Fast & furious

Our stonemasons have finished putting our Western Cascades stone in place and are now grouting it. We went with a medium-gray color for the grout so it wouldn't compete with the stone. Western Cascades is not a brand name, by the way. We have been doing some investigation into the region where the quarry is, and we think that the stone was erupted by a Western Cascades volcano. The Western Cascades predate the modern high Cascades, having ceased erupting at about the time the great Basalt Floods started occurring; so the stone probably is more than 17 million years old. The Western Cascade range also was west of the current high Cascades. There are a number of theories about this, but I won't go into that here: we have more house-related stuff to talk about!

Here's a grouted column on the front porch. There will be a wood wrap above the stone.

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So, now that the stone is done, we are thinking about the exterior house colors. I found a program which allows you to play with different color combinations. You create masks which define where different colors go, and then "paint" away on your computer. Here are a couple of examples, showing different color combinations on the back of the house:



Finally, although I don't have any more pretty pictures, there are a LOT of changes that are going to happen in the next week. The garage interior has been painted, and the main house interior is being painted right now; that will be done in another few days. The garage doors are slated to be installed early next week, followed by the kitchen cabinets and hardwood floors. We have figured out that we have enough Ipe flooring to do both levels, IF we do something else in the bathrooms, utility room, main-level foyer/hall and kitchen. That nice slate we got will go in the foyer/hall/kitchen, and we probably will put tile in the bathrooms. We probably will put Marmoleum in the utility room.

So the pace is definitely picking up! Currently, our builder thinks we will be able to move into our new house in March, and, based on how things are going, that seems pretty likely. Then we get to work on the landscaping....