O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy.

Well today (Saturday) was momentous in a couple of ways.  The primer coat was finished for the main level, except for where the drywall finishers aren't done yet (Master Suite).  Even got some of the finished colour on the wall behind the stairs.

Did I say STAIRS?  Yes, we actually have some lovely, hand-crafted stairs in place for the loft!

Kitchen primed

Back hallway

 Here is a little review of the stair construction, which took place over one long day, once the parts were milled and finished.

Step one, get the stairs into the slots on the stringers

Here all one side is attached, you can see the slots for the other side

Once they were in place and secured with lag bolts, Len added the finishing touch of oak pegs

Laying over the stairwell - don't ask how we got it there, but we did.

First lift, up onto the lower sawhorse

Len cleverly lifting the stairs onto the next higher sawhorse (he reports it is heavy)

Lifted to this height - sketchy

Out comes the jack and no more brute lifting

Ta da!  Happy Camper

The wall Len is sitting next to is painted the final colour which is sort of the colour of the drywall before it was primed (grey-green-beige)  I think it is called Florentine Plaster.  Hmmm.

The only big issue is that we miscalculated and have partly buried our vacuflow outlet behind the stringer.  So Len's job tomorrow is to cut a hole in the closet in the office (yes, already primed) and figure out a way to move it.  My job will be to do the painting on the main level.  This is getting exciting!  I can see a kitchen in my future!
Cath

Finally some rail progress

I have been concentrating on the loft rail today. I created a drilling jig for my forstner bit to cut square to the face for proper alignment of the oak pins that I will use to attach this post and the rail above it.

The jig ready to go after it is screwed down

The post ready to accept the pins

The post glued in place

Three posts, the middle one shorter

Prepping the rail

A dadoed slot for the spindles

The rail in place

Tomorrow I will attach the ends of the rail to the corner posts.  The drywall is complete in the kitchen, laundry, office and powder room so lots of painting to get done.  Cathryn will be back from a work trip tomorrow but too late to do any painting.  I'll keep her busy on the weekend.

Len

Posts are in

Today I spent time installing the two end posts for the loft railing.  They have to be in first before I can work on the flooring up there.

This is the post by the front entrance

Looking from west to east

From east to west

I went into town and got a 14 foot piece of fir from Joe Manette.  He is the guy who milled all of our trees into useable pieces.  I don't have anything that long so I got one from him for the top rail which will go from post to post. I am going to install the rail so I can put the center post under it and have it fit nice and level. I put another coat of varethane on the stair treads, only one more coat to go.

The kitchen area is almost ready for paint as is the laundry and the back hall.

Len

Stairs and rails, drywall, dogs and dinner

The drywall continues with Norm and Lynn giving it their best as you will see. Norm says that I should be able to paint the wall where the stairs will be and the kitchen area by Thursday. They are doing a great job and quite quickly as far as I can tell.

Norm and Lynn hard at it

I can't put varathane on the stair treads during the day as I have to wait till drywalling is done when Norm and Lynn head home. This being the case I have started on the railing for the loft area.

These are some of the timbers that were milled from trees on our property.

I am going to use them for corner posts on the rail 

The planer is getting a workout

I have my big vacuum set up and it sure saves the dust quotient

Lots of sanding as well but they look great

Finished sanding

I will be milling the bottom of both of these posts to fit into a square hole at the top of the timbers

Here is one o the holes 

And here is the other

Everyone has left so now I am on to the varathane. I am using the stair stringers for support as I won't be putting any varathane in the last 1 inch.

Set up and ready to go

All done and time for a dog walk then dinner.

It's 8:30 sounds like a pizza night.

Len

Don't tread on me

I got busy today with some more sanding belts for the stair treads.  They turned out great after a couple of hours.

Heae they are ready for stain

Here they are after stain

The grain sure comes out

We tried one of the stair stringers in position and found out that it was going to interfere with the light for the basement stairs.  The next photo is after I moved the light box down 6 inches and  Norm the drywaller did a patch on the original hole. Should be okay now.

I have started on the posts for the loft railing and will continue with that tomorrow.

Len

If you don't succeed and blah blah blah

So I've started again on the stair stringers with nice straight and dry planks. They are 2 1/2 by 12 by 16 feet.  They are rough sawn so lots of work to get them to look good and still look a little cabinish.

The slot jig

All of the treads ready for finishing

I did some preliminary work with hand planes

Soon I was using the planer to speed things up

The finished product on the right

Holes for lag bolts 

Giving the edges a round finish

Cath is adding some stain and varnish

Setting the router up to finish the treads

This is what you get after sanding for an hour

The finished product and ready for staining

Now that the stringers are completed I have to stay out of the house as the drywallers don't want any dust in there mud. I don't want any drywall dust in my finish so I will be working on the deck as I assemble the stairs then bring them in for installation. I think they will be quite heavy so I'll have to figure that out when I get there.

Len

Drywall Mudding etc

Well we had a nice break over Easter, thanks to Dave, Doris, Mom and Dad but apparently it wasn't enough rest for poor Len whose viral infection seemed to come back.  He has been dizzy and nauseous for a couple of days, but is back in action today.

Smiling in spite of it all

With the departure of all the snow, much muck is left behind on the north side of the house.  Len made a trench to drain it, which partly worked.  Since then we have had rain, so the muck isn't really drying up.

Mucky muck

A trench takes away most of the water

Len had to clear out the whole house for the drywall finishers and so the garage is even more full.  He had to leave the fireplace, obviously, and the wood for the loft floors is under the plastic as well.

Norm and his wife, Lynn, have been busy taping and mudding the walls.  You can see some of the progress below.

The kitchen

Our bathroom

Today Len went to get the new stringers for the staircase.  That's because the original ones he spent so much time on warped again and are unusable.  So he had the local mill cut two new ones and they put them in the kiln to dry - no twisting we hope!  We will take some pictures as he progresses with the stairs.

a stair gets put through the planer

Note the ear protection - definitely needed!

The new stringers

Also, if you haven't had enough of us,  you can follow my gardening attempts under the title "Gardening in the Cariboo" on blogger.

Cath