We’re burnt out. We are ready to use the upstairs to sleep, the main floor to play. We are ready to eat at a normal table, rather than one of us standing, the other sitting on a stool. We are ready to take our dirty dishes, and place them into a mechanical device that spits them out clean. We are ready to watch a movie on the TV, rather than a computer monitor. We are ready to sit on a couch to relax, rather than the floor.

We are ready to be done.

Counter tops are still not in. They better be in next week.

The contractor that was supposed to patch the floor starting Wednesday or yesterday is still not here. If he doesn’t show up on Monday he is getting fired.

The wood for our trim is finally here, but has yet to be cut, yet alone installed.

Our nice contractor is still nice, but hasn’t been showing up nearly as frequently as he used to. This is slowing us down tremendously. So much so that I took one of the side jobs I was going to give him into my own hands. That window we removed from the kitchen left an area on the exterior of the house without siding. I stopped by the lumber yard on my birthday a few days ago and picked up the cedar lap siding. Two days ago I put some tar paper over the plywood that covered the old window location and sealed it up. From there, I put up about half of the siding. I called it a night as to not keep the neighbors up with my pounding.

Getting the siding to look decent has turned out to be a significant challenge. The new lap siding is 1/16″ to 1/8″ thinner than the old stuff (and much less dense). This resulted in the first board sitting in too deep. From that one, I’ve been placing a nail under it when nailing it in to keep it at the same distance as the old material. This will require significant caulking under the lip of the board to seal them.

Overall, the siding project hasn’t turned out as well as I’d like so I’m going to save taking pictures until it is painted as I think it’ll not look as bad once the boards are at least the same color.

Tonight I’m going to finish the siding, find a camping chair from the garage porch, and enjoy a nice drink in the most comfortable chair we have access to at the moment. It’ll be good.