Counter tops were replaced and put in mid-june. We made punch list with contractor today - 25 items. Not too bad. The house is not all unpacked yet. We still have a dozen or so lingering boxes that we either haven't, or waiting on some project. However, I was a little anxious to do a some comparison ... just to remind myself.
The 6 month marathon to get a butcher blocktop for the counter is finally over, we have a complete countertop installed. This marathon started when I originally ordered an end-grain walnut and cherry mix butcher blocktop from a company located in Michigan, you would think with the economy being somewhat stressed there that it would be delivered quick and be correct. But no, that is not what occured, it took 6 weeks before we finally received it and when we opened the packing crate we found that an long-grain counter top had been built. I called the company and they were willing to correct the problem and I took them up on the offer. 4 weeks later I called them and they told me that it was shipped the previous day but they would verify and call me back the next day, after calling them a week later I find out that in fact the top had not shipped and they had no idea when they would have walnut in stock to begin assembling my butcher block top, needless to say I cancelled the order after sharing a few of my thoughts about their business model. We ended up using a company here in Washington that provided the end product you see here.
The butcher block for the island and bar top arrived early this week. G opened the crates today .. and woola! The walnut is a little red, but very purty. The guy did exactly the opposite and put the grain the long way, instead of the short way so the seam is noticeable. I took the photo from the kitchen looking towards the liv/din room. You can see the pile of boxes, still. We are waiting on him to fix the upper cab and finish the corners, and counter. Contractor has made so little progress for the last four week that G had a really 'nice' chat with him. We will see if that helped.
Finally, I've have this new hosting platform and it's taken me 6 weeks between niggling house projects/moving in and working through the 'net security to get off the dependencies with my servers and actually upload content directly to the site. Here is one of the first images when we moved in, it's not sized correctly since I'm testing that my process actually works. The last 6 weeks of photos will be posted soon.
The house is coming through the home stretch, I'm finding this to be the hardest part of the project for me (not that I'm doing anything other then looking at it ;-P). This latest batch of images covers everything from the glass tiles, new hallway cabinets, vanity & bowl sink, kitchen cabinet doors installed, through interior and exterior shots of the arbor and glass doors without the plastic covering.
The outside arbor is much bigger then I was envisioning.
There has been some slippage in the project timeline, but it's still coming along nicely. Staining and laquering is nearly complete. I am really happy with the way the folding doors turned turned out and with Eda's choice of stain color.
Doors for the folding wall and cabinet doors (see the single panel unfinished white oak amongst the stuff?), most of the appliances and mbath plumbing fixtures were delivered in the last two weeks.
It has been a little bit of wait, wait, wait some more, and see... this is the phase where the 'schuff' doesn't arrive on time, wrong 'schuff'.. We ordered red knobs for the cook top and black ones arrived. We ordered a plain undermount kitchen sink and a apron front showed up. Kitchen fixtures along with the dishwasher is MIA.
Anyhoo... you can see contractor guy installing two of the five doors and what it feels like with the folding wall completely opened.
We may have a couple more change orders coming for misc finishes.oh, and a pic of the floor!. All the photos courtesy of my phone's camera. Sad to say that moving in at the end of Jan is not going to happen. I am now reset to plan for mid-feb move in.
The holidays have really slowed the finishing work down. I have to stop myself from becoming impatient and let the contractors do their work.
The drywall is complete, the wood floors have been installed. Everything is happening very quickly now with cabinet installation, floor finishing and painting beginning.
Like Christmas trees, Mistletoe, and Wreaths the sheetrock has been hung, then mudded, hopefully it stays that way.
The insulation has been installed and will be inspected monday. This begins the final leg of our remodel, everything is finishing work once the sheetrock is complete.
I also shipped the refrigerator and stove today thru uShip. I have to give the shipping providers the benefit of the doubt since they are from Michigan and have have a good history on uShip. I was skeptical when they showed up with a pickup and are going to transport these items across country to my folks house (I can't see how thay make a profit on this shipment as I know gas costs more then I paid them). We'll see how this works out.
This week marks the beginning of plumbing, electrical, and framing inspections. Our next round of pictures should have everything sheetrocked.
The framing for the vaulted ceiling is complete, we're waiting on inspection now. The ceiling is projected to be finished (sheet-rocked and insulated) by the time we get back from our thanksgiving trip back to Michigan. In the foreground you can see E demonstrating her point to the contractor, her hand was moving so fast the camera just picked up a blur.
I am learning a whole lot of new vocabulary - today's word is Pony wall. That's that little section between original wall and the new ceiling. Here is a closer look at the beam
We spent a lot of time looking up when we went on site meeting today. Look carefully ... the 31' beam is amazing see the calculation from eng. DC said it is 500lb+. (notes on Flickr). They got it up with just 2 people.
We did lots of house stuff today. At the end of the day, we stopped by the house to get something and drop off a black marble sample for our DC ( dear contractor ;-) ) They had a slow week while we worked out the co's (change orders).. They did manage to template the stoop for the pavers outside...
Our first site meeting. If you look closely, you will see the framing for the new kitchen window and some of the folding doors. This is where the woodstove was ...
We moved out of our house on October 22. We will return after the new years to a [hopefully] better house. This empty room will be our new living room. The silly wall will be gone and ...
