Rain, rain, go away!

So our friends in the greater DC area will already know this, but the monsoon season here hasn't let up much at all. We're still getting regular showers, there are places all over the region that are experiencing really terrible flooding, roads washed away, and unfortunately even a few deaths to my understanding. Compared to these issues, our frustrations with the rain seem petty at best, but it definitely has interfered with our plans lately. It's hard for certain materials to dry or cure in the rain and some projects are on hold until we can work on them outside, so it didn't feel like we got a great deal accomplished this weekend.

To demonstrate - this was the view out of the sitting room looking at the storm drain across the street, and the house is at the top of a hill that was backed up and creating a lake in road:

Also, when Morris goes out of town for most of a day, it's amazing how much less gets done compared to me being out of town for a day....

He was there on Friday, which was originally scheduled as the day the contractor was going to come in to work on the HVAC, but the contractor decided he wasn't working on anything until he saw some payment for the roof from the bank. (BTW, so happy for a non-leaky roof right now!) To give a sense of how hot it was inside, here's one of Morris's smart home panels from Friday:

Yep. 87 degrees inside the house. With about 500% humidity. Yay for DC weather. Morris was not a happy camper, but he did get more work on the wiring done. Fortunately today we're connecting with the right department at our lender so we can get the contractor an earlier draw to keep him happy.

The biggest visible difference was the painting of the front sitting room, which we decided would be nice and dark like an old school library. So we found a paint color we liked that in various stages of drying looked like melted chocolate or chocolate pudding. Unfortunately with such a major color change, it took a lot of paint - 3 coats! of the good stuff! - to get it to really cover properly.

Here's after coat 1 - Loving the color but definitely not gonna be able to stay like this. We couldn't even try to pass that off as some sort of faux finish. It's just not done.

Coat 2 - looking better, but still spots of the old light blue trying to peek through!

Finally coat 3 and with a start on the hardwood floor:

 

 

(Don't worry, the spots on the wall are just reflections coming in the window.) Yeah, that's gonna look goooooood. Just need some leather wingback chairs, a library full of hardcover books, and an old man smoking a pipe in the corner.

Morris also saw this fixture out in the wild and so we're looking forward to adding that in this room for some steampunk flair. This will be so much fun!

The saga of the island counter piece is still continuing. There were some issues with the final epoxy pour on Friday that just didn't want to properly harden due to either a mixing issue or just the dense humidity in the air. 

The final pour looked great:

But sadly the chemistry didn't hold up.

Morris is working on figuring out how best to finish it to show off the beautiful lava-like middle, so stay tuned!

The rain delayed, but didn't stop us from a few more improvements in the kitchen - including getting more lattice hung and lights back up.

And I've got more kitchen tile floor! Once we grout this section, the fridge can go to its true home (where the broom is here in the picture), and we can start making more use of it as a kitchen and not as a terrifying work site/murder scene. (Dear NSA/FBI, I promise we're not actually murderers, despite the number of saws/knives/shovels we have bought recently. I swear it's just for remodeling!)

Stay tuned next week for more adventures in drywall and jungle clearing. (seriously, this rain is an issue trying to maintain this lawn!)