One busy weekend

It's Monday morning and although I'm back at work, after this past weekend, going to work feels more like taking a break than anything else! It has been a whirlwind weekend for the past few days at the house. I knew we were in trouble when the masons said they were coming back to start putting up the stone on Saturday, but I had no idea they planned on working on Sunday too! Thankfully we weren't stepping on each other's toes since I still had a lot of wood to stain, 2 windows that needed one more coat of paint and J was busy installing the electrical boxes for the new lighting fixtures on the front of the house. Things were going great until a freak thunderstorm hit on Sunday afternoon that forced the masons to quit what they were doing and call it a day. I was happy to see them go, but not happy to see that they did not clean up all the mortar mess that had fallen onto the driveway during the course of their work. J and I spent the next 2 hours hurriedly cleaning it up before it set and become a permanent part of the driveway! It was only after that that I noticed the 2 upper windows had not been covered in plastic and now had a bunch of stratches on the aluminum casing. Nevermind the large scratch on the glass of one of the upper sashes. So a whole weekend of feeling good from finishing a few major tasks came crashing down - I am officially pissed. I understand during the course of major work, some stuff is bound to happen, but when we repeatedly told them to please cover the other windows BEFORE they start working near them and then realized that stuff happened because they blatantly DIDN'T do that, well I think I have a right to be just a wee bit angry. So last night the hammer came crashing down. No more stonework until all the prep work that we've asked them to do gets done. Ok - I'm done venting. Breath in...breath out...

Here's a picture of the progress as of late Saturday afternoon, which unfortunately isn't the most recent. I was too ticked off last night after shoveling dried mortar to take any pictures.

In other news - I would like to take a moment to wish a very Happy Birthday to my dear friend sj! And may the planets align properly sometime this week or maybe next so that we can get together for our annual "double birthday" dinner celebration (our birthdays are exactly 1 week apart!)