Our holiday weekend was jam-packed. We spent alot of time with family, stopped by the New York State Fair , and still managed to squeeze in a full day at the house. God bless the 3-day weekend.

After doing some research and cost estimates for the proposed deck, we decided it could wait. There are too many necessary projects that require our money/energy/attention right now. So, we cleaned up the back lawn the best we could (chipping away at clay soil piles that turned into rock hard SCULPTURES!). It’ll be under 3 feet of snow in a few months, anyway.

The kitchen addition has a full floor now, which makes it look less scary. We don’t have to worry about anyone falling into the dirt pit, and it’ll probably cut down on the mud we track through the house. We ran a few electrical lines, and Teague showed me how to level out the pantry floor. NOT the easiest project I could have picked, it turns out. To make the current floor meet with the new floor, it needs to be raised up about 2″ on one end. But of course, it’s not 2″ all the way across – some points are lower than others. So, I took 5 different measurements and made 5 different shims – each starts at a different height and tapers down, so that when a piece of plywood lays over all of them it’ll be (somewhat) level.

Here’s a photo of the first three so you can see what I’m talking about:

Next, I’ll go in and run stringers in the opposite direction. Then we’ll top it with a fresh sheet of plywood. Ahhh, what a pretty pantry it will be one day.