Drywall started

I wasn't around for it, but the drywall guys had previously "loaded" the house with drywall and were able to start working today since the insulation was done. For the upstairs, the drywall was boomed in thru a temporarily removed window. This window, in fact:

I started looking at the progress upstairs, and at first it didn't seem like much progress had been made; mostly just the ceiling board in two of the bedrooms...

...but then I finally got out to the garage and realized it was already all done:

Wow - huge difference! :-) Oh yeah, that pallet of stuff in the middle is pretty much 100% boxes of joint taping compound, but I asked one of the drywall guys about it and he said it probably wouldn't be enough to finish the house.

I think that just about catches things up all the way to today. The only other things going on is that we gave final approval for our cabinet layout (our cabinets are coming from a well-known local supplier, Canyon Creek Cabinets), have been working hard to nail down final choices on tile, and are starting to think about interior wall paint colors.

We've also been talking to a local tile and glazing artist, Paul Lewing, about creating some decorative murals for the kitchen and the master bathroom shower. In the kitchen we're going for some, well, kitchen scenes :). (Well, we also might have a small portrait somewhere of our boxer dog Beau who regrettably got sick and had to be put down recently; "Bo-bo", you are still missed every single day!) In the shower, we're looking for a larger scene, something like the Seattle waterfront, with trees, mountains, the Space Needle, ferries, and maybe even a trimaran or two :). We also asked to include some underwater elements - my wife wouldn't let allow me to have any mermaids (even ones with seashells covering the, um, soft parts), so it'll have to be something else, say, a sunken ship maybe, and some fish or something. Clearly this sort of thing is a 100% decorative luxury, but I think it will add a nice touch to our house. More on this later. If you like this sort of thing, I would encourage you to check out Paul's web site - he has done some simply amazing work.

Finally, not to end on a down note or anything, but I do have to admit that I'm starting to feel a slight amount of "house fatigue"...while the progress is exciting, I'm looking forward to actually being able to just live in the house, and not having to spend so much time thinking about details, driving back and forth (some of the road ruts should have our name on them), and deciding on detail after detail. We're getting there though.