Progress at the house, and another birdbrain!

DS and I headed out to the house after I spoke with the bathroom floor tile guy. He said that there were "tons of people" working out at the house today and it made me curious to see what had been accomplished.

My sewing studio cabinets have been delivered, but were scattered about the house instead of being upstairs where they need to be. These two tall cabinets which will house fabric were in the entryway.
Most of the rest of the sewing studio cabinets were in the family room...
The painters have been hard at work staining (and leaving a horrid smell in the house from it!). These are the bannisters for the stairs...
These are the mullions that go between the double-pane glass of the patio doors in the family room...
The patio doors were also stained...
Here are the newel posts for the stairs...
And these are some of the spindles for the stairs...

The master bathroom floor is looking awesome!
The keystones for the medallion in the center of the floor are cut and placed. I think the tile guy said he is doing a herringbone pattern in the center, but don't hold me to that.
My sewing studio closet doors have been installed...
and all the attic and garage access doors are in place...

I was very pleased with all the work that has been done over the past couple of days. I hope it continues at this pace!

Around here, the shelves are looking very bare...
and the amount of stuff that has been boxed up for the move is increasing...
The cabinets are looking empty...
and the boxes are stacking up higher and higher...
So, if you happen to remember back a couple of months to the post about the robin that kept banging into our dining room window, you might also be interested in this. Yesterday and today there has been a bird (not the robin) flying against the French doors off our deck over and over again, and then flying to the kitchen window and hopping along the ledge, pecking at the glass as he goes. I don't know what his problem is, but he is driving me batty with the tapping!

Why do you think they call them 'birdbrains'?

It seems that many of the blogs I've read lately have mentioned that the writers are having problems with birds hitting their windows. I'm having the same problem here.

On Friday as I was working in the guest room making the bed, I heard what sounded like acorns hitting the window in the dining room below the guest room. I didn't think much of it - maybe the neighborhood kids were tossing acorns at our house for some reason. It continued however, and when I looked out the window I saw a robin sitting in the dogwood tree outside the dining room.
At that moment, the robin left the tree and then I heard the acorn noise again. Even though I didn't see the robin hit the window, it was very obvious that that was what had happened. He continued hitting the window every minute or so for the rest of the afternoon. First thing I heard when I woke up on Saturday morning was that robin bopping his head on our dining room window. If it wasn't so sad, it might be comical. Here he is flying at the window (click on the photo to enlarge it)...

We tried to block the window so he wouldn't see his reflection and we tried to scare the bird away, but nothing we did worked. DH's comment on the bird's behavior? "Why do you think they call them 'birdbrains'?" :-D

So, the robin continues to run into our window, although it isn't as often, and it isn't all day long like it was over the weekend. At least he isn't flying into the window full-tilt and knocking himself out or killing himself, so we'll let him be...