I hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend. Our weekend started Thursday morning when we took off to the cottage for two days, unfortunately we had to come back to work for the weekend. This time we rented the correct sanders and spent day one working on the floors, finally getting them completely flat.

Success at last! We haven’t finished the floors yet, but we’re going to do that this week.

It’s so nice to see the lines of the floors continue all the wall down the hallway into the kitchen.

We took down the large cupboard on the left of the window that was actually installed to hide the electrical panel. It was sticking out much too far, and making the kitchen feel cramped. I think I’ll make a little shallow box with hinges to hide the panel.

We also brought up the ceramic sink and white faucet from our old apartment, and making another plywood counter to install in this kitchen. Plywood is really easy to work with because you don’t need to laminate any of the wood as with most solid wood counter-tops. I have to admit, plywood isn’t the most durable material for a counter-top but if you add enough lacquer it holds up in a space that is used part time.

Just to get crazy before I left, I took down the old 70s office drop ceiling. I just whacked the metal hangers with a crowbar. Thinking back to it I’m happy I didn’t injure myself during the swinging. I did accidentally destroy a wall sconce, but thankfully those were going to be replaced anyways.

We decided to leave the exposed ceilings, they look so cool and add height to the small bedrooms. If down the road we want to make it more private I can always add a ceiling.

I had to end with this photo because I can already hear cries in the internet world after we paint the ceiling and fireplace white. To be honest I do sometimes consider keeping the wood ceilings as is, but all I have to do is go into the main cottage and see how clean and bright everything looks in white. From the photos I took you can’t really see the amount of water damage of the wood ceiling, nor can you appreciate the heavy feeling you get when you have a dark wood over head with light floors and white walls. It just feels unbalanced. Also, there aren’t many windows in this cottage so natural light is limited – the white will help to amp it up.

This week is going to be a good one if we can get most of the painting finished!