Oh wow, the Yestermorrow class sure accomplished a lot in one week. The dining room, where it once had a creaky sliding door, now boasts a swinging glass door and a window. The front door and an interior wall received complete overhauls as well. I would have liked more time to meet the students and instructor; they covered a lot of ground in a short course and I’d be fascinated to hear their perspectives.

Front doorway boarded up while the Yestermorrow class replaces it.

But I rarely found myself working close by the Yestermorrow crew, and it’s hard to justify chitchat when we all have so much to do. The polyurethane coating on the bedroom’s barnboard wall came out so well we decided to repeat the treatment all over. The stair surround got covered, as did the barn-style doors we built for upstairs and all the timber beams that will hold their hardware. I used an angle grinder to cut some hand-forged nails down to one inch long (so they wouldn’t puncture any hidden plumbing or electrical) and then hammered them into the bathroom walls.

Stair surround, polyurethaned.

Barn doors, polyurethaned.

A plethora of little tasks took less than a day each, sometimes less than an hour. Bob, wearing his electrician hat, installed cans for ceiling lighting in the bedroom. Mark and I cut another hole through the exterior wall (hideous job for a sawzall, with three layers of solid wood to push through) and slid in the dryer vent. I laid a new subfloor in a corner of the downstairs bathroom and jigsawed out a hole for the new toilet plumbing. I also replaced an outdoor spigot, though I didn’t hook it up to anything.

Dryer vent hole.

Toilet hole (heh heh).

And Paté removed every mote of dust from the master bedroom floor so she could unroll a cardboard-like protective surface as flat as possible. We want no expanding foam to fall on our finish floor when the insulation guys come to fill in the new roof. They’ll be here Monday, I’m told.

Master bedroom floor protected in preparation for foam insulation.