You Say Its Your Birthday -or- Slave Labor

Last Saturday was Caren's birthday. Alex, Kelby and Taryn came up to Tahoe to help us celebrate. All the celebrating means that we didn't get too terribly much done around the place. Instead, we took Caren out to Freshies, a Hawaiian restaurant in SLT. The food was really good, the dessert was... well, if I'd known the coconut cream pie was so good I would have skipped the teriyaki stir fry and had a whole pie for dinner.

Amidst all of the celebrating, I did put the kids to work in the finishing mill. The weather has been unseasonable and there is no snow on the ground, so I moved the mill back outside...

After helping with the table saw and planer, the boys went to work with the sanders. There was some talk about forming a union and striking, but I quelled that nonsense by suggesting that I might charge rent if they didn't get back to work. 

Notice the bench top that they are working on. It used to be the front door. The new front door can be seen in the photo below, with its temporary trim... see my previous post about temporary trim on the backdoor if you are wondering why it is temporary. Caren and I both like how the new front door changes the look of the place and are pretty excited to get the new siding and windows installed next spring. 

Taryn helped me pull nails and oiled all of the newly sanded trim. It is amazing how much faster things go when the labor force is quadrupled. We had most of the trim ready to finish the living room by mid morning.

Then we spent the next few hours putting it mostly in the right place. I say mostly, because we changed plans on the install about two-thirds of the way thru so a few pieces ended up looking pretty mickey moused into place. I knew I wasn't gonna sleep well... 

Sunday morning, Alex and I attempted to fix the mickey mouse job. Alex is happy, I'm not. Most likely, I will be tearing the whole shebang out some day soon and doing it right... I hate being OCD.

Somewhere in the midst of all the trim work, Alex and I put together the dish cabinet that is currently sitting above the refrigerator and pie safe. I thought Caren took pics. She thought I took pics... We don't have any pics. But, I will take some next weekend and post them because the dish cabinet is something that I am very happy with... something that I won't have to tear out and re-do...