Deconstruction

Apparently GMA took our faucet from the “sold” shelf and sold it to another customer, obviously a dignitary or celebrity of some sort. As a result, they had to re-order it from St. Louis. As a result, the plumber couldn’t come today, and won’t come until next week. As a result, we will spend another weekend waiting.

Jerry: I don’t understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?

Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.

Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That’s why you have the reservation.

Agent: I know why we have reservations.

Jerry: I don’t think you do. If you did, I’d have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to *hold* the reservation and that’s really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.

A fresh batch of pictures for you, gentle readers. Today the fortunate sons of Specific Design Home arrived to shove handfuls of grout upon our walls. They left behind a terrific mess, but the end result was very pleasing. Before departing for … ahem… the weekend at around 11am, they even rolled our dishwasher into it’s little nook next to the sink. Tomorrow, Rick the Plumber will reportedly make his long anticipated return to connect some pipes, but alas there is still no countertop in the new bath. We’ll see how far he gets…my guess is that the shower and toilet should be able to be hooked up with relative ease, but without a countertop or a kitchen faucet (O, Appliance Champion!) his efforts may be hampered.

Keep your fingers crossed, as there is an outside (vegas odds at 13%) chance that the electrician will return tomorrow as well.

Backsplash tile started going up today, scheduled for grouting tomorrow and hopefully the electrician will be back on Friday to hook up power to the kitchen and new bath. These little tiles have spacers built right into them, so they are making record time in putting them up - this picture is after just over an hour of work, including making the cuts.

Things lost so far:

• Kitchen Faucet. MIA, Kent has no idea where it is
• Backsplash tile. David reportedly ordered weeks ago, but as of yesterday was not sure if it was in.
• New bathroom countertop. In my excitement to have the kitchen countertop in yesterday I didn’t even notice that the bathroom countertop (which they measured a template for over a week ago and we picked the material) was totally overlooked. David is investigating
• Microwave, purchased and paid for 11 weeks ago. MIA, Kent has no idea where it is
• Certainly the entire contents of our kitchen, or at least the item needed most at the most inconvenient time. To be clarified further the first time we attempt to use the kitchen
• Sanity, faith in the competence of others

Got a call at 8:30 this morning from Justin, and the electrician is to come today and finish hooking up the under cabinet lights, then they will start on the backsplash tile tomorrow.

David and Justin were here for a little over an hour this morning, installing the straggler cabinet. Just a few minutes ago the countertop installers left, and without further delay here they are…

Timing is everything right? Well, it is in the the remodeling business anyway! Andy and I have been alone here since Tuesday and boy is it lonely (hah) and a little frustrating! The countertops have delayed everything as you have read in Andy’s post. Our dreams of having this project completed by Halloween have come and gone and our revised dream of having everything finished by Thanksgiving is fading fast. So….we are hoping that Santa will bring us a wonderful gift this year…our home!
Thanks for reading!

David and company are coming over Monday morning to put in the remaining cabinet (to the right of the kitchen sink) and install the dishwasher before the countertops are delivered on Monday afternoon. The dishwasher made it just under the wire, as the first load that GMA brought out was sans dishwasher. We called and Kent, our appliance champion, thought for a moment and said “Um…Dishwasher?” After a few minutes of positive reinforcement and gentle reminders he said “Oh, Dishwasher!” and it was on the next truck out. Our microwave, unfortunately, has suffered a far worse fate, as it has been completely lost. O! Appliance Champion!

The other thing that went in last week was the undercabinet lighting - the flat front cabinets don’t have a lip underneath to conceal it, but they are low profile and fairly unobtrusive.

Here is a cleaned up view of the kitchen floor - looks miraculously better with a little scrubbing action. It was sort of in vain, however, as after Jill spent hours cleaning up the floor, the electricians came in and indiscriminately spread bits of the ceiling everywhere when cutting out holes for the can lights and installing outlets.

Here is another view of the floor…I promise we won’t post any more pictures of the floor. Honestly, who wants to spend this much time looking at a floor? There were a few places that needed to be touched up (re-grouted) but for the most part after the last piece of the baseboard went in we had no complaints at all.

To make ourselves feel like something was happening we decided to make an effort to maximize available space in our closets. Formerly there was a single shelf and a seriously swaybacked closet rod, I tore all that out to make way for this yuppie shelving. This is the closet in the spare bedroom, I ended up getting a little trickier in our bedroom closet, including two stacked hanging areas, and more shelving. Thrilling, right?

Yesterday GMA delivered (at long last) some of the components we’ve been waiting for for the past week. The first load came and consisted of the range hood, some replacement cabinet parts (to replace damaged doors, etc), and the washer and dryer. Being the gentlemen and scholars they are, they decided to include the little pedestals the washer and dryer sit on, either out of thankfulness at the amount of money that we’ve spent in there, or because it was either that or throw them in the dumptster.

Here are some other goodies to get you through the weekend…

Our range hood…

Our (new) bathroom countertop color…

New bathroom faucet

New shower bits.

Electricians showed at about 10 this morning, and our hopes were quickly raised to think that the lights / power would be on in the ‘new’ portion of the house. Alas, but it was a false prophecy…the electrician is going to return after the countertops and backsplash are in to finish the job. They did put most of the outlets and switches in, but they are like pinky toes.

The shower caddy is plugged in as well, and we picked a throne fit for a king…it was on the list of things to install today but hasn’t been installed yet…just sitting idly in the garage.

Right now they are working on installing some shoe molding but not having the greatest of luck as it is pretty dark over there. They are using (and have subsequently destroyed) our two grow lights that keep our plants warm in the winter, but were blowing through lightbulbs at a rate of about 3 per day.

As you can see, despite frequent cleaning and various attempts at putting up barriers to the dust, it is omnipresent in our house. Right now there are only cursory attempts by us to keep it under control, but soon enough there will be a day of reckoning when justice will be meted out to dust and grime everywhere.

They came over today and finished the floor, putting in the grout in such a short amount of time that it made us look completely inept by comparison. The grout is a nice grey (gray?) color and the lines are nice and narrow, which should be quite easy to clean. Once the floor is cleaned in the next day or so it will look really sharp.

Most of the remaining work hinges on the installation of the countertops, so next week will likely be a quiet one around here.

Here is a slew of pictures from the past few days. The countertop guy came at 8am today and measured the countertops and made templates for everything. Tile is mostly done now with just a few left to go (they ran out at the end of the day and need about 5 more tiles), and they will grout tomorrow. The countertops are scheduled to be installed on the 7th of November, leaving a window of opportunity next week for the electricians to bring us back some juice in that half of the house. Running water would be a huge bonus too. In case you’re bored with reading about the kitchen, relax for a minute and watch this video which is sure to brighten your day.