Progress accomplished this week:
--Much of tile laid out in shower last weekend/Monday, including decorative trim. Even though it hasn't been grouted yet, I can tell it will look very very nice when it's done.
Obstacles encountered this week:
--But that's the only thing that got done this week, because Lexington was right in the middle of the bad ice storm that swept the Southeast. The nasty stuff started falling Tuesday, and when the street began to look like an ice rink, I shoveled and scraped a path from the addition to the workers' truck and told them to get home so I wouldn't have their deaths on my conscience. That evening the ice built up so much that tree branches and entire trees started falling all over the city, knocking down power lines. We lost power Wednesday morning, and Kentucky Utilities is saying nothing besides a recorded message that it may take "weeks" before the power is restored. Yikes.
I can't complain too much, because we are safe. Jonathan's office has a nice little apartment on the second floor, so we packed up the kids, cat plus litter box, two pet rats, and two fishbowls full of guppies and are camping out there for the time being. The schools have been closed all week long so we are enjoying plenty of, er, quality time with the kids.
Poor Wagner calls us periodically to ask, with hope in his heart, if the power is back on. I assure him that no matter how much HE wants the power on so his crews can get to work, WE want it on even more.
When we drew up the design and bid for the renovation project, we contemplated at great length including a whole-house backup generator that would cost roughly $10,000. We ultimately decided against it, due to the expense and our assumption that we wouldn't need it all that often to make it worth the cost, and besides we would always have Jon's office to stay at if we lost power at the house. Oh well. As Jon pointed out to me, we can't second-guess that decision just because of some temporary (I hope!!) inconvenience, and even if we had decided to get the generator, it probably wouldn't be up and running at this point.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Progress report -- Week 18
Shot of complicated tile work that needed to be done around whirlpool tub, with holes drilled for the faucets:
Photo of the elusive plush carpet with a mixture of colors (which I talked about in a previous post):
Here's our shower floor, all tiled and grouted:
Progress accomplished this week:
Good heavens... where do I start? Wagner says the house should be finished by the end of February. I'm not sure I believe him (the addition still looks very, well, unfinished), but he's the expert. At any rate, we seem to be very much on schedule, which is a minor miracle given the weather.
--Underlayment for garage study floor installed
--Cabinets in garage study hung. We're re-using our old kitchen cabinets that we had replaced during the kitchen renovation this summer. They are still quite serviceable and look fine.
--Cabinets in laundry room installed. We re-used some more of our cabinets/counters from the kitchen here.
--Tile work begun in shower and bath area. This is probably the most visible and important progress made this week. Larry (the tile guy) got the shower floor put down and grouted, and he is now hard at work putting the wall tiles in place. We hope to have the shower portion done this week.
--More closet doors installed throughout addition
Obstacles encountered this week:
--Cold weather has prevented work starting on pouring concrete around garage. Man, I'm tired of putting this down as an obstacle. The temperatures have been in the teens or even single digits all week, never approaching anything close to freezing. This is particularly frustrating because Wagner made the off-hand comment, "Too bad we haven't been able to pour the concrete, because otherwise you'd be able to use the garage for your cars." I think of that comment every time I'm scraping ice off the windshield in 5 degree weather on dark mornings.
--We don't want to put up the rest of the fence until the concrete is poured (to avoid any mess or concrete splatters), so we still only have fence posts in the back yard.
--The doorknobs I had chosen for the addition doors have not yet arrived. They were a new product line that Home Depot had samples of, but the shipments have been delayed with no assurance that they will be in stock any time soon. I'll have to go pick out some different ones. In keeping with the goal of adopting universal design for the addition (to plan for the future should we need things accessible), I had selected the lever kind of doorknob (as opposed to the round kind). But most lever types don't look very attractive. This new model was quite nice, so I went with it. I'll have to look around some more and see if I can find another lever type that looks as good, or maybe switch back to ordinary round doorknobs.
Photo of the elusive plush carpet with a mixture of colors (which I talked about in a previous post):
Here's our shower floor, all tiled and grouted:
Progress accomplished this week:
Good heavens... where do I start? Wagner says the house should be finished by the end of February. I'm not sure I believe him (the addition still looks very, well, unfinished), but he's the expert. At any rate, we seem to be very much on schedule, which is a minor miracle given the weather.
--Underlayment for garage study floor installed
--Cabinets in garage study hung. We're re-using our old kitchen cabinets that we had replaced during the kitchen renovation this summer. They are still quite serviceable and look fine.
--Cabinets in laundry room installed. We re-used some more of our cabinets/counters from the kitchen here.
--Tile work begun in shower and bath area. This is probably the most visible and important progress made this week. Larry (the tile guy) got the shower floor put down and grouted, and he is now hard at work putting the wall tiles in place. We hope to have the shower portion done this week.
--More closet doors installed throughout addition
Obstacles encountered this week:
--Cold weather has prevented work starting on pouring concrete around garage. Man, I'm tired of putting this down as an obstacle. The temperatures have been in the teens or even single digits all week, never approaching anything close to freezing. This is particularly frustrating because Wagner made the off-hand comment, "Too bad we haven't been able to pour the concrete, because otherwise you'd be able to use the garage for your cars." I think of that comment every time I'm scraping ice off the windshield in 5 degree weather on dark mornings.
--We don't want to put up the rest of the fence until the concrete is poured (to avoid any mess or concrete splatters), so we still only have fence posts in the back yard.
--The doorknobs I had chosen for the addition doors have not yet arrived. They were a new product line that Home Depot had samples of, but the shipments have been delayed with no assurance that they will be in stock any time soon. I'll have to go pick out some different ones. In keeping with the goal of adopting universal design for the addition (to plan for the future should we need things accessible), I had selected the lever kind of doorknob (as opposed to the round kind). But most lever types don't look very attractive. This new model was quite nice, so I went with it. I'll have to look around some more and see if I can find another lever type that looks as good, or maybe switch back to ordinary round doorknobs.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Maybe, just maybe, a decision on the carpet
As you know if you have been following this blog, I've had a hard time making the flooring decisions for the addition. I must have been to a half dozen carpet stores, and some of those on 3-4 occasions. I didn't think we had exotic tastes, but it still turned out to be very difficult to find a carpet that met all of Jonathan's and my criteria.
Jonathan's needs were simple: He wanted something thick and plush. Easy peasy. There are roughly 43,617 thick and plush carpet styles.
My needs are rather simple, too. Recall that my main criterion for choosing a shower tile was something mottled and containing the color of soap scum, so as better to hide dirt. I used a similar rationale for choosing a carpet color. I had noticed that, with our current carpet (which is a very plain beige colored plush), the slightest spot (such as when I spill coffee bringing it to Jon) or stain (such as when Isaac throws up) stands out like a sore thumb.
To me, it makes a lot more sense to have a carpet that contains a mixture of colors in an irregular pattern rather than a sheer expanse of unblemished and pristine sameness, which in my household is going to last a day, maybe two, at the most. Finding such a carpet shouldn't be a problem, as there are roughly 38,992 mottled color pattern carpet styles.
Putting those two sets of requirements together, it meant that all we needed to do was find a thick plush carpet with a mottled color scheme, preferably a color scheme including shades of coffee and vomit. Just joking (mostly) on that last bit. ;-)
You would think that would be an easy carpet to find. The reality is the intersection of those two sets is scarily close to zero. (Who'd've ever thunk that New Math I learned in grade school would actually be relevant???) There are lots of plush carpets, but they're almost all just one pure color. There are lots of mottled color carpets, but they're almost all shag or frisee/twist style carpets. And because neither Jon nor I were willing to budge on our criteria, I spent an awful long time looking at carpet samples. (Note to any carpet manufacturing executives who may be reading this: There is a real and potentially quite lucrative niche here that needs to be filled. We can't be the ONLY family in the world who wants a plush multi-colored carpet.)
Wagner had long given up on his gentle hints ("You really need to pick your carpet soon so I can order it") and moved on to more desperate tactics of escorting me to carpet stores, showing me various samples, and asking with a hopeful tone his voice, "how about something like this?", only to be crestfallen when I would say, "no... it's not mixed enough" or "no, it's too shaggy."
But we finally found something we liked. It's beige with speckled flecks of browns, greys, and blacks sprinkled throughout it. And it's a nice thick plush. I tried to find a sample on the web so I could post a photo of it, but I couldn't find one. But trust me, it's a lot prettier in person than how I described it.
The only snag, of course, is that it is more expensive than most carpets. *Sigh.*
Jonathan's needs were simple: He wanted something thick and plush. Easy peasy. There are roughly 43,617 thick and plush carpet styles.
My needs are rather simple, too. Recall that my main criterion for choosing a shower tile was something mottled and containing the color of soap scum, so as better to hide dirt. I used a similar rationale for choosing a carpet color. I had noticed that, with our current carpet (which is a very plain beige colored plush), the slightest spot (such as when I spill coffee bringing it to Jon) or stain (such as when Isaac throws up) stands out like a sore thumb.
To me, it makes a lot more sense to have a carpet that contains a mixture of colors in an irregular pattern rather than a sheer expanse of unblemished and pristine sameness, which in my household is going to last a day, maybe two, at the most. Finding such a carpet shouldn't be a problem, as there are roughly 38,992 mottled color pattern carpet styles.
Putting those two sets of requirements together, it meant that all we needed to do was find a thick plush carpet with a mottled color scheme, preferably a color scheme including shades of coffee and vomit. Just joking (mostly) on that last bit. ;-)
You would think that would be an easy carpet to find. The reality is the intersection of those two sets is scarily close to zero. (Who'd've ever thunk that New Math I learned in grade school would actually be relevant???) There are lots of plush carpets, but they're almost all just one pure color. There are lots of mottled color carpets, but they're almost all shag or frisee/twist style carpets. And because neither Jon nor I were willing to budge on our criteria, I spent an awful long time looking at carpet samples. (Note to any carpet manufacturing executives who may be reading this: There is a real and potentially quite lucrative niche here that needs to be filled. We can't be the ONLY family in the world who wants a plush multi-colored carpet.)
Wagner had long given up on his gentle hints ("You really need to pick your carpet soon so I can order it") and moved on to more desperate tactics of escorting me to carpet stores, showing me various samples, and asking with a hopeful tone his voice, "how about something like this?", only to be crestfallen when I would say, "no... it's not mixed enough" or "no, it's too shaggy."
But we finally found something we liked. It's beige with speckled flecks of browns, greys, and blacks sprinkled throughout it. And it's a nice thick plush. I tried to find a sample on the web so I could post a photo of it, but I couldn't find one. But trust me, it's a lot prettier in person than how I described it.
The only snag, of course, is that it is more expensive than most carpets. *Sigh.*
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Progress report -- Week 17.5
Jonathan and I were out of town all last week at a coin show, so I have been swamped and not able to post as much. When we got back, the tile had just been laid and I wasn't able to get into the addition to scope it out. So I'm sure that more was done that I just don't know about yet.
Progress accomplished this week:
--painting in garage and garage study finished
--painting begun in addition
--door frames, window frames, and crown molding installed in addition
--handrail installed in garage stairway
--most interior doors hung in addition, except for fancy special order door for bedroom
--tile put down and grouted in garage bathroom
--tile put down and grouted in addition laundry room/foyer area; status of tile in bathroom unclear because I couldn't get in there to see how much has been done
--fence posts for new fence put in
--telephone line rerouted to or through garage
--replacement whirlpool tub has arrived
--design for built-in bookcases in bedroom settled on
--new bed purchased. Jonathan and I decided to leave our current bed in the upstairs bedroom and let Athena use it when she moves in; this way Isaac can inherit her bunk bed, which he is greatly anticipating, and we'll leave his twin bed in our soon to be new dedicated guestroom. Our current bed is a beautiful antique that belonged to Jon's grandmother, quite huge and ornate, but it is also--to put it delicately--a pain in the butt to make and a bit on the shaky side. So we decided to buy a new bedroom set. I had been visiting the local furniture stores to see what they had, when I spied a nice queen-size sleigh bed with leather padding at one store. (Jon also decided he wanted a bed with a padded headboard given his penchant for sitting in bed early in the morning sipping his coffee.) It was priced at $1849, but the floor sample was a clearance item marked down to $875. The only snag is that it had a "SOLD" sign on it, but I am not easily deterred. Looking at the "sold" sign I noticed that it was dated November 1, so I asked the saleslady if it was possible that the customer was never going to consummate the deal and volunteered that we'd be willing to buy it outright in cash right away. She disappeared and after a few minutes came back and told us that she could sell us the bed, and they were also willing to store it in their warehouse until the addition was completed and ready for move-in. So now all we need to do is find a dresser/bedside table set that's a reasonably close match.
Obstacles encountered this week:
--I wasn't crazy about the paint color on the vaulted ceiling of the addition. We had originally asked to have it match the ceiling color of the rest of our house, but for some reason (the greater amount of windows and thus natural light coming in?) it looked much darker/tanner in the addition. So we're going to have the poor painter repaint the ceiling.
--weather has been too cold/snowy/icy (what else is new?), so we are unable to pour the concrete
--my absence and consequent inability to show exactly where I want the fancy trim to go in the shower has slowed tile work in shower
Progress accomplished this week:
--painting in garage and garage study finished
--painting begun in addition
--door frames, window frames, and crown molding installed in addition
--handrail installed in garage stairway
--most interior doors hung in addition, except for fancy special order door for bedroom
--tile put down and grouted in garage bathroom
--tile put down and grouted in addition laundry room/foyer area; status of tile in bathroom unclear because I couldn't get in there to see how much has been done
--fence posts for new fence put in
--telephone line rerouted to or through garage
--replacement whirlpool tub has arrived
--design for built-in bookcases in bedroom settled on
--new bed purchased. Jonathan and I decided to leave our current bed in the upstairs bedroom and let Athena use it when she moves in; this way Isaac can inherit her bunk bed, which he is greatly anticipating, and we'll leave his twin bed in our soon to be new dedicated guestroom. Our current bed is a beautiful antique that belonged to Jon's grandmother, quite huge and ornate, but it is also--to put it delicately--a pain in the butt to make and a bit on the shaky side. So we decided to buy a new bedroom set. I had been visiting the local furniture stores to see what they had, when I spied a nice queen-size sleigh bed with leather padding at one store. (Jon also decided he wanted a bed with a padded headboard given his penchant for sitting in bed early in the morning sipping his coffee.) It was priced at $1849, but the floor sample was a clearance item marked down to $875. The only snag is that it had a "SOLD" sign on it, but I am not easily deterred. Looking at the "sold" sign I noticed that it was dated November 1, so I asked the saleslady if it was possible that the customer was never going to consummate the deal and volunteered that we'd be willing to buy it outright in cash right away. She disappeared and after a few minutes came back and told us that she could sell us the bed, and they were also willing to store it in their warehouse until the addition was completed and ready for move-in. So now all we need to do is find a dresser/bedside table set that's a reasonably close match.
Obstacles encountered this week:
--I wasn't crazy about the paint color on the vaulted ceiling of the addition. We had originally asked to have it match the ceiling color of the rest of our house, but for some reason (the greater amount of windows and thus natural light coming in?) it looked much darker/tanner in the addition. So we're going to have the poor painter repaint the ceiling.
--weather has been too cold/snowy/icy (what else is new?), so we are unable to pour the concrete
--my absence and consequent inability to show exactly where I want the fancy trim to go in the shower has slowed tile work in shower
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Progress report --- Week 16
Progress accomplished this week:
--Carpentry details on garage study installed (baseboard, windowsills and window frames, doorway frames, doors installed)
--Carpentry details in addition begun
--Several doors in addition installed
--Tile for bathroom delivered; tile work starts Monday. This photo shows samples of the 3" decorative border and the trim piece.
--Painting begun in garage
--Weather cooperated and the masonry work on exterior of garage and addition is finally finished! WOOT!
--Continued working on perplexing leak in chimney that has plagued us since we moved into the house 5 years ago. We've tried everything to fix it, including rebuilding it from ground up. Until now, nothing's done the trick. But Wagner had his men seal it again and check/redo the flashing. He discovered a small crack in one part of the flashing, and fixed it, so maybe, just maybe, the problem is resolved. It didn't appear to leak any with the rain we had last night, so keep your fingers crossed.
--Meeting with concrete man to plan/start paving of ground outside new garage and rework our front walk to be accessible
--Back yard graded
--Sod for back yard put down
These last two steps sound simple, but they probably represent the most visible dramatic progress on the site, and I'm sure it's the step most appreciated by our neighbors. We no longer have the huge dumpster in the back yard and the mountain of dirt excavated for the garage. Wagner had to scramble around to find anybody with viable sod at this time of year, but he got a truckload of it in. He worked feverishly to get it all down yesterday before the heavy rains that were predicted started falling. But now our back yard looks like a back yard (albeit with a monstrous garage plopped down in the middle of it) rather than a construction site. It makes me think that, yes, this renovation *will* eventually be finished! Here's a shot of our new, flat, green back yard, with fence (temporarily) removed, showing the neighbor's shed now located firmly on his--and not our--property. ;-)
Obstacles encountered this week:
--Representative of the whirlpool tub company came out and looked at the tub and deemed it too damaged to repair. We are returning it under warranty and awaiting the replacement.
--During the grading process, the backhoe/bulldozer machine uprooted a tree stump, which pulled the telephone wire off the pole. No phone service. Phone repairman was out here for 3 hours yesterday, during which they discovered all sorts of other problems with the line. It was finally repaired and stayed repaired for, oh, about 12 hours. Noticed this morning the phone service was down once again. They'll send somebody out again tomorrow. *sigh*
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Floored once again with indecision
In a previous post I announced that we had finally decided what to put on the garage study floor, namely a very cheap oak laminate that I had found at Lumber Liquidators for something like 78 cents a square foot.
However, the more I looked into it, the more misgivings I had. The customer reviews on the Lumber Liquidators site were all uniformly positive, but I wasn't sure I could trust the site to post any negative reviews. The people on the do-it-yourself forum, on the other hand, were largely disapproving. On top of that, other sources I looked at said that you really need laminate to be at least 8 mm thick to avoid denting and other problems. The inexpensive laminate I was looking at was only 6 mm thick. And more than one source argued that laminate was not a good choice for kitchen areas or anywhere you're likely to have water spills. Hmmm.
So then one day I was walking by the flooring display at Home Depot and saw an ad for a product called Allure by Traffic Master. This was vinyl, but instead of being in big squares that you glue down, it's in the shape of planks like laminate flooring that have little strips that you stick together... no gluing down involved. It looked more realistic than the square vinyl fake wood floor. Best yet, it was unlike any other flooring option I had encountered so far in that it didn't require any special sublayer or floor preparation. You could just plop it right down on our wooden subfloor. That made it the least expensive option we had discovered so far.
So I went home and researched it on the internet. The Home Depot website listed nothing but rave reviews, with the flooring getting very high ratings from all customers. Again, you gotta wonder about the possibility of bias, though. But the other forums also rated it positively, with several landlords saying that they had installed tens of thousands of square feet of the product and had been very pleased with how it held up.
So I told Wagner that I had (*ahem*) changed my mind once again and wanted to get the Allure viny planking for the garage. He picked up a couple of samples pieces and laid it down in the garage. There was a bit of a roadblock when I showed it to Jonathan and the kids, and the color choice I favored (hickory) got overruled by the rest of the family. So I dragged them all to Home Depot where we decided on a light oak color instead.
At this point I thought we were all set to place the order, especially after Wagner told me that he had been able to negotiate a very attractive price on it, when Wagner came to me and said that he had been researching the product and was a bit worried about how it would hold up under changes of temperature and humidity. Apparently there have been reports of the planks separating and curling up off their little glue strips under temperature changes. Hmmm. He said he wanted to ask around a little more, as he's never used that product before and is more used to traditional vinyl stuff that you glue down solidly.
In the mean time, we're having a little debate regarding the stairs to the garage study. The carpenter has finished installing them, and they look great to us as is. But Wagner wanted us to either paint them and put down rubber treads (as the paint will wear off), or put carpet down. Jon and I don't want carpet (too hard to clean), but we also were worried that treads would be hard to clean. And to us the stairs look lovely. But when we proposed that plan to Wagner, instead of him being pleased that we were (finally) cutting expenses by not requiring the stairs to be finished, he objected "But there's different kinds of wood on the stairs! The wood doesn't all match!" We tried to assure him that the lack of feng shui truly didn't offend us, but he got that look on his face again, the look that says "these folks are making a big mistake."
So at this point, we're very much unsettled regarding the garage. Yikes.
However, the more I looked into it, the more misgivings I had. The customer reviews on the Lumber Liquidators site were all uniformly positive, but I wasn't sure I could trust the site to post any negative reviews. The people on the do-it-yourself forum, on the other hand, were largely disapproving. On top of that, other sources I looked at said that you really need laminate to be at least 8 mm thick to avoid denting and other problems. The inexpensive laminate I was looking at was only 6 mm thick. And more than one source argued that laminate was not a good choice for kitchen areas or anywhere you're likely to have water spills. Hmmm.
So then one day I was walking by the flooring display at Home Depot and saw an ad for a product called Allure by Traffic Master. This was vinyl, but instead of being in big squares that you glue down, it's in the shape of planks like laminate flooring that have little strips that you stick together... no gluing down involved. It looked more realistic than the square vinyl fake wood floor. Best yet, it was unlike any other flooring option I had encountered so far in that it didn't require any special sublayer or floor preparation. You could just plop it right down on our wooden subfloor. That made it the least expensive option we had discovered so far.
So I went home and researched it on the internet. The Home Depot website listed nothing but rave reviews, with the flooring getting very high ratings from all customers. Again, you gotta wonder about the possibility of bias, though. But the other forums also rated it positively, with several landlords saying that they had installed tens of thousands of square feet of the product and had been very pleased with how it held up.
So I told Wagner that I had (*ahem*) changed my mind once again and wanted to get the Allure viny planking for the garage. He picked up a couple of samples pieces and laid it down in the garage. There was a bit of a roadblock when I showed it to Jonathan and the kids, and the color choice I favored (hickory) got overruled by the rest of the family. So I dragged them all to Home Depot where we decided on a light oak color instead.
At this point I thought we were all set to place the order, especially after Wagner told me that he had been able to negotiate a very attractive price on it, when Wagner came to me and said that he had been researching the product and was a bit worried about how it would hold up under changes of temperature and humidity. Apparently there have been reports of the planks separating and curling up off their little glue strips under temperature changes. Hmmm. He said he wanted to ask around a little more, as he's never used that product before and is more used to traditional vinyl stuff that you glue down solidly.
In the mean time, we're having a little debate regarding the stairs to the garage study. The carpenter has finished installing them, and they look great to us as is. But Wagner wanted us to either paint them and put down rubber treads (as the paint will wear off), or put carpet down. Jon and I don't want carpet (too hard to clean), but we also were worried that treads would be hard to clean. And to us the stairs look lovely. But when we proposed that plan to Wagner, instead of him being pleased that we were (finally) cutting expenses by not requiring the stairs to be finished, he objected "But there's different kinds of wood on the stairs! The wood doesn't all match!" We tried to assure him that the lack of feng shui truly didn't offend us, but he got that look on his face again, the look that says "these folks are making a big mistake."
So at this point, we're very much unsettled regarding the garage. Yikes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
