A month since our last post

I think that's the longest we've gone without posting. We have been doing a few things, I haven't put the pictures on the computer though. I'm working on the powder room in the basement, I put in a pocket door last weekend, so most of the framing is done. I bought a pre-build door frame, I had to take it apart, and reconfigure it for our low basement though. I bought a solid-core pine door, it's only 24" wide. The kit for the pocket door costs more than the door. Oh well, easier than building it all from scratch. I ended up cutting 5" off the door to get it to fit, the door said not to cut more than an inch off each side. I think it'll be okay though, since it's a pocket door, it doesn't get the abuse that a normal door does. So the next step on the powder room is plumbing and electrical. We'll probably get a new toilet for upstairs, and use the current Simpson Sears one for downstairs. Hopefully I'll start on that this weekend.
As well we've been plugging away at the trim in the hallway. Deb bought me a beautiful 6" Bosch orbital sander for my birthday. We've almost got all of the entry ready for varnish. The pieces that I took off around the front door are done, and I put them back on this weekend. We took off the register to strip as well (now the whole house smells like stripper), it seems like it has a brass finish, it comes off with the stripper, so we'll probably just paint them a semi-gloss black. We're going to give the floor a little tlc as well, we're not ready to do the floors yet, since we still have to do the living room, dinning room and bedroom, so we're just going to sand down the bare spots, and apply shellac (the floors are originally shellacked). When we're ready, we'll rent a sander, sand all the floors (oh yeah and the kitchen too), and cover them in Waterlox.