Window Treatments

I have a couple days of catching up to do... Rob had asked me to come by the house yesterday afternoon because he was planning to install the trim around a sample window and wanted to make sure I was OK with his choices. Unfortunately, the materials he ordered didn't arrive in time, so he called to tell me he was "playing Santa Claus" instead. Sadly, he was not dressed in a red fur-trimmed suit distributing gifts to children, but rather messing around in our fireplace.
The damper has never opened or closed properly, so he said he would take a look, but it sounded like it wasn't something that could be easily fixed. We do use our fireplace on occasion in the winter, but we may have to find a way to seal it up when it's not in use so it doesn't create a big hole in our otherwise tightly-sealed house.

Upstairs, the plastic had been removed from all the windows, so there was a much better sense of the natural light and cross-ventilation that they will provide. (This is the master bedroom)
Outside, the stucco guys were finishing up and started to dismantle the scaffolding. Now the house looks more like a house.
They still have some work to do on the south face of the house and the back porch, but some of that will have to wait until the final window and back door are installed.
The pod had also been delivered with all the items we salvaged from the house, such as the doors and light fixtures.
After I left the house, I ran a bunch of errands and then drove out to Dulles airport to pick up my sister, Sonia. She's in town to join us for the Post Hunt on Sunday. She came last year for the first-ever Post Hunt with a couple of her friends, and, despite not winning, enjoyed it enough to come back and give it another try. I also managed to get tickets for the three of us to see Spinal Tap/The Folksmen at the Warner Theatre last night as part of their "Unwigged & Unplugged" tour. It was hilarious! They did a great mix of songs from This is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind and threw in a few surprises and videos for good measure. One of the highlights was a fan-created animated music video of Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight. Genius!

This morning I got an email and a phone message from Rob asking me to come by and check out the window, so Sonia and I headed over to take a look. It was nice to see the house without the scaffolding.
The pod had been emptied out, except for a couple toilets...
And all the contents were down in the basement. The next challenge will be to figure out which doors to use where, since they are not all the same size.
Rob showed us the window he had been working on in the office. He had installed the trim and the sill (which is called a 'stool' for some reason), and showed us two different options for the trim piece that goes under the sill. A small one:
And a large one:
I thought the larger trim looked a little funny because it was the same as the trim around the rest of the window, but inverted. Sonia and Rob both liked the look of the smaller trim, but I thought we needed something a little wider to balance out the the rest of the trim. Rob consulted his catalog and found the same trim in a larger size, so we agreed to go with that. That's way more time than I thought I'd ever spend thinking about window sills, but I'm glad Rob went to the trouble to do this for us.

On the way out, we checked out the front porch, which is now fully stuccoed and has a new ceiling. Up until yesterday, it had been covered with stucco equipment and a big work table, so it looked very different today.