Moving on

Thank you so much for the blessings you sent.  Even though the drywall dudes were eight thousand times speedier than I expected, I've been able to add some scripture, verses, and bits of text here and there all over the house, and those I didn't have room to write I tucked into a mason jar and squirreled away in the walls.  Our friends and family are our greatest blessing, and the house knows it as well as we do. Hugs to you!

Those drywall guys--like I said, speedy.

By Monday afternoon, whole rooms smelled of freshly sweaty socks and looked like a modernist's dream of stark architectural purity (WHY does drywall smell so weird, you guys?  I'll try to find out, and I'll report back if I do).

The put extra-specially awesome boards in the bathrooms

SUPERIOR.

And they even wire-meshed and mudded the wet areas of the bathrooms.

I'm a big fan of niches right now.

Some rooms were still in progress, but it was pretty clear they wouldn't be for long.

Our hundred-year-old shiplap, both the wretched (see those old termite trails? UGH!) and the sublime, was slipping back into its hiding place behind easily paintable, functional gypsum boards.  The whole house almost instantly took on a different character; a drywalled house, even if unfinished, feels like a house.  Ours feels like home, to me, but now it is just a house.  When it was just old shiplap and framing, the house had a cathedral-like quality.  The openness and purity of the structure was art, and I can see that part of the cause of the doldrums of the drywall phase is the loss of that sense.

Fortunately for me and you, the previous week I sent and impulsive e-mail to our contractor.  I admitted that it might be too late, but I asked him if we could leave one wall of shiplap in the living room exposed.

I haven't gotten a good picture of it yet because it's at the eastern end of the house and by the time I go by in the evenings the light isn't good enough, but it looks beautiful already and I can't wait to show it to you.  Before we started our house project, I had visited houses in the neighborhood that had left shiplap exposed after a renovation, and I have to admit I scoffed.  I thought it was silly, and too dark.  But I've gotten used to all this delicious oldness being on display in our house, and when it came down to it, I didn't want to give it up.  We'll probably clean it up and leave it unpainted, and I think it will end up being almost an art piece in itself on that wall.

And because my architect believes in the rule of three (read this *RULE OF THREE* with stars and sparkles) like I do, here's a little more shiplap hanging out in the garage waiting to be put other places in small quantities.  CAN'T WAIT.