The cat has been acquitted

The analysis of the carpet sample from our mystery stain showed that it was not caused by animal fluids, so our cat Slippers has been cleared of any and all crimes involving the new carpet. She is greatly relieved.

However, the carpet manufacturer rejected our claim, anyway, on the grounds that there was no evidence that the stain occurred during the milling process. They have a point, I guess, but I also know that *we* didn't make the stain, and I feel just as confident that it wasn't Wagner's crew or the carpet installer.

I didn't want to press the issue with the carpet manufacturer because there really is no way to tell when or how the stain happened, seeing as the carpet had been in the house for two days before I noticed it. So I was just going to let the matter drop, when Wagner said that he and the flooring wholesaler we bought the carpet from had agreed to split a $500 credit to return to us. I thought this was very gracious but not fair to them, as I was convinced neither of them was responsible for the stain. He insisted that we deserved some kind of credit, though. But then I pointed out that Jon and I shared some responsibility as well, because I didn't inspect the carpet thoroughly right after the installation and only noticed the spot a couple of days later.

So we decided to reduce the credit to $200 each from Wagner and the carpet store, which I still don't feel entirely right about, as it seems to me that it's the carpet manufacturer who should be paying.

We also decided not to attempt a repair through plugging in a new patch of carpet. The carpet installer said that over time the seams would become visible, and I'm guessing the cure will be worse than the problem. The spot really isn't noticeable unless you look carefully for it, and I am sure it is just the first of many spots this carpet will attract over its lifetime.

The important moral I learned from this incident is this: Take the time to inspect all work done very carefully, just as soon as it is completed. If I had gone to the effort to look the carpet over closely the day it was installed (instead of just poking my head in and saying "Looks great!" the way I had done), I would've noticed the spot right then and there, leaving no ambiguity about when it had occurred.

Of course, it's not exactly helpful that this lesson was learned at the tail end of our renovation and not the beginning. *sigh*

Our first night in the new room

So Jonathan and I had our first night in the new bedroom. We're still only partially moved in, but we got the essentials taken care of and can move the remaining items more leisurely over the next few days. We were particularly looking forward to trying out our new mattress set. After decades of experimenting with different--and progressively more expensive--mattress brands but always being disappointed with the permanent gullies that would form where our bodies would lie, we decided to spring big time for TempurPedic mattresses, which are made of the memory foam that was guaranteed never to form any gullies. Jon had been waking up with back pain, too, and TempurPedic mattresses are supposed to help out with that as well. They were hideously expensive, but they came with a 90-day free trial, so if it doesn't work out we can exchange them for something else.

I think I was so keyed up over the big move that I had a hard time falling asleep, so it wasn't the most restful night's sleep I ever had. Our poor cat, Slippers, was even more keyed up. She started out sleeping on our old bed upstairs, but then she got lonely and came looking for us, meowing plaintively and loudly. I called out to her, but when she jumped up on the bed she got even more confused because Jon and I had decided to switch sides. (I wanted the side with the shortest distance to the bathroom.) I am more willing than Jon to devote the bottom 1/3 of the bed space to the cat, so she has learned to stick to my side. But all this disruption was too much for her, so she just meowed and crawled around on the night tables until I scooped her up and shut her down in the basement. Maybe I'll have Athena switch over to sleeping in our old room right away, and she can be the one to give up foot space and Slippers will have company...

The photos above (taken before the blinds were installed) show our room with the new furniture. Athena said, "Wow, mom, this is the first room in our house we've ever had where all the furniture matches." Sad to say, this is true. ;-) The top photo shows the fancy glass door to the bedroom. This is not as revealing as it appears, as we also have a solid wood door leading from the kitchen to the addition foyer, which can be closed for additional privacy and noise reduction.

Getting punchy

It's hard to believe that this renovation is just about completely finished. Right now Wagner is just working on his punch list. (A "punch list" is the final list of tiny details that need to be fixed, like touching up painting, adjusting doors, and the like.) The other weekend he came over to the house and spent 3 or 4 hours going through the addition, waving a hand-held light over every inch of the walls to look for drywall or paint issues that needed touching up, trying out every door, etc., and taking notes for his punch list. Anything he saw that needed work got marked with a little piece of blue masking tape.


Progress accomplished this week:

--Touch up painting/drywall work, lots of it.
--Sconce in bedroom replaced; it had a faulty ballast so we swapped it out under warranty.
--Wagner moved out most of his stuff stored in the garage, so now Jonathan can park in there, too.
--New vinyl flooring installed in former laundry closet. (We had some left over from the garage study.)
--Washer and dryer hookups in former laundry closet dismantled, water line capped, spot where hookups were drywalled over. Closet repainted. We now have a large, functional backup pantry; see photo above.
--I was so pleased by how the new laundry closet floor came out that I asked Wagner to put down a new floor in our main pantry.
--Cleaned out main pantry; sorted and transferred all the household maintenance items (tools, light bulbs, etc.) to new closet; pantry will now be devoted solely to food items. Went overboard and sorted canned goods according to food type, though I stopped short of alphabetizing it all. I'm not quite finished (there's still a shelf of vitamins/medicines I need to reorganize), but my pantry has *never* looked this good. (See photo; you can't tell from this angle, but the pantry stretches out about 8 more feet to the right around the corner.)



--New bedroom furniture delivered. It looks great, and to my relief, the dressers/armoire etc. match the new bed very well in terms of color and style. I was a little nervous about it given that I had only the digital photos of the bed to go by when shopping for the rest of the furniture. We're shopping for mattresses today; I'll post photos of the furnished room after they get delivered.
--Blinds ordered. I was overwhelmed by all the window treatment options and the cost, so I ended up going very basic: cellular (honeycomb) blinds on the bedroom and closet windows, wood blinds for the garage study. I went ahead and paid extra to get the cordless option for the honeycomb blinds, because I have never liked the look of strings hanging down, and our old blinds inevitably got the strings all tangled up. We also decided to pay extra for an "operational" blind covering for the fancy arch on our bedroom window, so we can open and close it, rather than getting a fan-shaped blind that would be permanently closed. So we'll start with that for our window treatments, and if later on it looks too industrial, we can add draperies.

Obstacles encountered this week:

--We had an episode of extremely heavy rain accompanied by strong wind. The new skylight leaked about 5 drops from one corner. This did not concern me. However, we got a veritable downpour for about 5 minutes coming through the doorway between our dining room and family room. Although this was completely unrelated to the renovation/addition, Wagner--bless his heart--sprang into action and got a roofing company to come out and investigate. Turns out that we had a roof vent that needed replacement. We also had to go through and replace a big chunk of insulation in the attic that had gotten soaked. The roofers also redid the flashing around the skylight. I wasn't sure it was necessary to go to all that effort (it had been a ferocious downfall, and we only had a couple of drops coming through), but Wagner just said sternly, "Skylights should NEVER leak" and insisted that it would be fixed.

--Two days after the carpet was installed, I noticed a small spot on it where the color is different, almost like a bleach stain. It is barely perceptible (Jonathan swears he can't see it at all), but... it is there. And it was a brand new, expensive carpet. We reported it to the carpet company, who have sent out two people investigating it. They even took a sample of the fiber to analyze it to see if they can determine the source of the discoloration. The guy who installed the carpet says it looks to him like it was a flaw of the milling process. The carpet people are eager to suggest that it occurred AFTER installation, perhaps by one of Wagner's men, or they even had the temerity to suggest that our cat had peed on it. I've seen how careful Wagner and his crew have been about cleanliness throughout this job, so I'm quite convinced the carpet came this way. And our cat has been so freaked out by the renovation process that she never even goes in the addition (besides, most of the time the door to that area stays closed).

So, we'll see. I have no stomach for making them replace the entire carpet. And the spot is barely perceptible. Unfortunately, it is located in a high visibility area of the room, not in some corner or where it would be hidden under furniture, drat it. But as Jonathan said, we're going to be making plenty of more obvious stains at some point in the future. On the other hand, we paid a lot for the carpet, darn it, and it should have been unblemished. The carpet guy said he could just plug in a replacement patch (we have plenty of leftover pieces), which would look better in the short term, but the seams could become visible after a year or two with repeated vacuuming or cleaning.

We'll wait to see what the carpet analysis shows, but at this point I'm leaning toward NOT doing the repair and just taking some kind of credit for having a new carpet installed with a blemish.

The garage "this is not an apartment" study

I'm behind on posting some photos. The garage study, which--for the benefit of any Fayette County Building Inspectors who might be reading this blog--I will emphasize is not a garage apartment but rather a guestroom or study, was actually finished some weeks ago. Here's what it looks like. The first shot shows the kitchen area. These were our old cabinets we had in the main house kitchen before we renovated. The flooring came out great, I think. We ended up using a brand called "Konecto," and it sure looks like hardwood from a distance but is instead practical and easy-to-maintain vinyl. The refrigerator was a floor model clearance deal we got for a bargain because it had a small, imperceptible chip on one corner:




This shows the room taken from a different angle and gives a good view of the built-in bookcases that run all along one side of the room:



And here's the small but serviceable bathroom: