighbors - all pitched in on the painting over the weekend so we had it ready today for the cement board in the kitchen to be installed and kitchen cabinets to be unpacked. I think they look great up against our newly painted walls. We particularly like the wine rack (which we can't wait to fill, empty, fill, empty) and the tall pantry cabinet on the cathedral wall. The beaded wainscoating style really suits us. Our beautiful Slate Solutions "Multicolor" tiles arrived for the entryway and kitchen as did the island sink, the bathroom vanity and the lighting for the bathroom. "WinterWheat" tiling of the master bathroom continues and final parts of radiant heat installed so bedroom flooring can go in tomorrow. Oak stairs to the basement are being put in as we speak. I spent a couple hours at Mario's picking out paint for the bathroom ("Acorn Yellow"), bedroom ("Montpelier"), library and hallway ("Firenze") today. Two out of three ain't bad I guess - in the light of our space, the "Firenze" orangey color I picked that went so well with the floor tiles in the store just wouldn't work in the hallway behind the green wall. So back to visit Dottie at Mario's tomorrow for something a little more complementary (in the brown/taupe family) for there. Today Jim walked us through the plan for the deck. Our old deck was 16 feet deep so since we're using the old wood we'll make it 16 feet vs. the 14 feet that was originally architected. A deck that big will reduce the light that gets in to the guest suite/office but we're already planning to light it well to compensate. Since we're not doing the screened-in porch on the side (at least not for now), we'll put deck there too. Jim will start bringing the field stone up this week and we'll have the fireplace delivered so they can start installing as soon as they can. The granite folks come to template Thursday. I've taken vacation to start packing. It's hard to concentrate on work anyway - and most of the clients are also on vacation. Yippee!!