And Let the Festivities Begin!

With my birthday!

Let It Snow...

We were a little daunted at the idea of having to shovel more snow than ever before. Luckily, our kind neighbor and his sidewalk snow blower came to the rescue.

Festivity Preparation

The Tree Hunt - after going to one tree farm where they cone-cut every tree, no matter what species it was, we went to a farm that only grew Fraser Fir- and did not shape them.

The tree farm had a collection of many old bird nests that had been found in their trees.

Back in Quincy, everyone had put up lights. It is a well lit city during the holidays. These decorations are a vintage example from a house in the neigborhood...only a few of the many.

The tree went right up and just barely fit!

The lights are flicker free LEDs.

The Workshop

Tim has begun building a boat. It's a kit boat and is shipped in various puzzle pieces that get glued together (with a very strong epoxy). One day it will be a Northeaster Dory like the one we tried out at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival:

and here she is in parts....

clamptastic

Garage Gut

Our garage is a wee bit small for a car- it was built in 1900 along with the house. We are planning to dig up part of the driveway anyway, so the garage is really a storage shed and a bike garage. It's a sweet little building with many windows. We cleaned it up to make it a little more usable a couple of weekends ago.

Discovery Beneath the Stairs

Holidays at the House

The day before Thanksgiving we put the partially reassembled kitchen corner to good use- the espresso machine is back online.

The dining room preparing for the big day...

The day of

The Spa

We had been living without a real bathroom floor since the asbestos guys removed the old tiles. Our old American Standard toilet used a ton of water and was constantly running. It was time for an update to our own personal spa.

disassembling the toilet...another great use for the wet/dry vac.

here you can see the floor where the old hardwood was cut out and plywood was put down, probably for a previous plumbing fix.

layers of paint behind the old toilet tank

old sink pipe that was obviously ready to go- so much that it cracked.

making the template for our new floor

the sub floor was leveled off with a thin layer of concrete

cutting the new floor to the template. for the floor we went with a relatively affordable ($1.50/sq ft), somewhat temporary option. we may renovate the bathroom more in the future and did not want to invest in nice tiles yet. this thin foam-like fiberglass flooring is actually made to last around 20 years. it's incredibly easy to cut and lies down flat. we were going to get a pattern that did not try to resemble anything else; but this one, a faux cork, was one of the cheapest selections and we thought could actually fool someone (compared with the faux wood or stone).

the next day our plumber, Bruce, came and replaced the sink pipe

and the next day we had our new toilet installed! it's a TOTO toilet that only uses 1.28 gallons per flush. the style seems to compliment our other bathroom fixtures well. plus we gave in and got the quiet close lid- mostly for novelty sake. you can picture it closing slowly, and quietly, in these pics: