It's a start!

"Ah, my old friend mahogany," Deco said a few weeks ago, caressing a board, when we showed him and Dave a sample of the Santos we were ordering. This morning the two of them started getting reacquainted with their friend.

The upstairs, they said, would be trickiest -- the transitions from the guest room to the hall to the loft especially, with all the closets joining along the way -- so that's where they started.

They found a few issues they hadn't anticipated -- jamb heights, one short course of tongue-and-groove that will require a little padding just above the little guest room -- but nothing insurmountable.

"If you look at this hour by hour, you'll go crazy," Deco said late in the day, more to Robert than to me, I think. "Give it a day, and we'll knock your eyes out."