Gimme Three Steps

Nope, I wasn't cutting the rug, but rather cleaning it.  Actually, them.  My quest to cover the floors at Glenlochan with as many of the rugs that came with the house as possible continued through the fall.  As mentioned in the original rug post, I would not bring a rug into the house unless it was clean enough and smelled good enough that I was willing to stick my nose in the fibers.  I've continued with my unconventional but effective cleanings and, over the months, I've now cleaned by hand every rug that I think will survive my heavy handed methods.  One large rug was too damaged to save and several appear to be antiques that we will be taking to a professional for assessment and cleaning.  This is the one that started it all.

 

I then moved on to the aqua floral rug that turned out to be a perfect match for our bedroom.

The blue floral looks great in the downstairs blue bedroom and cleaned up so nicely.

And, most recently, the brown rug currently adorning the game room in front of the fireplace, seen here in drying mode.

Not pictured is the green rug from our last house that also needed a good scrubbing after a few years in storage.  Each one required a lot of elbow grease, but they all look good and, most importantly, are completely clean and odor-free.  Baby steps towards getting this house fully furnished and decorated. 

Done Dick'en with the Dock

Check, check, check - the dock project is done.  It was a long time coming and, despite some real reservations midday through the project, worth the wait.  The siding is spectacular - and totally reinforced our view that it had to be board and batten siding.  The horizontal thin stuff just wasn't going to give it the right feel, especially when the original had been vertical.

Some of the delay had to do with locating just the right color of siding.  Our first choice matched the color of Glenlochan unbelievably perfectly.  Too perfectly, apparently - the color had been discontinued.  And no, there wasn't enough left in stock, not even hobbling together everything available across the nation.  Plan B involved matching the original color of the boathouse which, as you may recall, looked like this:

That seemed like a quick trip to the supply store...not.  Barn red is not an easy color to find in board and batten siding.  The first samples were more rust than red, not at all true to the original and, in my humble view, not very attractive.  Finally, we found the Georgia Pacific "Hampton Red" board and batten siding.  Of course it was a "premium" color.  Of course it was special order.  Of course it took a while to arrive.  Again - worth the wait.  Here's the install:

 The interior of the boathouse (note the fall colors starting on the opposite shore).  We elected to widen the slip we'd be using for a boat and create a kayak launch/wave runner slip on the other side.

 The step-down for launching the kayaks:

The dock looking back to shore, now complete with steps:

And, the finished boathouse and dock:

The next project will be to run a water supply and electric down to the boathouse.