Its been a full week. I finished the flooring in our "West Wing" and moved on to the Laundry room which I finished Friday. There are still two or three partial strips needed in doorways and at the transition from tile to wood in our big hall.

Thursday was a busy day as our electrician came early to finish the basement lights & hooked up the generator box by the West covered porch. He used a clever approach that involves an outside box to plug the generator into with a breaker on our main panel. there is a sliding metal lock on the main panel that only allows the generator breaker to be turned on when the main breaker is turned off. Wiring this way meets code & only costs around $150-$200. Other electricians bid an isolation device at around $1700-$2000. Our electrician's solution is elegant & fail safe.

When the electrician left, two plumbers arrived & they spent most of the day installing the remainder of our bathroom fixtures upstairs & in the small bathroom. They finished moving the pot filler to its new location and started the hookup of our "dog bath station" in the garage but were waiting for a few parts still & are scheduled to return Monday. The faucett for our jetted tub was a floor model and came mounted on a wooden display shelf. I mounted the shelf for a faucet base at our dog bath station. The bath was intended to be portable & used outside but we are plumbing it into a permanent location. Late in the day, I repaired sheetrock around the pot filler & did the first two layers of mud to cover the repair.

Still have a cold. Still laying Maple flooring in the West bedroom.

I've been slowed by a cold for the last few days, but I'm about 1/2 done with the final West bedroom. As I worked in other rooms, I set aside boards that were covered with black paint. There were quite a few, all good straight wood so I'm using them in this room. Hope to have a few estimates for sanding and finishing our floors soon.

Yesterday I finished up the West hallway then spent quite a while removing all the flooring "culls" I had piled in the remaining bedroom. These were pieces of Maple that were defective in some way, like being 2" wide instead of 2 1/4" or they were damaged during removal from the gym floor, heavily warped, had irregular holes with plugs showing etc. There were about 75 sq ft of them & they didn't take up so much room once neatly stacked in the garage.

I vacuumed the floor, chalked a line, then got a few rows down before quitting early to attend a Christmas program at my grand daughter's middle school. She played the violin & sang. It was quite a good production.

I needed only a few thousand staples to finish but had to buy 10,000 as that was the smallest lot they had. When I opened the box, I found 3 packs of 3,330 so the left overs should be easy to sell on e-Bay when I sell the stapler.

Our siding crew used these 5" x 8" steel inserts for joint flashing behind the beveled siding butted end joints. Supposed to be better than caulking the gaps.(it will take a lot of years to find out) I found a big stack during the clean up but I have already done the leftover siding return for credit. They make great wood scrapers for finishing, so I gave most of them to Jeremy but kept these for myself.

I finished one of the West bedrooms yesterday, then moved to the Kitchen where I cut some more sheetrock out & put in the blocking so the plumber can move the pot filler when he returns. We quit early in order to take Peaches by the vet for a rabies shot, then dropped her off at the kennel for a week of boarding & training while I recover from my surgery.

Spaced out when I got up this morning: I was fasting for my surgery but thought water would be O.K. (I wasn't given a pre-surgery instruction sheet, surgeon just rattled off something about fasting after 8 PM evening before surgery) I drank a couple cups of water from 5:30 AM until we left for Kaiser at 8 AM, so I failed the O.R. Nurse's questioning. She called in the anesthesiologist & my surgeon to decide what to do. At first it sounded as if I would just need my surgery done at 10:00 AM instead of 9:30 AM but they decided it would be safer to reschedule for January 6, 2009. We headed home but stopped at Western Tool where I bought another 10,000 flooring staples, then we picked up Peaches at the kennel. I was starving, so we got some breakfast at Karls Jr.

Thanksgiving morning I began laying flooring in one of the West bedrooms. We brought up a table & some chairs for the nook then I cleaned up my workshop refrigerator and set it up in the kitchen right where the big fridge will go when we move in. Jeremy had a big programming job over the holiday so he & June came late in the day Thursday with the grandkids & we had our first Thanksgiving meal in the new house. Friday and Saturday I made some progress on the West Wing and hope to at least finish the bedroom & possibly the West hallway before my Surgery on Tuesday. That only leaves the laundry room and the other West bedroom to finish when I feel up to working again.