September was a month of focusing on just one project- the fireplace/mantle. It’s been on my wish list for awhile as I’ve had serious dreams about Christmas with this as the anchor/backdrop. And this month we started and completed the project! It honestly went faster than I had anticipated and that added quite a boost to our perceived productivity. Fit in a few other things, but mostly stayed focused and indoors because it has not been the fall we thought September would be- way too hot. But still proud of what we did get accomplished this month.

• Installed final lazy Susan after they shipped one wrong one.
• Began (and finished Oct 2, but I’ll be nice and not make you wait for the Oct update) tiling the fireplace surround and the mantle
• Did some overseeding of our grass
• Had our only carrot harvest from the garden. Pumpkins look to be a bust and laughably maybe more tomatoes?
• Got our last siding at the tippy top of the gable scheduled for install

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I would really love for Jim to write a blog post on the design of the fireplace surround as it was a perfect compliment of our skills. I had a strong vision for how the wall should look and Jim is much better with geometry and fractions. He mocked it up on the computer and ultimately was able to give me what I wanted. But the specifics should come from him since he had the ‘hard part’. I just tiled, grouted, sealed, caulked, painted, stained, sanded, and poly’d all the pieces.

Next month (current month as of this writing) will focus on more woodworking projects. I was content to just get the fireplace surround and mantle done for Xmas, but it went so fast we’re hoping to get the built in bookcases done on either side of the fireplace. That will really finish out the living room, so I’m hoping we can get it complete in the next two months. Some projects go quickly and some bog down so we’ll have to see what progress we have to report this time next month!