Make a Little Birdhouse...

I knew the house was going to be swarming with painters today, so I just stopped by briefly on my way to the grocery store to drop off some cool Restoration Hardware cabinet knobs for the built-ins in the master bedroom that were delivered this afternoon. A few changes to the exterior: the yard signs have been removed, and the port-a-john is gone! Both a step in the right direction to improving the curb appeal of our house.
They also repainted the front porch. I asked them to try to match the color of the brick stairs. It's a little more orange than I'd prefer, but Rob said that was the closest match they could find.
Since I couldn't go in the front door, I went around to the back and was amazed to see that John had already finished building the bench for the back porch. Yes, the one we designed on a scrap of wood two days ago! This is a freestanding unit, so it can --theoretically -- be moved, but it is made of Trex and is incredibly heavy.
It also has a hinged lid, so we can store stuff inside. Rob told me he snapped a photo of John laying in the box like a corpse in a coffin. I'll have to get a copy of that!
Inside, the house was indeed swarming with painters, as expected. Some of them were covered with little bits of blue tape, which they must have stuck to their shirts as they touched up the spots that were marked with it. I could hear cursing coming from the stairs, so I figured Rob must be up on the ladder. And so he was -- trying to repair the skylight, which wasn't closing properly. He eventually climbed down and let John have a go at it. He doesn't seem to mind heights at all.
Rob told me that he accompanied his wife to her doctor's appointment yesterday afternoon (she's pregnant with their first child), and kept getting funny looks from people. He had forgotten to remove the "DICKHEAD" label from his shirt. Hee hee! I asked Rob and John if they wanted me to pick anything up for them at the grocery store, and they asked for some bottled water to keep in the refrigerator. It was in the 90's today, so that sounded pretty good. I asked them to leave the back door unlocked so I could drop it off on my way home, since I figured they would be gone by then.

I picked up a case of bottled water, a big bag of grapes, and some toilet paper (the port-a-john is gone and our toilets are hooked up). Since it was so hot out, I went to the apartment first and put all my own groceries away before going back to the house to drop off the water, grapes, and TP. I was surprised to see that everyone was still there, even though it was after 4 pm. Rob and John were just cleaning up, and the painters were still touching up the paint and sanding our old doors so they could refinish them. John presented me with this birdhouse he made for us. He told me my homework for the weekend is to stain and finish it. Rob said he could mount it on a post salvaged from the old electrical tower so we can install it in the yard somewhere. What a sweet gesture! I'm going to miss these guys!
I took the birdhouse down to my little makeshift workshop in the basement where I'd been working on the medicine cabinets and then went over a few questions with Rob and John about the kitchen. One crucial item was whether we could hang our old pot rack on this wall as we had planned.
The issue is that there are a lot of plumbing pipes and electrical wires in this wall, so they had warned me earlier not to nail anything into it. When I mentioned the pot rack, they both made a face. So today I brought it up from the basement in hopes that they could come up with a solution for me. After I vetoed John's suggestion to hang it over the window and Rob's that he had the perfect spot for it in his own kitchen, they measured it and said it might actually work right where I want it. It turns out it is just the right length for both ends to be nailed directly into the studs, and since there is still a hole in the wall where a phone jack will eventually go, we can see where the closest one is and measure to the other one from there. Whew!

We're on the home stretch now -- just one week 'til moving day!