Fancy Bathroom

Our master bathroom ended up looking a lot fancier than I expected.  

As apposed to the rest of the house where we tried to go as simple and easy as we 

would let ourselves, for time and money's sake, I ended up spending a lot of time in this room.  

To give the appearance of board and baton paneling, 

I added pieces of wood trim to the walls part of the way up.  

I then primed those.  

Then painted the whole lower section.  Then painted the top and bottom pieces trim white along with the window and door trim. 

Finally, three other guys from work 

helped me move over the claw-foot tub and we carried it into place.  

The plumber Scott then finished the fixtures last weekend and we love how it turned out.

Staircase

After putting off dealing with the staircase for too long, I realized the safest, and fastest installation method would be to hire Danny to come back and do it for me.  He and Stoney made quick work of it and we're happy with how it turned out.  I did some of the finish work on it and have yet to stain and finish it.  The treads are the same species as the flooring, White Oak, so I have stain to match the prefinished flooring.  The Newel posts and handrail are Red Oak so I'll stain them darker and not even try to get them close to the rest.

This last piece of railing is about 3 feet long, 3 feet more than we had any single piece leftover.  Maybe you can figure out what we did to make it work.  Shhhh, don't tell anyone.

Back Porch Finished

My Dad came for another (of many) weekends to help out and we tackled the back porch.  We started with the decking finished and the four corner posts.  My plan is to build steps from the kitchen corner side, (over Dad's shoulder in the picture) down toward the garage and onto the ground that will be accessible from the side of the house.  However, time being what it is and we want to close as soon as we can, we'll leave that part for later.  

Using treated pine lumber, we added two more 4X4 posts on each side and used 2X4's to make railing all around with 2X2 spindles making it all kid-safe.  We built it in such a way that come spring I'll add screen panels to the outside for a screened in porch.  Take that bugs!

For weeks ahead of time we had beautiful 60s and 70s weather, and then Dad came and the wind picked up and dropped down to 40s at midday.  

(Not pictured, Mat helped some too.  You'll notice the two spindles 

in the corner that are upside down.  Thanks Mat.)