New Year's Eve

We woke to this--softly, in the middle of the night, a moist, heavy fall of snow arrived.

We didn't notice until morning that everything had changed. Happy new year!

The End

 

The end of the year:

Bathroom

The window is trimmed up, after existing as a flapping box of Tyvek and vapour barrier since the summer. Jo gave it a fine coat of spar varnish, and for modesty's sake, some pseudo-stained glass appliqué. It makes a nice splash of colour in what is otherwise a most austere room. Now we have the closet to tackle, the area under the stairs, the heater, and some miscellaneous trim.

Progress

 I was troubled to find significant rot in the studs in the bathroom this summer. We had to tear out the windows and rebuild from without, a process that shouldn't have worked but did. This is how things looked:

This was rather discouraging. Jo was very positive, though, which helped a lot. We removed the rotten wood--tricky, but not especially challenging--and then, somewhat to our surpise, successfully replaced it without demolishing the bathroom wall, which by then included not only insulation and gyprock, but a substantial amount of rather nice ceramic tile. Anyway, after lots of structural work, a great deal of expandable foam insulation, and many other bits of detail work, we had the "rework" windows back in place.

The original frames were toast by then. I was not especially troubled; unlike the downstairs frames, which they closely resembled, they were not oak but some softwood--probably spruce or pine. 

It WAS a challenge. I wanted to join the two windows, as before, with a common sill and header. I minimized ornamentation, as the style of the new bathroom is quite austere, but I felt the grooves in the centre trim piece would tone down its breadth. It's not bad!  And now, perhaps, we are almost ready for winter.