We survived the cold snap..

And so did our plumbing. I have been suffering from nightmares involving flooding and house collapse (as seen in The Money Pit), but the house, which seems to be under a Special Dispensation from Above, is just fine.

I was going to go over to the house today and rip up the glued-down carpet in the kitchen (it's on top of perfectly good but hideous linoleum), but got distracted by my gestational diabetes test. I won't, of course, find out whether I "passed" or not until monday, when my next OB appointment is. Whee. I'm probably fine, except for having to drink what amounts to concentrated flat orange soda :P

We've got a sort of a tradition of buying and rehabbing houses during pregnancy in my family - my parents did this too, with their first project house in 1975, and the next one in 1977. I've got a goal of moving in on or around Tax Day - we'll see how well it goes. As long as we can get moved in before I have a baby in my arms, we're okay.

Practical things:

The breaker box should be going in (well, at least dry-fitted) tomorrow. I'm charging our saw batteries right now. After that, we'll be able to really get the several outlet circuits in from below without losing our places ;)

I've figured out an elegant, Anglo-Japanese style arrangement for the necessary support beam and its attendant posts in our dining room. It'll go nicely with the planned false beams on the ceiling. I'll post a drawing as soon as I have it scanned. I'm also considering building box-type window seats into the two ends of the bay - they would be ideal, and perhaps some nice Stickley-style wall-hanging shelves would be good, too. Or maybe we can scrape up another 30 bucks and get two more sconces ... Hmmm.

I'm debating making a plaque to mount our new house numbers on - perhaps wood or aged hammered copper? I hate it when I can't make up my mind.

I'm still working on my reconstruction of the original paper I found bits of. So far, it looks fairly neat, and I may send what I've got off to Bradbury and Bradbury for their archives once I get it done. If they're interested.

I've been toying with paint colors for each room, and how to use the edging papers I found, and whether I want to make a freize ... So far, we've got greys and blues for the living room, and greens and browns for the dining room, and red/black/white with steel and chrome in our unavoidably 1930's kitchen. Possibly deep blue with white and chrome in the bath, with or without black accents. Nothing yet for the master bedroom suite (bedroom and dressing room will be done the same), and we're still juggling ideas for the boy's room.