I got a modest amount of work done this weekend... spent Saturday at the county fair with my family and slept in until noon on Sunday... still made some progress today.

The little sticks of wood are coming out of the concrete a lot easier after a few weeks. I was worried that the concrete would bond with the wood and make removal an epic battle, but it didn't happen that way. Glad.

Framing the stairwell. 

Here's a plumb-bob telling me I made the stairwell wall 3 inches too long to clear the center beam. I ended up trimming this wall twice: once in length to clear the beam, and once in height after I forgot to take 4.5 inches off of the stud length for the thickness of the plates... this was a day of measuring once and cutting twice.

Loving this texture...

Ready to start building some stairs.