Climbing the stairway to…

Our second floor! We went out visit our house today, and saw that we’ve now got part of an actual stairway. The stairs were a bit of a splurge for us, and we ran several hundred dollars over budget, because we wanted the treads, newels and railings to be maple. The risers and balusters are pine, so they will be painted white, but the maple portions will be stained a natural maple color:

One of my favorite parts of the house is the large, screened back porch, with two – count ’em, two! – ceiling fans. Today, upon arrival at our house, we saw that the back porch had been screened in. This was a surprise to me, since our builder Woody hadn’t mentioned it in our conversations that week:

The hole in the backyard is all filled up, and we found the cause of this sitting in our front yard:

Actually, while we were at the house, Woody came out and told us that he was working on a Saturday, because the site guy was going to be back out that day, and Woody needed to meet with him. We were surprised to find Woody working on the weekend, but it was a lucky chance that brought him there, since he helped us solve the riddle of our wheelbarrow. We’d bought a wheelbarrow from Home Depot, but there were no accompanying directions. Before Woody arrived, we’d put the entire thing together, except that there was one extra piece that we couldn’t make fit. Woody very kindly bent the metal for us, so that it would fit exactly where it should. Crappily made Chinese wheelbarrow!

We got the barrow, though, so that we could haul the last of our compost pile into our compost bin. We’d been composting in the silt fence area for the erstwhile gopher tortoises, but now that we have the bin, we needed to move this pile into the bin so that our landscaper, who is coming this week, can remove the silt fence and mow that area. Our compost is coming along nicely and is moist, rich, dark brown, and, generally, everything that a compost should be.

Another surprise was that we got the handles for our interior doors:

The exterior door has the temporary knob on it still, and when I asked Woody why, he said that it was because he didn’t want any of the sub-contractors to have the keys to our actual lock. Very smart!

Our LG microwave/hood has also been installed:

We purchased this at Appliance Direct, new in box, for about $15 less than it would have cost us to buy it new from other stores at which we’d shopped. Not one of our better bargains, but every little bit helps!

Some of our light fixtures were put up last week, and I don’t think I’d posted pictures of those. Here is our front porch light:

It came with regular bulbs, and we just haven’t bought the candelabra base CFL’s yet. We do have the energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs up in all of our interior light fixtures, as well as in the lights outside our garage:

And, finally, we saw something pretty cool today. On our way to have lunch at the Country House Restaurant in Lake Wales, we spotted a mama & papa sandhill crane with their baby, on the side of a busy highway. The baby looked too young to fly, because he was still really downy, so I can only assume that they are raising him in the parking lot of a shopping center! I wish them luck in their endeavour, and hope they manage to keep that baby safe:

What is next for us, you ask? The electrician is coming on Monday to finish the electrical work, so that we can get an inspection this coming week and have the electricity turned on. Once this is done, the flooring can be finalized – halleluia! This will probably happen not this coming week, but the one after. The painters are coming this week to paint and stain the stairs, and, once the lot grading is complete, the landscaper will come and do his thing. Then the driveway will be poured next week, though I would think that the driveway should be poured before the landscaper lays the sod? The propane guy has to be sweet-talked into coming and hooking up our range, and the cabinet people need to install our potato & onion baskets. After that, we are pretty much done! Woody is going to have someone come in to give the place a thorough cleaning, since there are about 10 million dead lovebugs inside the house, and he’s hoping to have it ready by the end of July. We’re keeping all 20 of our fingers (are we aliens?) and all 20 of our toes crossed that this is the case, since it would be really nice to have a bit of summer time to settle in before school starts for me in mid-August.