Whirlwind of a weekend

For the last few weekends we've been projecting but we haven't really finished much to showcase. But, alas, all of that tedious painting a sanding finally came to fruition. This weekend, we took on the back door and other assorted projects. Of course, we picked the coldest weekend of the year to tackle the project where the house has to be open but aside from some frosted fingers, we pulled it off.

Our new rear view: check out our renovated backyard!

It's weird getting used to all of that light in the back corner of the kitchen; I keep thinking we left the door open.

Out the front of the house, the view is decidedly uneven. This poor maple can't decide what color to be: orange or green. This is the most bizarre fall coloring I've seen:

Once the door was in place, we took on a bunch of other miscellany: refinishing the butcher block, touching up paint here and there, prepping the new front door for another coat of finish, and cleaning out the basement.

The butcher block has been holding up pretty well with the finish we applied but last month when I left a wet cast iron skillet on the wood, I was left with a stubborn rust spot. That, along with a few other imperfections were sanded out on Saturday and we have a new coat of oil penetrating the wood this evening.

Here's Justin sanding out the rough spots.

We carried the new front door into the basement because the urethane wasn't drying very fast in the cold garage. The basement is pretty chilly too but probably warm enough. I'll be add a couple of coats of finish to the door and before long, we'll be turning off the heat in the house again to install the front door. Brrrrr....

Here's Justin sanding out the rough patches where the finish didn't set up nicely due to the cold temperatures.

Quick Update

I have no pictures to show today but we've had a lot of fun this past week moving in. Yesterday, we received the cabinets for our kitchen island unexpectantly so we were compelled to install the island. I ordered the butcherblock countertop on Thursday afternoon once I realized the cabinets were on their way. Justin had started the installation by the time I came home. I punched holes in all of the doors to install the knob & pull hardware and by 8pm, we had ourselves a kitchen island sans countertop.

UPS has been making regular stops at our place since we moved in. We had a delivery of the bathroom towel bars this week and the pendant lights for the kitchen island, ordered on Thursday, have been delivered today (how's that for speed...and delivery was FREE!). I've been busy getting a few of the things I've been longing for over the past four months including some new hiking shoes and a cute mini-muffin tin. The shoes came yesterday and the tin is on its way today.