Take my breath away

First thing Thursday, Arnold put me on the phone with Shawn.

There was some confusion about the heating and air contract (I'd agreed to a bigger secondary unit that the contractor recommended, and that upcharge is indeed mine). Shawn just wanted to make sure of the facts before our HVAC guy gets here with the equipment next week (we hope).

As we were chatting, I wandered into the house with the cell phone, telling him how much I appreciated all the hard work Frank and Kurt had done in the last month -- and as I walked from the den into the big room, Shawn heard me gasp.

Frank had turned posts, 2-by-4's and 1-by-6's into a loft railing overnight. The gaps in the panels are where our decorative cutouts will go, with one pineapple silhouette spread across the two central boards in each section of railing.

(And what an improvement from the architect's interpretation, where the fruit are marching shoulder to shoulder across every board.)

Like so many parts of the house, an entire feature had sprung to life thanks to incredible sweat and skill, and it took my breath away.

"I hope you can hear how wide my smile is," I told Shawn. He told me he sure could.

A little later in the morning, when Robert arrived and I brought him in to look, his reaction was like Dollie's a few weeks back, when she first saw the paneling on the ceiling:

"Wowww!"