And It Goes On and On and On...

 

Imagine a job that is far more than full time. It is six days a week, long hours each day, and even when you are sleeping you are planning out detail after detail in your mind. That is Jo's job. He has now been spending a number of months deep into the finish work. This is the most time consuming, the most detail oriented, and the most artistic part of the project. I think that Jo is good at most everything he tries, but this is the area that he shines. 

He has spent many hours putting up trim that looks classic craftsman. I think it is perfect.

Keep in mind that almost every piece of wood inside and outside of our house has been milled and finished by Jo, with the help of my parents. That was a lot of time consuming work!

For the trim we decided on a walnut finish but for the floor we are keeping natural to keep the house from feeling too dark.

Jo built each piece of the banister. I am not sure how he got the top part so smooth. 

Now it just needs to have stain and finish. 

The floor is larch plank of varying widths. Instead of tongue and groove, Jo used biscuit joiners with exposed, pyramid head, bronze nails. He hand-pounded every nail into the floor, which covers almost all of the main floor. After the floor was completed we used Tung oil to finish it (thanks Mom and Devin for help with that). 

Jo's right forearm was noticeably bigger than the left at the end of 2 months of pounding nails.

  

The banister is almost complete. 

 

Just when Jo needed it, some awesome help arrived. Devin had a bit of time after a summer in Alaska and before the start of school, so he came down to work with Jo. This really boosted Jo's spirits and helped him get a lot completed! Jo does a great job working by himself, but a lot of time and creativity go into planning out how to do certain projects alone, so it is nice to have another person to help.

Here they are turning the master bedroom into a paint room. Jo had a lot of doors to stain (over 20) so he set them all up so that he could spray them all at once.  

After they were all set up I got to vacuum all the dust off of them. I was pretty excited to help build our house!