Let's decorate

Things are starting to come together now. The dining room is done, apart from new windows. We ordered them and hoped they would be installed before Xmas, but as they are almost 6' high and 4' wide they have to be custom made and probably won't be ready until January. At least we have ordered them. It felt so good to have finally made a decision about them. I hope we will be happy with the result. We also ordered new windows for upstairs except for our bedroom, because those are in good condition, and for my study. Steven jumped up on the garage roof and nailed back the siding and it doesn't look to shabby so we are going to leave it until next year before we consider replacing that section. It isn't possible to get redwood boards in that width anymore and we would have to replace the whole of that side so that it didn't look odd; while that is only 25'x4' it isn't something we want to shell out for if we don't have too. We will have the whole house refinished with oxalic acid next Spring and decide then what to do.

We have also, after three months of cogitating, agreed to put wood flooring on the back hall. Ceramic tile is just too cold, both to stand on and to look at. It was putting down the tile in the kitchen that finally made up our minds. We have such a large area (kitchen, eating area and back hall) that we would have to cover it with rugs to live with it, so we might as well put down runners to keep the dogs from scratching the wood and I think wood will look better. Now we are waiting for the installer to come back and lay more bamboo. We also decided that the stairs require too much work to refinish so we will be out this Thanksgiving weekend looking at carpet for both the front and rear staircases. As we both dislike carpet and hate shopping that should be a joyous experience.