Welcome to the ClubHouse

Erin left this afternoon and we're still in mourning :( but trying to move on courageously.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the fruit of our labors this holiday weekend:

Just about done. Erin and the kids are painting inside.

Erin arrived Friday night and we (mostly Bobby) worked pretty much all day Saturday, Monday (Memorial Day), Tuesday, and Wednesday. It was a labor of love and time and sweat. The instruction manual said it should take two adults something like 8 hours to assemble. Ha! Every time we would finish a section, we'd think, "Whew, okay, that was the hardest part. The rest should be easier." And we'd be wrong every time ;)

But it's beautiful and totally worth it. The kids are thrilled, I'm thrilled, and Bobby's thrilled never to do that again, thank you very much. More pictures:

Two walls up

All four walls, roof trusses, and the beginning of a real roof!

James and Matthew chillin' by the grill on Memorial Day.

Cherry Cusma. It's a Romanian dessert well worth the effort. Mmmmmmm.

A view inside! Matthew is covering his ears because Bobby is still shingling the roof and it's really, really loud in there. We love the loft!

Decorating the inside. Erin and I took all day to prime and paint the inside. Then the kids got to decorate it themselves. Alice was feeling a little sad that Erin would be leaving the next day, so her decorations kinda took a "shrine" slant. There are outright declarations as you see here and other references to various inside jokes they've collected over the years.

Even Matthew got into it. Love that little lefty!

And James went through two other painting outfits before this one. He got paint on his first set, which was totally fine. But then he changed his clothes and nobody noticed until he already got paint on himself again. And another set. Pbbbbsh.

We still have some finishing touches we'd like to do: finish painting the outside, install the shutters and window boxes, put some sort of water-resistant flooring in (stick-on vinyl tiles?), and then eventually create flower beds around it so it's incorporated into the general backyard design. Maybe a path up to the front door? But not for a while.

We're gonna take a breather. Whew!