The Short Family Adventures: Week 6

By far the most changes this week - it's giving us house-fever!!!! Walls went up everywhere and we faced a lot of decisions. We have finally decided on unfinished, engineered Brazilian Tigerwood which will be site-finished with a penetrating oil finish - phew!!!! It's fabulously hard, the oil finish is VOC-free and makes scratches and dents fixable on an individual basis and not nearly as visible as a polyurethane finish. This particular brand (Real Wood) is warrantied to go over radiant, has a wear-layer as thick as hardwood, and is more stable. FINALLY!!!!! Monday we got the news that when Dell had gone to the city to discuss our basement plans he figured out we were not engineered for GypCrete. Since this is the material that the radiant was to be in and the dimensions of the floor were set to - problem. Resolved by doing a different form of radiant (actually the same kind as Erika and Mark - installed below the subfloor, from under the floor) and sloping the landing slightly at the top of our current stairs. The county also put some huge restrictions on our crawl space. Since pouring concrete under any wood floor will cause it to warp (which we didn't realize until last weekend), we need to get the concrete poured before. And since the radiant has to go in under the concrete, the county considers the heated space a finished space, so indeed we must finish the basement. That includes electrical, plumbing, AND dry wall - ugh! We're not finishing the bathroom or painting at this point. Now we are really overbudget! Thank goodness we paid less in taxes so we're still covered with our savings. Now that we're past that bump, we are getting really excited about having the extra space the basement offers. It will be great to get the exercise equipment out again and have a large, heated space for the kiddos to play when it's nasty outside (feels like all the time recently!). More house news... we have decided based on how the room looks that we will not put the tv over the fireplace. The funny thing is that Dean was the one to talk me into it (it took a lot of convincing and the whole mirror idea to do it), but then when we started to walk around our living room, he was the one too convince me otherwise! The fireplace will look so much better without the tv - really allow the stone to show and especially excited about our mantle - a huge chunk of beautiful cedar from the property. The wood just got out of the kiln and now is to undergo some finishing steps before being ready. After walking around the house with the walls in place, we've also opted to move a couple walls - make the office smaller and living room larger, no door on the laundry area of the mudroom, and put the door on the otherside of the powder room. Next week, it appears that our stairs and 3rd floor will be going in! The radiant in the basement and concrete will be poured at the end of next week. Dean, Dell, and I are headed to Georgetown (Seattle) on Tuesday to look at granite/quartz countertops, tile flooring, and carpeting. No decisions to be made yet, just need to start looking so we can make decisions and also get local bids for the work (not that any of those have panned out so far - pretty flaky really.). On the family front, Dean & I were both struck down with the cold from the kiddos. Neither of us were as sick as they were (maybe Airborne does help?) but it still made for a long week. Dean has scheduled his recertification test and a week-long class to prepare for it, all in August. We'll go as a family to Portland for the weekend before the class and then Dean will stay on by himself. Spring soccer started last week with a great win against long-time rival Bella Italia, however, some controversy over "stolen players" put a damper on it for Dean. Gotta love the small town politics! Ainsley's definately showing signs of being three - sweet and talkative and compliant one moment and stubborn and screaming the next. Only a couple of melt downs this week and mainly due to hunger or fatigue, however, when they happen - wow! Funny things with her this week - she's getting really excited whenever Ian babbles telling us how he's talking to her. She was coloring a princess and I asked which one it was and she told me it was "Sleeping Booty"!!! Ian's starting to use his legs to crawl instead of just dragging himself by his arms (not that he doesn't cruise that way!). He's able to pull himself to standing now and is walking using our furniture and walls. He's learned how to hit the floor with his bum versus his head, although has nailed his head often not paying attention to where he's going when crawling. He ate pasta for the first time this week and loved it. Not much going on with me - work is always busy. I started a monthly "health" competition between employees with prizes of healthy food, gym membership, or massage (what everyone will choose I'm sure!). Our river otter project is on hold until after the breeding season - will resume for July/August. And we've added a cougar project for the Skokomish tribe - although less likely to be intimately involved in that one due to the distance. Here's a few pics from the week... Basement Rec Room /Monday progress

Tuesday

Wednesday

Dancing in the fireplace

Thursday - yes, snow again! In fact, the framers showed up at 7am (no, we get no privacy in the mornings!) and then disappeared for a little while. Dean ran across them coming back when he was leaving for work and they told them that they had driven up the hill to see how pretty the snow looked in the trees!!!!