Crown Molding

We invited some friends over to see the house Saturday afternoon and ended up with a tour group of 10 adults and 6 kids (ages 1-6). Now the house is not exactly an ideal place for little kids to be running around -- we're talking power tools, loose nails, scraps of wood, containers of paint/glue/stain/etc. in easy reach, and most importantly, no railings on the stairs. The older kids were given strict instructions to stick close to their parents, and the youngest one was carried at all times, but there was no way our friends' 18-month-old son was going to tolerate either of those conditions, so I volunteered to take him for a walk in his stroller while the rest of the gang took the tour. Fortunately, he was totally OK with that, but I missed seeing everyone's reaction to the house. Most of them hadn't seen it since before we started the renovation. Josh assured me that everyone was duly impressed -- and all the kids were unharmed and accounted for when it was over.

I didn't have a chance to go to the house during the day today as I spent part of the morning working on the walk-in closet design with Noel and had a ton of work to do, but I did stop by briefly on my way home from my aerobics class. As I turned the corner onto our street, I noticed a forklift pulling out of our driveway. That was somewhat unexpected, since it was after 7 pm, but it turned out they were delivering the newel posts for the stairs. (Those are the big, boxy posts that go at the top and bottom that the handrail attaches to.) They left them on a pallet on the driveway, covered with a plastic sheet. I briefly considered trying to carry them inside in case it rained, but since it required a forklift to deliver them, I didn't think I could move them by myself, especially since I was already exhausted.

I didn't notice too many new things since Saturday, but they had started installing the crown and undercabinet molding on the kitchen cabinets, which makes them look a little nicer.
It also looked like someone had come by to measure the cabinets for countertops, as most of the cardboard had been pulled off the tops.

The shower floor in the main level bathroom had been tiled, but it hasn't been grouted yet, and it looks awful with the hot pink waterproofing paint. I'm sure it will look much better once that pink stuff is covered with white tile.Here's the other window in the living room, where Rob has pulled off the excessively large trim. They will re-do these with smaller trim that won't require cutting the corners to fit within the arch, which I think will look much better.
The painters have been busy staining our windows and new doors to match the old doors. I know it's a little odd to have dark wood windows with white trim, but I think it will look cool when it's all done.
The old doors were stained a dark, rich brown. It looks like they are trying to match the color by doing one coat of dark brown and one coat of a reddish stain. Here you can see the open bedroom door just has the brown stain, but the closed bathroom door has the red stain as well.
I actually kind of prefer the brown stain on its own, but there's no going back now. And Josh likes the redder one -- so I'm OK with letting him overrule me on this one.