Progress, turmoil and shower seats

Boy, what a difference one week makes. My last post was Monday, and a lot has happened since then. I posted some pics of the progress here. So far the basement and the first floor is framed, and Bob (the builder) has started some exploratory research into the family room ceiling.

During the exploration, Bob removed a portion of the ceiling drywall to discover one large kink in our overall design. Turns out that the ceiling joists in that room go left-to-right, not front-to-back. Whoops. Whoda thunk that an 11-foot by 20-foot room would have 20-foot ceiling joists. So, after a quick review with the architect (that'd be dad) we decided that to keep the floor of the new room upstairs from bouncing like a diving board, a little joist reinforcement was needed. No biggie. Bob then discovered that the ceiling slopes 3/4" from the left side of the house toward the middle. Not much that can be done about that, and it means that any coins we drop on our bedroom floor will be conveniently collected in one corner of the room.

Another interesting side effect related to the holes in our family room ceiling....this week the weather has been great, but the temps dropped to the 30's at night. With a gaping chasm in the family room ceiling, there's nothing keeping the cold out. We've woken up with frost in the kitchen the past couple of days.

So meanwhile, we've completely emptied the family room, meaning that I write this to you from our new computer desk location under the steps in the basement. I feel like a troll. My precious. The other rooms are still livable, though starting to get slightly cramped. It's gonna get real interesting in a couple weeks when we lose our kitchen table space and pot cabinet. I've already planned out our dinner seating arrangements for that point. I'll eat standing by the kitchen sink, Hilary will be on the front porch, Natalie can eat sitting on the toilet using the sink as her table, and Jessica will be perched comfortably on top of the fridge. Any guests that come over will be required to take us out to dinner. And it better not be Eat & Park!!

A final thought for the day. The shower was ordered today. I had a long discussion with the plumber over the benefits of shower seat location. If your shower head is on the left, do you want the shower to have a seat on the right (so the water can hit you) or on the left (so you are under the water? This turned into a discussion on Zen and the art of leg shaving. We decided that the overall feng shui of the room would be greatly affected by the seat placement, and in the end we opted for the right. Now the next big question...round toilet bowl or elongated? Oh, the decisions....