All through the summer I've been slowly working with the entrance hall. Like, half a day one week, a couple of days one month and so. But I'd guess slow progress still counts as progress. Today I got it the main work (nearly) finished. It still lacks a finishing treatment. I think I will apply a layer of linen oil, as much as the timber will absorb. That should work like a natural lacquer. Once that is done, I'll get to the stage when I can install some pieces of furniture, like a rack for hanging coats.

Ah well. And the floor will most likely remain unfinished for the coming winter. That is because I don't yet know exactly what I'm going to do it. There still is the old sewer system, installed inside a layer of concrete on the entrance hall floor. At first I thought that I should definitely keep the sewer - but then it turned out that the kitchen sink is not connected to that sewer pipeline, but has a separate pipe. Which means that if I like to, I could keep the kitchen sewer and uninstall the entrance hall sewer - that would allow me to completely tear open and to remake all of the entrance hall floor. But I'm not sure if I really want to do that - what if I just cap some unused sewer connections, and keep the one which is about the middle of the entrance hall floor. If I then build a top layer of the floor, so that it will be slightly tilted, any water on the entrance hall floor should just flow into the sewer. That could be handy, if I come indoors with all wet clothes. Hmm, I need to think about it.

The entrance hall is kind of a divided into two or three parts - depends on how you count. The main part is properly insulated, and I hope the temperature in that part will stay above freezing for the whole winter. Then, there is upstairs, which is only partially insulated. It will serve as storage, and a summertime guest-room. The third part is a stairway connecting the two floors. The upstairs and the stairway will still need some finishing work, but at the moment I can't afford buying more materials so that has to wait.

Renovating an old house often means that nothing is exactly rectangular anymore, all the corners aren't sharp 90 degrees. To get everything finely installed, I had to make a lot of custom parts. Like, the last floor plank for the upstairs - it is about 4 metres long, and 12 centimetres wide. But, because of the irregular shape of the whole structure the plank didn't fit in as such. On the other end of the upstairs floor there was neatly that 12 cm space, but on the another end there was only 8 cm space for the plank. So I had to trim a long triangular piece away from the floor plank. At that point I was happy to have an electric circular saw. Anyone who has ever used a hand saw to make a cut parallel to the direction of the grain of the wood knows that it is significantly slower and heavier than cutting across the grain. But with an electric circular saw trimming a 4 metre long floor plank along the grain was quick and easy. This is one of the things when living on low budget - having proper tools makes work that much more efficient, but I can only afford to buy one new tool per year. But I'd guess slow progress still counts as progress =)