Progress Report --- Week 21

I probably should've just numbered my progress reports rather than call them Week Whatever, as I think I'm off by a week or two. Oh well. At any rate, there's been remarkable and considerable progress done since my last report.

Progress accomplished this week:

--Installation of bathroom cabinets and crown molding completed.
--Primer coating of paint put up in bedroom/bathroom. Paint color looks as nice on the walls as on the paint chip, phew!
--Baseboard trim installed in addition
--Furnace and humidifier installation completed; furnace is up and going. It's an amazing system, and I will be shortly writing an entire post dedicated to it.
--Garage painting completed.
--Concrete poured on walkway besides addition. Now all we have left is to add the brick portion of the walkway.
--Plumbing in garage study connected and functional.
--Plumbing, HVAC, and electrician inspections of garage conducted and passed. Final inspection occurs TODAY, which means that this morning may be the last time--and I am getting all teary-eyed with joy writing this sentence--that I will ever have to scrape ice off my windshield. Wagner wanted to save half the garage for storage of his equipment, so that means poor Jonathan will still have to park his car out in the driveway. I felt guilty about nabbing the available garage spot, but that feeling soon faded. ;-)

Obstacles encountered this week:

--Grouting around the decorative trim in shower doorway in the walkway is too rough, making it difficult to paint neatly around it. Wagner is going to have the tile guy back in to smooth it out somehow.
--New garage door seal let in some water during the last rain. We had the installer out this morning to look at it under warranty.
--Sub-freezing temperatures (what a surprise) are preventing the masonry guy from laying the brick walkway.
--Medicine cabinet we picked out for garage bathrooms sticks out too much, but can't be recessed due to ductwork in the wall. We'll take it back and just put up a plain mirror instead.
--Plumber deemed our current setup (one hot water heater for the original house, a separate one for the new bedroom/bathroom) as not ideal. He was worried there wouldn't be enough hot water for the whirlpool tub and shower if we used them in close succession. So he attached the two water heaters together somehow so that they're connected and serve the entire house.

Bathroom talk

So this morning Wagner wanted me to show him where to place all accessories in the garage study bathroom. We got the towel bar, medicine chest, and hand towel ring situated easily enough. Then he said, "Where do you want the toilet paper holder?" This was a matter of critical importance to me, as I definitely wanted to avoid situations like I've encountered in the past where you have to twist around and reach behind you to get the toilet paper.

So I sat down on the toilet (somewhat gingerly; the bowl has been installed but not the seat yet), reached my arm out to where I thought a comfortable place would be to grab the toilet paper, and told Wagner, "Right there!" He just shot me The Look and said, "Okay, but that's really very strange." "What do you mean?," I asked. "It's just that most people put their toilet paper holders over there," he replied, pointing to a spot that was much lower and further back.

So apparently I have weird bathroom preferences. I pointed out the whole logic of having the toilet paper at arm's length in front of you, so that you don't have to twist around in contortions every time you go to the bathroom. Wagner then started reassuring me that I should place the holder exactly where I wanted it, no matter how unusual such placement was. But the last thing I want is a weird bathroom that would be mocked and rejected by all the other bathrooms out there. So we compromised and put it somewhere in between. ;-)

While we're on the topic of toilet paper, I have to share my excitement over the toilet paper holder we got for the master bathroom. It's an ingenious design that does NOT involve one of those blasted little spring mechanisms, which I hate with a passion. The spring things in the middle always seem to pop open and fall apart in two pieces when you change toilet paper, and they always seem to be either too tight (so you have to exert the strength of ten to get it to fit in the bracket) or too loose (which means they keep falling out). But as bad as the spring mechanism kind of toilet paper holder is, they're still orders of magnitude better than the hook-shaped toilet paper holders, where every time you pull on the toilet paper the whole thing comes flying off the hook and rolling across the floor.

So you can imagine my heartfelt delight when I discovered a beautiful toilet paper holder at Ferguson's, the Moen Icon model, that operates with a simple pivoting arm mechanism. When it's time to change the toilet paper, you just swing the arm up, swap out the rolls, and then set it back down. Why every toilet paper holder in the world is not like that, I don't know. Here it is in all its beauty:

Progress Report --- Week 20

Progress accomplished this week:

Hurray! It's amazing how much has been done once the weather and utilities started cooperating.

--Tile work in bathroom FINISHED. It is gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. I'm thrilled with it.
--Installation of cabinets in bathroom begun. Should be finished tomorrow.
--Knob selection for bathroom cabinets made. I must be getting better at decisions because it only took me an hour to decide.
--Exterior paint on addition/garage trim begun, should be finished tomorrow, weather permitting.
--Concrete poured outside garage (see photo above). Wagner says that the garage is close to being completely done and that we can set a date for when we can start using it to park our cars. Hurray!
--Design of closets begun. I'm using a free service that ClosetMaid has where you send them measurements of the closet space, tell them how much space you need for long vs. short hanging stuff, shoes, etc., and they ship back a plan with all the part numbers identified. We did a first round of this, but I want to tweak the plans they came up with a bit. I'm trying to decide between using mostly functional (and cheaper) wire shelving units vs. more expensive but better looking laminate shelving. Given how much I went over budget for the tile, I'm leaning toward functional and cheap. ;-)
--Caulking and prep work for interior painting in addition begun.
--Rest of bedroom furniture purchased. We found a nice dresser and chest of drawers that would match nicely the new bed we had already bought. It was a discontinued line and thus on sale. The snag is that the furniture store would only sell it as a complete set, including a bed (which we didn't really need) and an armoire (ditto). Jon still liked it better than the other dresser I had identified, so we went ahead and bought the set, on the reasoning that we can use the extra bed in the garage space and squeeze the armoire in somewhere. The children, who were sick and tired of me dragging them to furniture stores and looking at dressers, didn't care one way or the other as long as we bought something.

Obstacles encountered this week:

--The tile person had miscalculated the amount of tile we needed and we were short a couple of pieces for the floor. Rather than wait for a new order to come in, we used some of the leftover budget tile from the laundry room to put on the bathroom floor under the cabinets. No one will ever see it, but I think it bothered Wagner not to have it all uniform. "What if you swap out the cabinets?" he asked. I told him that (a) we probably won't ever do that, but (b) even if we did, we'd be putting new cabinets over it, so the different tile STILL wouldn't be visible. We'll still go ahead and order an extra box of the main tile just to have spares in case something happens, but this way we didn't have to delay work on the rest of the bathroom.
--Steady rain beginning this morning will probably delay pouring rest of concrete around side of addition and finishing exterior painting.

The Ice Man cometh... and stayeth

When this renovation is finally done, I think I'm going to put the house on the market... and move to San Diego or Florida because I am exceedingly tired of this winter weather.

Just kidding, mostly, but man all this snow and ice and bitter cold temperatures is disheartening. We were without power for 3 and a half days last week. We got electricity back Friday afternoon, and I gleefully called Wagner and told him the good news. He was elated as well and lined things up with the tile guys to resume work on Monday. We packed up our clothes, cat, rats, and guppies and moved back to the house, where we enjoyed exactly two glorious nights of electricity. Sunday morning, though, Jon was outside shoveling snow when he heard the big "Boom!" of a transformer blowing out, and we were plunged into darkness and cold once again. So once again Wagner had to call off the workers and once again we had to pack up kids, pets, belongings and move back to Jonathan's office. It took another couple of days for the power to come back on, this time for good--we hope. Cross your fingers.

Of course we had thrown out all the food in the freezer the first time the power came back on and bought replacements... which I then had to throw out again. Sigh.

But finally, finally we were able to get Larry (the tile guy) back in action. I just love talking with him. He is a true crafstman in every sense of the word, and it is gratifying to see just how deeply he cares about doing a good job. The other day we were talking about some issue of the tile layout, and he casually mentioned that he had been "thinking about your job while lying in bed last night." I laughed and told him that I hoped he had much better things to think about at night than my shower. He replied that he took his work seriously and enjoyed doing jobs like ours, where it wasn't just a simple floor but more like "artisanship."

The shower is done, and the rest of the tile work will be completed today or tomorrow. We have to stay off it for 24 hours, but after that I'll take some photos and post them. It is absolutely gorgeous and well worth the considerable amount we went over budget for it. Here's a teaser photo of the floor with the medallion that didn't come out too well because the sunlight was glaring on it (I couldn't walk on the floor to take it from the other angle). It hasn't been grouted yet and will look a lot better afterwards, but this will give you a feel for what it will look like:

(Lack of) Progress Report -- Week 19: ICE STORM

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.

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.

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.*