TGIF 5

Lots of progress this week. Thursday our new painters arrived and started prepping the guest house ceiling. Spent almost an hour getting to know the owner, Chris Costa, who is a really nice guy and (we think) went to high school with Chip. He's having his "#1 guy," Robert, work on the project and Dave, who has known him for a dozen years, says we're not going to find anyone better. Robert started by sanding the beams and then filling in the cracks with wood putty. He then sanded them again.

The Tombleson crew continued finishing hanging the sheetrock as well as removing all of the transom plywood panels, numbering each one so that John Laughton can make exact replicas of them in the plyboo material he's using for the cabinetry. John also stopped by to bring a mock-up of the hardware he wants to use to replace the existing hinges. The gas-filled pneumatic hinges are really nice but we're not going to go with them because they provide only one option: open all the way, and we like our old hardware style that allowed us to open the panels a few inches, a little bit more, or all the way depending on how much air we wanted. So John is now looking for more options.

The window for the shower also arrived on Thursday and the Tombleson guys quickly installed it. However, Dave was not happy with the product for a number of reasons. He thought we'd be unhappy with its exposed black screws (he was right) and the fact that both the inside and outside left and right frames were not symmetrical. He said he's installed thousands of windows and never seen one like the one we now have. After sharing his frustration with us at the end of the day Thursday, he decided to have Mike come by first thing Friday to have a look. He did, and later in the day Dirk from Monterey Glass came by and, at the end of the day, Dave informed us we're getting a new window. Thanks, Dave!

So we came home to some good news but even better than that, we have railings around the deck! Happy dance, happy dance! It looks amazing and makes our MCM hearts very happy. Can't wait to see the fence done, too.

The painters also finished staining the beams in the guest house. And, again, Dave was right. Robert did an amazing job. There is so much "movement" in the grain that it's hard not to stare at them. Robert said he stained them with a first coat, sanded them, and then applied the second coat. He said they're going to look even better when they apply the sealer to the entire ceiling. More happy dancing ahead!

Note the third picture above. That's the beam in the guest house bath that we hadn't planned for but later decided to keep exposed and run LED rope lighting behind it as an homage to MCM soffit lighting commonly found in 50s bathrooms and kitchens. We're going to tell everyone we planned it all along. The photo below that one is a detail of the (soon to be former) shower window and its exposed screws. And the last photo above is a detail of the deck railing. It's so cool the neighbors stopped by to check it out. Based on how much noise they were making it seems they really love it, too.