I drove over on Thursday after my final meeting with Lucy. All the brick was done and it is so pretty. The brick itself is pretty and the workmanship is wonderful. As usual, Mike has excellent subs. And the cleanup! He had a guy over scrubbing and hosing down the brick and chipping off any mortar that might have accidently dropped. Another example of Mike's fine attention to detail: he decided that the north side of the house would look better with brick all the way up rather than HardiPlank which is what the plans called for. On his own, Mike did a strucural analysis to determine the load bearing capacity of the wall. He built the necessary reinforcements and you can see from the pictures how much better it looks. It not only adds to the symmetry of the house but makes maintenance lots easier for us in the future.

By Thursday of this week the sheetrock was finished upstairs and almost done downstairs. The brick work for the hearth and fireplace wall had been completed. I flew to Dallas Saturday morning for Leslye's baby shower so didn't get to make our usual Saturday trek (but did take pictures on Thursday). D took his buddy, Tommy McPhillips over on Saturday. He said there were mudders walking all around on their stilts floating out the sheetrock. Too bad I had the camera--that would have been a neat picture. We've got a walk-through scheduled with Mike for Tuesday next week to verify which rooms get paint and which ones get wallpaper. Also talked with Kathy at K&N Appliances this week and firmed up the selections for the kitchen stuff.

I remember talking with Mary (Mike's mom and secretary/receptionist/hostess with the mostest) when we first started this project. She had recently finished building a home and said when it was over she was so tired of making decisions that her house stayed undecorated for a year just cuz she didn't want to have to make any more decisions! I can relate! Are we almost done, Teri?