A final look at the house for the week

As the week wraps up, the painters are almost finished with what they can accomplish at the moment -- meaning, the interior rooms of the house.

ENCOURAGING!

They still need to paint the garages and the laundry room, but those areas are still full of building materials and furniture that have yet to be installed, so until we make some more progress on that side of things, the painters have some time off to go earn money somewhere else.

I'll be adding a Paint Color post to my Home/DIY page once everything is finished so you'll always be able to go there to refer to it if you have questions about the paint colors in our house. And when I post the rooms when they're finally furnished, I'll give you sources for the furniture and accessories when I have them. For now, I'm just gonna say, "THIS ROOM IS FINALLY PAINTED."

Nick and Jake's room is now blue. This picture is a couple of days old ... the baseboards are now shiny-white ... not spattered with blue.

The boys' bathroom (which all three will share) is now light grey ... there's no natural light in there, so it's really hard to get a decent picture of it. Especially with a cell phone. I'll try to do better with my big camera once we move in -- you're just gonna have to take my word that it doesn't look as institutional in person as it does in this picture. And of course artwork will liven it up.

Nathaniel's room is green, which I love against the dark grey doors. (The blue in the other boys' room looks great with the dark grey doors, too.) I hesitated for a millisecond before committing to the dark grey doors, but I LOVE them. ADORE them. Now that the walls are painted, I am so glad I went with my gut and didn't shy away from the bolder choice here.

This is the view out Nathaniel's window ... he looks out over the firepit and the trampoline area. It's hard to tell from this vantage point, but the firepit area is built up about 18 inches, and the trampoline area about three feet.

Amelia's room is light grey with the board-and-batten wainscoting that I love so much. It's identical to her room at our current house, but the doors of course are dark and the carpet will be a little darker.

This is her bathroom after one coat of grey paint ... it now has two or three. SUCH an improvement over the busy wallpaper that was there before!

I know I've already shown you her light fixtures, but that flower one. GAH. We just have to look at it one more time.

The master bathroom is still a work-in-progress, but it's coming along nicely. My painter seriously questioned my sanity when I told him I wanted the ceiling in there painted blue. NO REGRETS.

Obviously when I took these, the finish work wasn't complete around the top of the shower, and they hadn't cut back in and painted the crown. But now they have, and I'm totally happy with it.

I chose a beveled subway tile -- not the standard subway -- and the way it catches and reflects light is really nice.

For the shower floor, I chose a one-inch hexagonal Carrara marble. I would love to have used this in more places throughout the house, but it's prohibitively expensive. This little area will be much-loved!

Again, nothing had been cleaned when I took these pictures, so there's grout and haze all over the tiles. Sorry. I just figured you'd rather see A post today than a PERFECT post today.

More of the herringbone Carrara is going up in the kitchen for the backsplash ... it's not grouted yet, so you can't get the full effect. But it should be next week!

Just yesterday and day before, the blue went up on the walls in there.

As is the case with just about every paint in the world, the blue looks bluer, greyer and greener depending on which part of the room you're in. But I love the way it looks against the trim white and the new cedar beams in particular.

Last but not least, I promised you some better pictures of the yard now that the landscaping is in place. Here's the firepit from another angle:

We have four coordinating vintage-style chairs to put together this weekend that will finish out this area.

You can see the various sprinklers and hoses I have snaking around the lawn, trying to keep my sod alive in these 95-degree temperatures we've been having.

And I've now hired my friend Lisa's sons to come every morning or evening and water the shrubs individually, because they've just been suffering. If I don't get over there every single night after work and give each of them a good watering, the next day they've already started to shrivel.

Just watering the bushes takes me (by myself) about 45 minutes, so having them take on the bushes and turning on the sprinklers to help the sod -- which I rotate when I get there after work -- is helping a lot.

If no one's told you, taking care of newly planted sod and shrubs -- ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU DON'T LIVE AT THE HOUSE YET -- is a lot like having a new puppy.

But once everything's established and we get past the heat of the summer, it will be much easier to maintain. Also, ONCE WE MOVE IN, sheer proximity will help.

Okay, that's it for this week. It's hard to believe, but if we stay on schedule (don't jinx us now!), this weekend will be my last weekend to work at the house before we move. Our annual beach trip is coming up, which will take me out of commission for two weekends, and then it's Go Time.

Keep your fingers and toes crossed for us!