The next milestone

The Boy and I stayed in the house again last night, warm and cozy. I spent the evening staining pine boards for the ceiling, testing out the "Pickled Oak" stain for colour and intensity. It doesn't really do very much to the pine, although it brings out the grain and lightens the colour a little bit. Compared to plain unstained wood, it just seems to have a little more depth. I think that for the rest of the house I may want something a bit whiter, more like a true pickling stain. I'll have to get some different ones to test out.

This morning I put the pine boards I'd stained up on the part of my ceiling that is also the side wall of The Boy's loft, I think it looks pretty good. The pine will wrap down and under to the ceiling (which is the floor of the loft), and there will be pine on the angled part of the roof as well. The walls will be cedar, although I haven't bought any of that wood yet.

After that was done, I put the vinyl tiles down on the floor in the bathroom, which had been cleaned and swept for me by The Boy. He was really helpful today, sweeping up all the dust, clearing out the garbage from the crawl space, fetching things for me when I was up on the ladder, and generally being very useful.

Today, Plumber Man was out again working on the hot water tank and the well pressure tank. We still need a controller device for the well pump before we can have running water, but that is scheduled to arrive on Monday, so now when it gets here, everything else is ready. I am told that by Monday evening, we should have running water! How cool!

The biggest milestone today is that we have ....

(drumroll please)

a toilet.

True, we have no running water, but you can still use it - you just flush it with a bucket of water. The septic system is in place and everything is hooked up, so everything will go where it's supposed to go. This means I can tell the porta potty guys to come get their outhouse and take it away!

I am so very excited. By Monday night, I should (if all goes well) have running hot and cold water! And a toilet! And maybe even a shower, if Plumber Man gets that set up too. (The shower is the white shape you see at the bottom of the picture.)