We made some real progress over the labor day weekend, largely due to the HUGE amount of help that we got from some truly fantastic people in town. We (Dad, Mom, Uncle Al & myself) started laying down pavers for the driveway/patio on Saturday morning and slowly throughout the day we accumulated more and more volunteers until, towards the end of the day, we had 12 people working. Because of that tremendous amount of help, we were able to get all of the pavers laid down in a single day. All ~2500 of them. I forgot to get some pictures of the finished product before it got dark on Monday, which is why you’re getting this update a week late. Unfortunately we got a bunch of rain on Monday night and didn’t quite have the dirt sloped away on the one edge of the pavers yet, so we had some water back up on to them and leave some residue, but we’ll get them cleaned off.

The big reason why it got dark before I got a decent picture of the finished driveway/patio on Monday is because of the shower in my master bathroom…

I ordered a marble shower base and 3 marble panels for the walls through the company that is making my kitchen and bathroom cabinets. They have a connection because they get marble countertops for bathrooms pretty regularly and that organization also makes shower panels/bases. Anyway, the order was delivered on Friday 8/30 and the guy was coming to start laying the tile on the bathroom floors on Tuesday 9/3, so unfortunately it was looking like we’d have to get, at least the base, installed ourselves so it would be ready for the tile guy on Tuesday.

Wow. That was a hell of an ordeal.

The shower base measured 69 1/4 inches wide, and with the drywall removed in the bathroom (to get ready for the shower base) the stud-to-stud measurement of the space was 69 1/4 inches. Plus (as you can see in the picture) the bathroom is all one single width, so somehow we were going to have to get it through the door upright and lay it down once it was in the room. That was a tight fit. We ended up notching out the studs and the bottom plate on the inside wall (non-load-bearing of course) so that we could get it laying flat in that area on 4×4 blocks. Then shimmed it up so it wouldn’t sit directly on top of the hot water lines in the floor, lined up the drain and got the PVC cement it on before dropping it down the rest of the way. HUGE thanks to Neighbor Tim for spending 3 1/2 hours helping us get that in place in addition to helping us with the pavers 2 days before, and HUGE thanks to Neighbor Fred who helped us get those (very) heavy pieces of marble up to the second level.

And, of course, I didn’t get a picture of that in-place because it was 9:30p before we finished and I forgot to snap it before we unplugged all of the lights. etc. Here is a picture of it from last weekend, after the tile guy has his self-leveler down on top of the hot water lines and the Ditra anti-fracture mat down on top of that. He’s set to finish up the tile today.

The hardwood floors are coming along nicely. As of last weekend he’s got them all laid down and a great start on the sanding. The plan is to have stain on them by the end of the day today, the first clear coat on them tomorrow and they’ll be ready for the cabinets to come in on Thursday! They are looking really nice after he’s got them sanded and I’m really excited to see what they’re going to look like finished.

And finally I have to give a shout out to Luxy 13 Hops who grow hops on a farm just outside of town. For the last three weekends they’ve been harvesting hops and I spent some time on Saturday helping them out with that. It was a great atmosphere, lots of conversation, learning about hops and catching up with Cory and Clinton Rausch who run Luxy 13 along with Joe Klein. Check them out at https://www.luxy13hops.com/.