First Half of November

 Technically the very last day of October... the fan finally arrived and I installed it right before a Halloween party started, but I didn't take and pictures until a couple of days later. We really like it! The fan is a Haiku by Big Ass Fans. This is the only one that's still made in the US as far as we were ever able to tell anyway.

 I also came close to wrapping up the mini-project known as the front door. This is how it looked when it was installed and after windows were in. Neither of those were as easy as they sound - especially trimming the door on the long and short sides. It was probably the most difficult part of the project because after putting all of this work into it the last thing I wanted to do was cut it too small!

Since our huge project is finally wrapping up I was finally able to start cleaning up. These cabinets were intended to be used at a rental but that didn't work out. I donated them to Habitat along with a ton of other stuff we removed from the house. It was great to finally get the den back!

It's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better.

October

In the month of October I worked only on doors. The remaining ones that I had to install went up, all the stuff for the front door arrived and it was time to figure out how to make it and put it all together. It actually wasn't that hard. Given known dimensions of a standard front door I was able to take measurements from a picture and use those to figure out how large and where the windows should be. Then all there was to do was cut them out and finish the door.

To do that I needed a router and a guide. The best guide for this sort of thing that I could come up with was to clamp dimensional lumber and run the router against that. It gave straight, repeatable cuts every time. I took out only 1/4" of material at a time so this took a while. Once I had actual window sizes I was able to take those to a local glass company to have windows made. While waiting I stained and finished the wood. All of this made a huge mess with tons of sawdust flying around everywhere. Of course I did all of this in the dining room so there was a lot of cleaning to do.

Second Half of September

The second half of September was spent mostly with me wrapping up electrical odds and ends. The doors for all rooms adjacent to the family room arrived from Baird Brothers and I also started the finishing process and installed the first one of those. It was nice to FINALLY have a door to the master bedroom!

I also ordered everything we would need for the front door. No small undertaking since I wound up trying to match up finishes between parts that were new and others that were over 50 years old.

The last project was to make the refrigerator surround. The plan calls for a Subzero but since we have a heavily damaged rental house and unresponsive insurance companies to deal with it seemed best to use the refrigerator we have for the time being.