A quick update on the second project: The renovation of the store. 

The carpet and related detritus having been removed, and the missus and I having found a wood-floor-looking-substitute-for-an-actual-wood-floor for all the areas once covered with the carpet, we’ve moved on to more detailed work: the bathroom and the Great Sandblasting Project.

Contractor Chris’ son Grant has been tapped to sandblast all the beams in the shop to take off the unfortunate white paint some troglodyte decided was a good idea at the time.  Here’s one of the beams in progress:

Sadly the work is slow, messy, noisy, and difficult.  Happily I am not doing it myself, though I feel for Grant.  In any event, the deed is getting done and the beams will look lots better once that white is off.  I think I like them au natural but will confer with Susan on whether we need to eventually stain them.

After suffering through an afternoon at Arizona Tile trying to pick out the themes for the bathroom we had an epiphany: everything in that store, though nice, is already looking dated to us.  Maybe it’s because we just went through all that with our current residence but I suspect it’s because we can see that in only a few years people will be able to look at our house and say, “Oh, you must have redone all the bathrooms sometime between 2002 and 2007 or whatever.”  I wonder if people building brand-new Tuscan-style homes already realize how many of us cringe at their choice.

So we’re doing in whole thing in Mexican / talavera tile with a saltillo tile floor.  That’s something that never really goes in, or out, of style.  And for a tiny bathroom, in a shop, we think that will be just the ticket.  For a vanity, we’re having Ghost Town Trading in Albuquerque make us one out of old distressed wood.   We’ve already decided that they will be enlisted to make the kitchen cabinets in the house.