John in a Box

Here is the aforementioned photo of John posing as a corpse inside the storage bench he made for our back porch last week.
Of course, John is physically incapable of not smiling when he knows someone is taking a photo of him, so he looks like he died happy, with his trusty drill in his arms. Rob took this photo on John's cell phone, so it took several steps to get it from there to my cell phone to my computer, but I think it was worth the effort. (What do you think, John? I know you are reading this!)

Anyway, I stopped by the house for 2 minutes this afternoon to drop off a check, and was delighted to see our balcony railing being installed. Rob was trying to warn them in his fluent Spanglish that there was electrical wiring for the lantern in the wall underneath, so they should be careful when attaching it to the outside of the house.
They also poured the concrete for the piece of walkway at the bottom of the stairs. I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to get to the front stairs, but they handily solved that with a sturdy plank. Our driveway and runners have also been poured.
I came back later in the afternoon to see what had transpired today. Inside, the cleaning crew was hard at work making our house look shiny and new. They are from Fresco cleaning services, which is a green company, so there was no chemical smell from their cleaning products -- and the house looked great.
Now that all the detritus has been cleared out, you can see what the kitchen looks like.
During the preliminary inspection last week, they were told we needed to have drywall installed on all the exterior basement walls, so they put that up today. Not sure if it's much of an improvement, but it will be one less step for us when we get around to finishing the basement.
Upstairs, the built-ins in the master bedroom have been put back together and the knobs installed on the cabinet doors.
Ian came today to finish tiling around the vanity in the master bath. I guess he'll have to come back tomorrow to grout.
I'm not sure what this is on our toilet paper holder, but I sure hope they're not using it!
Here's the view of the balcony from inside the front bedroom. It has the same Mexican tile as the bathroom on the main level.
And this is the view from the balcony. It will take me a while to get used to even having a view, since we couldn't see much from our house when it was just one story. It's cool to be able to see all the way down our street.
By the way, they've reduced the price on that yellow craftsman bungalow on steroids two doors down from us and are also offering it for rent. So, if you'd like to live in the biggest house on the block (it's double the size of our house!), you can either buy it for a cool $1.89 million, or rent it for a mere $11,000/month. What a bargain! This house has been on the market for over a year now, and at this rate, it doesn't look like it's going to be occupied anytime soon.

So, here's what our house looks like with the balcony railings. I think it adds a certain je ne sais quoi, n'est-ce pas?
Tomorrow is the final inspection. Fingers crossed that we pass!