Orville and Juan started installing the Bella natural hickory floor last week. It took Orville quite a while to establish this first line of boards. It's important to get this right because the floors are interconnected throughout the house.

The got a lot more laid on day 2. The blue tape is there to help hold the boards in place until the glue sets. The heavy boxes hold the floor down and provide a walkway.

I have to admit that when I first saw this I was a surprised at how much pattern there is. I knew there would be but seeing it is different from imagining it. Luckily, we both love it! It's very different but feels good in the space. The pattern is stronger when you look down the boards and quieter when you look across them. I'll take more photos later.

Here is the breakfast room, before…

And here it is, primed. The soffit will come out to be replaced by cabinets. New doors and drawers are being made but I can already tell how much lighter and brighter it will be in white.

As I type this I am at DFW waiting for a plane to take me to Washington. I'll be in Bellingham to visit the Running With Scissors quilt guild, then it's on to Aunt Mary's quilt shop outside of Seattle for a 2-day class. Now is a good time to catch you up on the remodeling.

What you see below is our new shower. I chose a beautiful, expensive tile for the accent band. It has white glass and pieces of snow white quartz. It was perfect – until it was grouted with the dirt-colored grout that I chose. In the photo below you will see the piece of the un-grouted tile taped up over the band of already-grouted tile.

We all learned a new thing: glass tiles pick up the color of the grout. To be white, this band should have white grout. I did not want white grout in the shower. The greyish color would be OK except that I wanted WHITE! 

Rick smiled and said, we'll fix it. Luis, who worked hard to make the first choice work, smiled and said it was fine, he'd fix it. My contractor, Rick Owens, and his crews are top notch!

At this point I knew I would need a porcelain tile. I went to Home Depot and found some 3×6 subway tiles that were inexpensive and that fit the space. Luis chipped out the old tile without messing up any of the other tiles and put in the new ones. And, you know what? The new ones look really nice and I think I like them at least as well as my first choice! 

Inside the shower is a built-in shelf. Luis had carefully surrounded it with the 1st tile. We left that tile in place and I like it there. It's interesting and a reminder of what went on before. If I can get a good photo of that area, I will.

You can see the shaved-off river rock on the shower floor. It has been sealed with a sealer since I took this photo that made the white rocks darker. I think I liked them better whiter and I may lightly sand off the top of the whiter stones. Or not.

You knew this already, right? I visit a lot of guilds and am amazed by the number of quilts made with love and given freely for good causes. It warms the heart. 

I was recently contacted by Jim Nickerson, the social media director of The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. He worked with a wonderful group of women in the East Bay of San Francisco (one of my favorite guilds) who made and delivered over 70 quilts to the victims of Superstorm Sandy. He asked if I would share their story and I am happy to. Click here to
download EBHQ-SandyQuilts.

As I said, quilters are such nice people!

The three winners of the 100 Blocks Vo. 7 are: Karen, Suz, and Robin. Congratulations! Please do email your addresses to me and Lorna will get your issue into the mail.

Janine Huisjen, winner of the blog tour event, I need to hear from you or I'm going to have to choose another winner for the book and magazine. Please do email me with your physical address.

I did mention that I'd ask my son, Jeff, about the best way to choose a random number. Here is his reply:

"It's not really "random" to ask people to pick numbers — if you did this over and over, you'd find some numbers get picked ore often than others. This can still count as random, but not in the colloquial meaning of "every number has equal probability of being chosen". People are generally bad at simulating randomness. An interesting experiment is to ask people to write down a sequence of 10 coin flips — heads, heads, tails, etc — without actually flipping a coin. The made up sequences will rarely have three heads in a row, even though this happens by chance fairly regularly."

You'll be happy to know that I used a random number generator to choose my winners :-). 

…Janine Huisjen! I used a random number generator to choose the winner. It generated a number and then I got to wondering what makes that any different that asking my husband to pick a number? That's a question I'll need to ask my younger son, Jeff, the biostatistician, when he's here next week.

Janine, please email me with your shipping address and Lorna will ship the book and magazine to you.

Be sure to check out the next post. I'm giving away 3 more of the 100 Blocks magazines. Leave a comment. I'll choose 3 winners on Monday.

As promised, I am offering you a chance to win one of 3 issues of the new 100 Blocks magazine. Leave a comment and on Monday morning 3 winners will be chosen randomly.

And now for something different. As my regular readers know, I often post about things other than quilting, like this TED Talk by David Pogue. I use multiple electronic devices every day and I think I know how to use them pretty well. Then I find out that there's still a lot I don't know. This talk is short and to the point and I hope you discover a new trick!