Moving back inside

So we got the outside painted, the deck in place, the railing around the little deck, and the heat pump installed on the west wall. Our original plan was to put the heat pump on the little deck, but they are so small and lightweight now, it made more sense to mount the thing on the west wall. It would be more out of the way, and we'd need to run a lot less copper to the air handling units inside. That leaves us with the little deck that we don't need, but I think it'll be fun to have. It gives us easy access to the roof (for chimney sweeping) and it provides egress in case of a fire.

The inspector wouldn't pass the bedroom because the window was one square inch too small to meet code for climbing out through. He tried earnestly to make it work, too, but that one inch remained. You can see the offending window in the picture at the right. Then he had the idea to exchange the library and the bedroom. The library has a door onto the deck! That'll meet code. We just had to install an electric baseboard heater, because bedrooms have to have heat. This photo shows the floor after Val applied three coats of urethane to it, by the way. The electric is finished now, too, as I write in mid December. I think we still have to put on the baseboards or it won't count as "finished." Pretty nice library, eh? It even has a book closet big enough for a teenage girl's clothes! You can see half of that closet in the photo. I should add that the girls—and the dogs, apparently— go out onto the deck roof on nice days. All four creatures seem to have the sense to stay away from the edge. Maybe I'll build a ladder down the front so they can escape if there's a fire. Oops—no egress.

You might find the steps onto the little deck interesting. Val built them. You can't see it, but the bottom panel on the left has a little sculpted Hobbit door in it, and when you open it, you can see a little apartment! A nice treat for visiting grandkids. So the upstairs is essentially finished.
However, downstairs needed some work. We got the insulation on both levels done and the dry wall on both levels. (later we found a bunch of empty beer bottles in hidden places when we were cleaning up. Apparently one of the dry wall guys kept himself refreshed the day he worked unsupervised.)

The downstairs floor was a different story. The floor was a concrete slab poured by the crook contractor five years ago. It served as a place to store lumber and firewood until we closed it in. The plan is to lay tubing down, then cover it with two inches of fine concrete, then tile that. Oh yes. We also had to rip out the entire wall on the first floor between the addition and the house. You can see the wall with the window removed. The white wall on the right also went. And we pulled up all the living room carpet. The new tile will unify the whole area by extending into the house. Here's what it looks like now.
Val took a bunch of pictures of the floor with the tubing zig-zagging across the floor but I don't have those yet. The concrete guys were fast and professional, and they returned several times to polish the semi-cured concrete. We can't walk on it for a week; since the new material is on existing concrete, the water generated by the curing all has to go up, so it takes a really long time to cure. The view in this picture, by the way, is from about ten feet to the right and closer to the addition than in the previous picture. That curtain up there would be left of and behind the photographer.
So now we get to twiddle our thumbs and watch the concrete set. At least were not in a corner! The inspector is scheduled to come and give us a certificate of occupancy as soon as he can walk on the floor.