Toby can’t stand painting! He likes the building and the constructing… but not the painting. Me, I love to paint! I don’t know if it’s the actual act of painting so much as the complete change in the feel of a house once there are colors on the walls! I think, next to actually moving in, it’s my favorite part of a new house!

Kaia requested Pink and Green for her room. I know, the pictures look a bit like pepto bismal, but it’s actually a nice color, and the green tones it down a bit. The plan is to paint flowers, grass, fairies and such on the green lower portion of the back wall.

(Sorry for the drywall dust on the lens) Here I am, finishing up the walls, music blasting… Somewhere in this picture is Kaia’s secret room! Can’t see it? Mission accomplished, then!! 🙂 I like how my shadow looks in this one!

This is the back wall (which will have a shelf on it), closet, and to the right of the closet will be a floor to ceiling book shelf! Trim and shelving go up next. Then I will clean the floors!

Here I’m working on trimming out the Mechanical room (we call it that because it will house all the solar mechanical stuff, but it will also be a laundry/mudroom) I used the same green in here that was in kaia’s room. I really like the color!

Again, sorry for the dust on the camera lens. This room has no windows, so it’s hard to get good lighting in the room. The color looks kind of bland in the picture, but it’s really pretty. This is also a nice pic of our new water tank! It’s 120 gallons!! lots of storage capacity for the solar hot water. To the bottom right of the pic is the tubing that runs through the floors for radiant heating. I can’t wait to test that out!!

And finally, the pantry. Floor to ceiling shelves on both sides here too! yahoo!! This room leads from the Mechanical room and opens up right next to the kitchen. The kitchen will be a yellowy orange color that goes great with this green.

Tomorrow, I hope to tackle the downstairs bathroom!

Oh, I forgot to mention the paint!!  It’s called Earthpaints.  They are locally made, sustainable, non-toxic paints!!  I love them!  I didn’t feel at all sick or head-achey after painting and breathing them in all day.  They are also a little thicker than traditional store bought paints, so they don’t splash all over the floor.  But, the coverage is still pretty good!  And they are self priming.  So, I put two coats of paint directly on the drywall in kaia’s room.  The green is darker and only took one coat for the Mec. room and pantry (two coats would make it more durable though).  Great stuff!!  You should look into it if you are going to be painting!!  (Oh, I know I’d mentioned wanting to do milk paints, but once I did the cost calculations for the special primers that I would need and natural colorants and all that stuff, the Earthpaints were actually cheaper and less time consuming!)

We ordered our wood stove!  A Hearthstone ‘tribute’. It should be in this coming week!  Woohoo!  We debated between a locally made ‘Appalachian Stove’, which cost $1000 less than this one, and the tribute.  But, in the end, the reviews, cool look of the soapstone, and the hefty construction of this stove won out with us.  Guess we’d better move all the construction crap out of the living room so we can put the stove in!

So, I’m hearing through the grape vine, that we don’t have enough house pictures for you picture mongers!  Well then, here you go!

We’ve been doing lots of little things, trying to get the house closed up.  All but two of the windows are hung.  The doors are in and the door knobs are set.  We’ve been doing cordwood on sunny days….

Here’s the front door.  I know, it looks a little run down, but it’s just dirty.  Once I clean it up, clean the window, and paint if red it will be fabulous!!

Here are the french doors that lead into the dining room.  Aren’t they nice.  They were another Habitat for Humanity find.  We spent a pretty penny on the specially made locks, hinges and handle, but it still cost less then new doors would have.

These Pella windows are the only ones we bought new.  They cost more than all the other windows  combined!  But, we decided it was important to have an operable window in the living room, ’cause all the others are fixed.  So, now we will have some good airflow through the room.  Can you see the triangle windows are in too?   (We’ve got windows with green frames… brown, white, neutral…. I think we will leave them varied colors.  It’s kinda cool.)

Today, we worked on bringing up the cordwood wall in the kitchen.  It’s one of the lowest.  But, once we get the wood to the window, the rest will go pretty quickly.  We did about 3 layers today… these wide walls take a while!!

Here I am making a little somethin’ special for this wall.

Kaia joined me and made a flower of her own.  Mine is blue/yellow, hers is red/yellow.  Cool, eh?

Oh, for those of you who might be interested, we are hoping to have another (maybe our last, wohoooo!) cordwood party this Sat. Dec. 8th.  If you want to join us, we would love to have you!!