Busy busy busy!

We hadn't been over to the house for a few days, and when we checked it out today, we found so many new things! The builders haven't been slacking after all.

Outside, they installed a wooden beam and knee braces under the story breaks. These will support the breaks and keep them from sagging over time:


One of the most amazing things that arrived in our house is our wood flooring from Zena Forest. You may remember that we're getting the wood from a sustainably managed forest just outside Salem. The wood arrived yesterday and will sit in the house for about a week to become acclimated to the temperature and humidity before it is installed. This will allow the wood to settle and prevent it from changing size after installation. Here are several photos of the beautiful wood, which is Oregon white oak:




The floor boards will be several different widths, rather than a uniform width. This allowed us to get more boards out of each tree that was cut, creating less waste:



The finish carpenter has also been hard at work. He built the tread caps for the stairs and started installing the railings:

We will be installing carpet on the main part of the stairs because wooden stairs can get slippery. The entire upstairs of the house will be carpeted. We chose a carpet this week. It's brown and is made of wool. When we brought home the sample from the store, our dog turned around three times on it and laid down. So I guess we made the right choice.

Upstairs, the most exciting development is that some of our cabinets have arrived! They're made out of cherry and will be stained a medium-brown color -- we're still deciding on the exact shade. These cabinets are identical in style to what will be in the kitchen. Here are the cabinets that will go under the sinks in the master bathroom:

Pippen tested out the cabinets that will go in the smaller upstairs bathroom:

Here's a short video that demonstrates one of our favorite features of the new cabinets:



The finish carpenter started building the frames around the doorways, which mimic the style of the frames around the windows:

He also began building the shelving in the closets of our two smaller bedrooms. We have a combination of built-in shelves, removable shelves and rods for hanging clothing:

It was overwhelming seeing all the new things that happened in the house this week. Everything is really starting to come together. The wood flooring will be installed soon, as will the linoleum we picked out this week for the mud room and the bathrooms. We have to decide on our cabinet color so that those can be stained. Hopefully the rain will let up soon so that the painters can paint the outside of the house (although it is February in Oregon, so it might be a while).