Sprinting Toward the Finish Line

This weekend, we are hoping to largely finish the Cheney Cottage.  So yesterday and today, we got a lot done.  Some of it is small stuff (moving the refrigerator in and changing the door so it opens the right way) and some of it is bigger stuff (tiling the backsplash; shellacking the woodwork).  We got the water running in the kitchen sink, and tested all the pipes for leaks.  And the dishwasher is finally hooked up, and ready to start washing dishes (once we have hot water).

These pictures were taking after we'd worked all day, so the light is bad and they are somewhat blurry (just like us).  The living room has no lights in it currently, so we set up a light shining at the area under the stairs, and snapped some quick pictures.  But this gives a sense of how it's going.

The shellac is amazing.  It dries pretty quickly, and it makes the woodwork somewhat darker and definitely richer and deeper.  All the wood shines once the shellac is on - it's really beautiful.

The bench under the stairs

The corbels and stair railing

The bench and pedestal

In the kitchen, we got some antique tiles, and put a couple of them into the field of tiles as accents. The main tiles match the color of the 1949 metal cabinets beautifully, and the accent tiles add some interest.  We still have to install the toe kick and get a cutting board for the slide out space in the cabinet - but other than that, the kitchen is complete.

The Cheney Cottage  kitchen with backsplash

We're making great progress, and we still hope that, by tomorrow, the house will be pretty much done.

Tomorrow: more shellacking, and lots of cleaning.  And more pictures, taken during the day.  I'll also post an invitation to the Open House for the Cheney Cottage, so Bay Area blog readers can come see the finished house.