I did some work this month (not much), but was rather lazy about keeping track. The good news is, the end is truly in sight. Anyway, here’s a summary.

Stairs: Painted the underside white, polyurethaned the stairs and banister pieces, then attempted to read the assembly directions. I have to say, I was really disappointed by Houseworks this time. First of all, the directions are impractical (i.e., glue all the flimsy little spindles to the stairs, somehow managing to space them exactly right, then fit the banister on top of the spindles without snapping them off…) Second, some made no sense at all. I probably can’t explain how confusing they are without being very confusing myself, so let’s just say, as someone who considers herself to have a relatively good handle on the English language, I was utterly befuddled.

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So, it became painfully clear that the stairs that came with my Orchid kit just weren’t going to cut it. I tried to make them work. I sanded the pieces so they’d look nice. And once I sanded them they wouldn’t fit together properly. The solution? I bought these. And they look a thousand times better than the kit stairs would have.

The stairs I bought are a little wider than the ones in the kit. Geoff widened the hole for me with his dremel tool.

Looks kind of like a real room, doesn’t it?!

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I got a lot of work done on the kitchen cabinets last week. Pictures to come soon, I hope. I also bought a clawfoot bathtub to replace the triangular one I decided wouldn’t work. It has a neat little silver plug on a chain. It was marked down $10 because the plug was disconnected from the side of the tub — nothing a beading needle and a little glue wouldn’t fix. I’m so proud of myself!

I put the porch together this weekend. Decided there was no way I’d use the crappy trim that came with my kit, so I invested in some Houseworks components. Also had a few adventures with a saw and a sander to get the porch posts the right height (and managed to sand off the tip of my knuckle…)

The porch, with posts, railing, and spindles from Houseworks. Considerably nicer than it would have been if I’d followed the directions.

How it’ll look (roughly) once the gable is attached.

The idea is that the porch roof forms the “floor” of the gable. (It makes cute a window seat kind of thing on the second floor. I’m planning to build a bed into that space.) Geoff set up a jig for me so the gable could be glued into the right shape.

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