Crawling to the finish

In regular life, crossing a finish line usually evokes this sort of image:



When it comes to construction, this is what crossing the finish line looks like:



Some of the three loyal readers of this blog may think that this is merely another excuse by your correspondent for not posting for a couple of weeks, but those of you who have been lucky enough to have experienced the time warp of construction first hand will recognize the dilation of the space time continuum that occurs near the end of a construction project that causes even fairly minor things to take days and week to happen. So here's a compendium of all that has happened in the last two weeks:

One of the most symbolically important changes in the house is that the front door is now fully operational:





Even more symbolic, and just as important, was the addition of the house number above the door -- now the house knows its own address.



One of the last items to be actually installed is this stainless steel veterinary examination table that will be serving as a folding work table outside the laundry room. Let me assure our concerned readers that no animals will be hurt, or even annoyed, on this table, unless they interfere with the folding of the laundry:







Speaking of stainless steel, the refrigerator was finally turned on and it proceeded to refrigerate its interior spaces; no food yet, but you have to start somewhere:




Another harbinger of civilization, the ice maker, was also cranking away:





In order to protect all that ice, the alarm system was wired in and activated:




Another finishing touch was putting the finishing touch on the dining room chandelier. This started with a single metal rod suspended from the ceiling, more abstract metal art than lighting:



Then we added the lights:



Next we had to unpack each of these paper-wrapped packets



to find two pieces of crystal connected by a very very thin filament



and then draped each of these in one of the grooves in the metal rod.



The end result looked like this:





As sparkly as this chandelier may be, we still need other things to stare at from time to time, which is why the house got a couple of Televisions this week:




And a few other pieces of hardware to connect to the new TVs:





Finally, in keeping with the overall green concept, rather than throwing away the leftover steel decking and ipe wood, we asked the crew to fashion them into benches we can use on the front deck:





Not a whole lot of progress to show for two weeks of work, but at least we are progressing towards the finish line, one agonizing slow step at a time.

Next week: More of the same.