There are a few critical things that MUST be completed before we can get temporary occupancy.  One of those things is to install the fire door in the garage.  Art has done this today, as well as hanging the doors for the server room.  Here is a view of these doors from the garage with the doors open

and with the doors closed.

Today, the painters also went to town on the stair staining.  We wanted to have the majority of the dust producing actions finished before we moved stuff into the house so the painters are sanding and staining the stairs.  They stayed late tonight to make sure they got all the staining done today.  Here they are just finishing off a bit on the upper portion of the stairs.

Unfortunately, they had already stained everything but the last seven stairs when they realized they had missed a spot at the top so they had to improvise on how to get the painter up there to stain it.   The answer was to use an A-frame ladder in which one leg was the ladder and the other leg was one of the painters.... for a better visual, see below.

If the painting/staining business slows down, this guy will have a future in pant holding with the concrete crew. 

In the photograph above, you can also see the difference between the naked stair (the first few treads of the stair) and the stained stair (the stringer).

We almost had them stain the stairs a darker color to match the floor, but in the end stuck with a color close to the stain on the windows.  This was a good choice as they look fabulous!

Peter has been dying to try out the induction hob, even just to get some water boiling.  So we brought up one of the pots from the house we are living in to try out the hob.  Peter used the pot filler to put some water in the pot

and turned on the "heat".

Unfortunately, the test was unsuccessful.  The induction hob is too intelligent and knows this particular pot is not compatible with induction heating so the stove just beeped at us and did not boil the water.  Good thing we got a bunch of free pots and pans from Miele that are made for induction cooktops!  We will just have to wait for those pots to arrive before we can test the hob.