New bamboo stairs

Soon after we installed the new bamboo floor it was time to do something about the stairs as well. We bought bamboo plywood (plyboo) for the treads and regular (oak) plywood for the risers. There is no new tile floor here yet, only an old cut-to-shape black jute rug to cover the old.

The fresh new bamboo steps in place. I think this photo was snapped right after the treads were clear coated (see the tape on the edge of each riser.)

We changed this color later but this pix shows the risers stained in a walnut color. Today their color is "Bombay Mahogany" which happens to be the color of our trims and doors inside the house.

Here those "Bombay Mahogany" baseboards can be seen.
I can't tell for sure but I think here the risers are already mahogany in color as well.

Tile work done. Thank you, DG! I am not sure why we took this pix but it seems someone was getting ready for a snowboarding weekend...

No railing yet here, but finally the house started to look cleaner. This image needs to be placed next to the one I took soon after we moved in when we had all kinds of tools here by the entrance door. On that old photo one can also see the crazy shiny wallpaper on the downstairs wall (here the wall had already been painted white, actually "tortilla").

Bamboo floor install

I have just found these very old images from the time when we installed the bamboo floors in the house. The walls were still opened and the freshly exposed beam was still unpainted.

Another area where the walls were opened up and rebuilt was the pantry's corner. Here, the entire corner of the kitchen was rebuilt and a new sliding door was added. On this photo the old kitchen floor is still in place but the upper cabinets are already removed. Back then, was it 2005? we lived without a kitchen for 6 months but it looks like here we still had "half" of it working? (Honestly, it can get pretty soul-draining to have to live like this but we pressed on hoping every day that our house  eventually will turn into a beautiful home.)

Another view of the old living room's subfloor. I forgot about the floor lamp we used back then made of a camera's tripod and a clamp.

Finally, beautiful, new bamboo floor in our bedroom. We chose pre-finished bamboo since we already lived in the house and didn't want to have to deal with the odors and poisons of the finishing materials.

No more iron railing, but the new glass railing wasn't done yet either when this photo was taken. I think we had no railing here for a few years, at least a year and a half...

I will never forget the happiness I felt when I saw this for the very first time after returning home one day. It has been many years but I still get the goosebumps!

Another view of the living room, dining room area. The old deck and its old railing can be seen in the dark.

Driveway project

I found some images today showing how the driveway was remodeled a few years ago. They seem really old now, since they show the house even before painting, with less windows and with large dirt piles everywhere.

Cement mixer and some workers hard at work.

Drain (to our french drain!) still covered with plastic.

Driveway smoothed out, and almost done.