Painting progress and finishing touches

It always surprises me how the house can look and feel so unfinished, for so many months, and then all of a sudden it comes together.  We're finally at that point after what feels like miles and miles of trim installation and other detail work.  It helped immensely that we hired out painting for the first floor and, after it took three guys six full days to prep and paint, we're glad we did.  There's still some touch-up to do, little details here and there to clean up, and a handful of additional projects on the list but for the first time, the house does not look like a construction zone!  That alone is cause for a celebratory post, but add in that Brian had the time to build a custom dining table and I have another foster puppy (I might be starting a foster puppy mill here), and there is much good news in this update!  Let's start with a couple of "after" pictures:

Stairs are done and painted!

Another angle - walls are also finally painted too!

Brian also went ahead and started the install on the crown molding in the kitchen

And finished the install - we forgot to take pictures of the rest of the cabinets but they all look like this now!

Then it was time to work on a fun project - building the walnut base for the custom dining table.  Brian made a prototype awhile back from regular 2x4s and has been waiting to have time to build the real table from walnut.  We picked up the walnut pieces when we bought the living edge bar top and it looks like they came from the same tree.  After Brian bought some new woodworking equipment (a planer, drum sander, and other fun things), it was time to make the real table.

Just three pieces of walnut right now

Getting the legs notched out

Yep, that fits together!

And a close-up of the joints

A few coats of rub-on poly in satin will finish the wood off

And now it's time to glue and clamp it all together

Now that's a custom table!  

And a wider angle shot with the living edge bar top from the same tree

The kitchen is finally coming together!

And here's our current puppy resident, Ella!

Such a sweetheart!