Meanwhile, inside.....

.....we're still making some progress.
The flooring contractor delivered the solid 3/4" oak wood for the upstairs, while I scrambled to find space heaters and finalize my downstairs wood flooring choice. We're on a concrete slab, so downstairs, we're going to float a prefinished engineered product. I needed to pick something NOW, so the flooring contractor could match finishes.
Finally, after many hours of agonizing deliberation (sorry, it's always that way for me), I picked the Kahrs Original Collection 3-strip San Antonio. Kahrs is a very high quality brand, I liked the color and it could be clicked together (no glue required, we're DIYing). I only wished the individual strips were 4" wide instead of 2 3/4". Oh well, c'est la vie.
Anyhoo, good news is, now the flooring contractor can match the upstairs finish to the downstairs finish.

The fabricator came and made templates for all of our marble countertops and thresholds. He used 1/4" thick strips of plywood to basically make a pattern which he'll take back to his shop and lay down on the marble slab. Just like cutting out pattern pieces for a sewing project!

Mr. Xu and his coworker continued installing cabinets and grouting the remaining tile. They also did the porcelain tile in the laundry/mudroom. Originally, we had planned to tile that one room, just because we thought it would be an interesting experience, another skill to take a stab at. I finally admitted defeat. Too much on our plate already, didn't have the energy to research and read all the how-to-dos, just too plain tired. I'm glad we had Mr. Xu take care of it. Here's a pic right after grouting; the haze still needs to be cleaned off, but I love how it turned out!