The last few days have been encouraging with rooms being finished up by the diligent workers and our furniture arriving. Today we sold the house! We had been negotiating with other buyers who wanted a contingency on selling their house, but then other buyers came in and made a nice bid with no contingency. We were lucky neither tried to lowball us. I dunno about the rest of the housing market, but we didn't do too badly on this sale. We are very relieved and want to thank Bret's parents for all their hard work making it ready and supervising the movers, etc.

We thank Suzanne for all her hard work maintaining the house while it was up for sale. Mr. Brackett gets a thank you for his unflagging hospitality and patience while I sat on his porch taking cell phone calls and secretly peeking at the potential buyers from across the street. Our real estate team pulled through for us and we are of course relieved to be owners of only one house again.

So, on with the cottage progress...

Here comes our stuff! The movers consisted of the three guys who packed us; a father and his two sons and then two local guys were brought in to help unload. All of them really hustled.

The truck...

inside...

Adam has to have a look inside...

Okay, it wasn't enough that this guy had to put this huge chair on his back, he decided to carry stuff in his hands as well...

Master Bedroom

Here are the beautiful drapes that Bret's mom created from the bed set we found on sale at Linens 'n Things. We are so thrilled with them. She really did a great job!

Master Dressing Room

The Master Sitting Room is the same colour as the Master Bedroom (it just photographed whiter). Right now, we have the purple chairs in there, but we'll see how it goes.

Master Bathroom

The Master Bathroom is really a treat for us. Here is the shower...

enclosed toilet...

we only wanted a single sink...since we will only be in the bathroom one at a time...

We are looking for a big round mirror to go over the sink.

Hearth Room

The family room built-ins are temporarily holding all the dishes because the kitchen cabinets don't begin to be big enough! The doorway leading to the kitchen will be flanked with shelving that we hope to buy at Lucketts.

The Dining Room gets the Living Room mirror...oh, ignore the apple, it doesn't go there. The wall colours are a bit off in these photos, I promise...

and keeps the clock. The table fits a little better than we feared it wouldn't and so it's a keeper for now. It still can't open up all the way and the chairs are a bit big.

We got this idea to make this the "Map Room" a kinda staged gentleman's explorer home from his travels. We have a big map on one wall and our four smaller maps flanking the window. It will be a spare study. (Can there be too many?)

Foyer

Our Living Room sofa table got a new job, guarding the foyer:

Kitchen

Here are the finished cabinets with glass handles. We love it! The slate floors are the next step.

Breakfast Room

Breakfast Room but where to eat? The table is still full of stuff!

We will look for a storage piece here:

If the movers would have shuffled my books like a deck of cards, they couldn't have mixed them up more!

The shelves now have the general history and military history books roughly sorted:

More books still all over the floor...

Kitchen Cabinet Doors

Here are some kitchen cabinet doors, painted and ready for reassembly:

Found these at Pottery Barn to flank the mirror sink in the master bathroom:

See this workbench?

I think it could be made into a wonderful something. Bret and Adam don't agree.

Kitchen Cabinets

Here are the kitchen colours!

Kitchen lilypads aka rotating shelves waiting to return to their cabinet hideaways:

Hopefully, the doors will go on tomorrow, while the master bathroom marble is being installed.

Oh we saw four deer today! I was told by our neighbor to put out a saltlick if I wanted to attract them. I will get one asap! I didn't get a photo of them, but here are some other on-the-way-to-our-house shots:

Here are the four (round) bushes (on the right) I look for to turn onto a road that leads to our house...see 'em?

turning...

one view of our street:

the other direction:

Marble Meeting

The very nice people at the marble place remembered I cheered up and became more coherent at the sight of chocolate and bottled water and were all ready for me on our second meeting:

Living Room Drapes

Bret's mom shortened the living room valances and drapes.

The first is the after and the second is the before (because I got 'em mixed up):

The past week:

The following posts show what happened this past week, not necessarily in chronological order. Bret's parents arrived and were hard at work on helping everywhere they could and graciously sleeping on air mattresses in various locales to accommodate the march of construction progress. They were truly heroic in their feats of fix, create, clean and figure-it-outs. Early in their visit, Jana, Ken and Evan joined us for dinner.

After I was in a sort of car accident and a few other personal mishaps, my dad dropped everything, including his lunch utensils to fly up and calm me down. For a few days, I ran errands and had periodic emotional expressions before tackling a little of the kitchen project. A day after my sorta accident and my dad showed up, a branch fell on the painter's truck.

Among the loud, piercing whir of the electric drilling and sawing, etc. ...Bret's mom worked peacefully and quietly on the valances for the basement and the drapery for the living room (remade from the existing ones and then new ones for the master bedroom (made from an extra comforter bed set we bought at Linens 'n Things, which is going out of business and so we got a great deal on two of the same set; using one for "spare parts"). Bret's dad stoically undertook their installation.

Meanwhile Bret and his dad were working on the bookshelves and lots of other stuff while the workers were renovating the laundry room and basement closet and painting all the upstairs rooms and hallway and also the living room and foyer.

Toward the end of the week the floor guys showed up to start the second floor. We replaced the carpets there with the same kind of wood floors we have on the first floor; a kind of rough looking finished in a dark stain. Since they are still working, master bedroom progress is not yet available for photo shoots. In a few days I should be able to flash my media pass.

We have been eating on the porch as our kitchen has been emptied into the dining room.

Today, Bret's parents (after getting up at before the crack of dawn to secretly wash their bedsheets! as if they had not done enough) and my dad went home.

Bret cleaned up the laundry room some more (today is the first day I could do laundry without waiting for the construction guys to go away) and we continued working on the kitchen and I put some stuff (okay, books) in the basement closet.

Kitchen Cabinets

We have opted for a country kitchen. These are the green painted interiors that I brushed on myself. The exteriors will be in red. Bright and Christmasy and yummy.

These are the interiors that Bret brushed on himself:

But our dads did the hardest part. Sanding and taping and cleaning. I did a little of that and helped take off the hardware. Adam pitched in at various stages. And Bret's mom was still hard at work on the drapes...

Foyer

Here is the foyer with the new wall paint.

Here is the first finished space in the whole house! A basement closet which my desks will be near when they arrive. My desks will face the pool table and this closet (, the laundry room and a powder room) will be to the side of the desks.

Bret's mom was in charge of drapery. She made this valance which matches another previously made one. She used the material from another drape that was just swagged over a window. Both of these were on the first floor. A third one will be just perfect as a table runner!

Progress on the bookshelves is going slowly, but Bret and his dad got waylaid by a few hundred other little interruptions.

We had a little sadness. A branch from a frontyard tree fell from way up in the tree and landed on the painter's truck. He and his pal are making sad faces. We assured them the insurance will take care of it. But it's not a happy deal, anyway.

Bret is on the phone calling the general contractor so he can explain to the painter in spanish. Afterward, he was smiling.