Well this past weekend (actually five days since last Thursday) was super productive.  Sarah and I managed to fit in a little fun with a kayaking trip and a bbq with some friends, but this break was mostly about getting a good chunk of work done downstairs.  The contractor was also back to help, and he took care of pouring the footings for the columns holding the wall we're taking out, and adding new floor joists to the kitchen.  Sarah and I finally got the permit from the city, had an inspection for the footings and spent the first day or two working outside on the porch.  Sunday and Monday we focused on refinishing the doors going into the front foyer.  This was no small task...first we had to remove all the window stops, scrape all the loose paint, fill any holes, get new glass cut, install the glass, replace all the stops and finally prime and paint.  These doors are going to be the finishing touch to the foyer so spending so much time on one task wasn't all so bad.

Here's one of the doors...and this was after spending a day working on them.  Unfortunately the drunk Irishman who built the door 100 years ago didn't make all the lites the same size.

Sarah working hard on the door trim pieces.  We have to wear respirators for a lot of the work since there's lead paint everywhere.

And here are the doors after two days working on them (in 95 degree heat and humidity).  The last thing to do is scrape the paint from the glass and then we are DONE.

This is the temporary wall the contractor built to shore up the floor above.  Some of the studs had to be removed to pour the new footing.

The new footing's covered in plastic on the bottom left.  All the joists there are brand new and we can finally see some semblance of a kitchen floor!

Another side project from this weekend was to create new corbels for the front porch to replace rotten ones. We used the originals to create a template...and saved several hundred $$ in the process.