75% complete??

Brad and I just had a fun day, going on a "date." This was a real change from all the days of non-stop work Brad has been doing since he got out of school. But more about our day later. For now, I'll explain the photos on today's post. First, I've been meaning to show how one of our builders, Matt, repaired one of our shutters --- by replacing three slats that had long been missing. This repair has been especially pleasing to Nannie. Once the exterior staining is finished, the new slats won't be noticeable.
And, by the way, much work in the last few days has been guys working on the exterior of the house. They have been caulking every single batten on both sides. This is in addition to the fact that all the exterior battens already were re-nailed to make them tighter. This is going to be one well-sealed house!!

So above is a shot of the new pantry shelves. Next, we bought paint samples and tried them out. Here are two shots of the kitchen where we tried out the color.

Next we have two shots of a neutral paint color that we are trying in the sunroom. There is quite a bit of glare on the first shot. We stood the door by the paint, because the two doors from the sunroom into the old part of the house will be two old doors from the fish-cleaning porch. However, they will be re-stained, as we have decided to re-stain the entire interior of the house, as well as the exterior. This is a late-breaking piece of news, as originally we were not going to re-stain the interior walls. We were just going to have them cleaned. All the new wood trim on doors and windows will be stained to match the old, so the raw-new wood look of the trim is a bit misleading.

The paint on the photo below is a better representation. I think I like it!!!! Wish I had family and friends out there to help me decide.

Okay, so now about our day. We left home at 9:00 a.m. and drove up to Schuyler, VA which is between Lynchburg and Charlottesville, off to the east a bit, in Nelson County. We took Route 6 and then a couple of really small back roads. The main purpose of our day was to visit the Alberene Soapstone Plant. I have been wanting to see the plant and somehow to incorporate some Virginia soapstone into our renovation project from the very start. This was something Daddy and I had talked about for several years. He was familiar with the business from his days as a traveling salesman. We bought a remnant piece of soapstone that is really beautiful and we are going to use it for the vanity top in the master bathroom. Brad will drive back up there next week in his pick-up truck and transport the slab to Spectrum Stone in Concord so they can fabricate the piece for our needs.

After that we went to The Waltons Mountain Museum, which was less than a half mile away from the soapstone plant. We had a wonderful stroll back in time at the museum --- this coincided with our recent discovery of re-runs of the Waltons on a couple of different channels on our satellite TV.

We rushed home to get the dogs out for a walk. While away, our builder had called and asked us to visit Ferguson's Kitchen and Bath to make the final selection concerning the glass shower door for our master bathroom. I did that while Brad stayed home to be here with a guy who came to service our upstairs air conditioner. Late in the day we finally went to Hanshill and took the photos shown on this entry. It was a busy day, but very satisfactory! We received a bill for the third installment on our construction bill (3rd out of 4). I think this means we are 75% complete and may be able to move some time in August!! It's getting close!