Returned to New Orleans today following some business travel and some personal time with my family in Virginia.

Our plane landed mid-day so when we arrived back at the house work was in full swing. Mike and Rick were installing the wall tile in the downstairs bathroom.

By the end of the day a good bit of the tile was up. Seeing this makes it seem like the project will one day be completed.

Needing to stay busy while the guys were here working, K and I decided to work on getting the kitchen into some sort of functional state. While I was traveling, Ben and Rob stopped by and helped K move the refrigerator into the kitchen — no small feat involving removal of handles and doors — and hook up the Chambers stove. Today I worked on painting some shelves and K figured out how to turn four random pieces of furniture into a kitchen. I think she did a great job. I am thinking of this as Kitchen 1.0 — knowing that we will be iterating as we discover what works and what needs improvement.

No heavy lifting tonight though. We are relaxing. K is catching up on some PBS and I am working on version 1.1 of the music room since two of my tables just migrated down to the kitchen this afternoon. The good thing about version 1.1 is that the turntable is actually hooked up to the stereo. First up on vinyl in the new house: Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The track was Tin Pan Alley for those of you keeping score at home.

The rest of the soundtrack for the writing of this post: Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy and Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Concert.

And lo, the first time I laid eyes upon the tub installed in the bathroom there rested upon it a single shaft of light brought forth from the heavens. And when I saw it I said, ‘this is good.’

Okay. So the shaft of light was a bit up and to the right, but still a pretty momentous occasion. Never take for granted the ability to take a bath, inside your own home. This small wonder of modern Roman engineering is quite a nice addition to any home.

In other news, K and I painted the kitchen yesterday before I ran off to my Serenaders gig. We are looking at the results under various lighting conditions to see if we can get away with one coat. So far I am impressed withe covering ability of the Aura paint. We may have gotten lucky.

I realized as I was about to write this that last night and tonight I have started writing after midnight so the date of the posts is technically wrong. Not a big deal but in the interest of Truth in Advertising . . .

K & I returned to our day gigs so we didn’t do any renovating today. And much of what the guys did doesn’t make for a good photo opp: third coat of mud on the sheet rock, more rock in the downstairs bathroom, etc.

The only real visual change was the installation of a couple low-end kitchen cabinets. Since we didn’t plan to demo the kitchen, we didn’t budget to install a kitchen. But given the fact that we did rip out the old kitchen, we have to recreate some level of functionality.

A trick we learned at The Marigny St. house is that while countertops are expensive, doors are cheap. And once installed as counter tops, doors look and function remarkably well. Many people who shared meals with us at Marigny St. were surprised to learn that our counters were actually doors.

So we decided to finish off our low-end cabinets with a low-end door. So low-end, in fact, that this particular door was salvaged from our neighbor’s house. I wonder if they will recognize the door they threw out when they come for dinner?

K & I spent the lion’s share of our evening back at Marigny St. cleaning and touching up the paint. Everything should be ready for the new tenants by Saturday — probably earlier but given that we still don’t have a shower here it is nice to have access to our old one. What? Your shower isn’t 2.2 miles from your house?

After painting at Marigny street, I wanted to try out the new music room here. Certainly not 100% but even jammed full of boxes and sans AC it felt right.

I think we are going to be ok.

With the move approaching, everyone is focused on getting the rough-in inspection so we can close the walls and finish the bathrooms and kitchen.

The plumbers are hitting their stride now and new pipe is appearing daily.

I used my time this evening to finish the sanding of the kitchen floor and get the first coat of oil on the floor. The floor was so thirsty it easily drank two coats of tung oil. By the time I left it already felt like a finish was setting up on the surface. I am really learning to enjoy this process.

Next week we make the jump to the new house.

I’ve been practicing showering in the yard to get ready ’cause barring a miracle, we won’t have a tub or shower. While some may see this as a privation, I like to put things in perspective. When I moved in to the house we are living in now, we didn’t even have a toilet. Not because we live in West Virginia — just because my plumber was a moron. But that is another story from another time. At least the tub is near the bathroom.

For me, today was all about floors. Surprising I know.

This morning I put the first finish coat of tung oil on the upstairs bathroom floor. Unlike the varnish debacle in the music room, this time the oil went down nicely and the results look great. This picture doesn’t really capture it because I took it while the oil was still wet. But the oil penetrated deeply into the wood and the finish looks great.

Tomorrow I will put down another coat of tung oil and that should be it for the oil. K and I talked today about waxing this floor since it will be a bathroom and we are both a bit curious about what the wax and oil combination will look like. No decision yet.

While I was oiling the bathroom floor, K was floating sheet rock in the kitchen. When she finished her first pass, I started working on refinishing the kitchen floor. This time, I started right in with the belt sander. No screwing around this time.

The floors had a fair amount of tar paper on them that even the vinegar treatment didn’t get off. The result was that the sandpaper would gum up fairly quickly so the rough cut took longer than it otherwise would have. I never got past the 24 grit today so the floors are still very rough but I think tomorrow will go much quicker now that the heavy lifting has been done. Here is a before and after pic.

The floors certainly will not be pristine but I love the story that the wear and tear tells. Even the old powder post beetle trails which have been buried for decades are part of the story of the house to me. Removing the layers of additions — sticky tile, luan, floor covering, tar paper, old finishes — and then touching the raw wood set in place by unknown craftsmen in 1903 using square-cut nails; that is a connection with the past that many people never get to make. Another reminder of the slow movement of time in this city and the fact that we are part of a chain of being.  I used to feel this in Europe when I walked down a street that people used hundreds of years ago or touched a bar that someone else had touched 3oo years prior. But we are a young country and so our connections with the past are much shallower. Our house is relatively new . . . 1903. Nevertheless, it has a soul. You can feel it when you run your hand across the freshly exposed wood of the old floor.