From Crazy Paving to a Good Night's Sleep

On Friday, SS2 was hardly here at all, and it was peaceful inside the house. The one piece of bad news that he did bring was that the electricians had thrown their hands in the air in despair and declared that the skylights in the kitchen could not be repaired; and that the construction team would now need to deal direct with the customer service people at Velux. SS2 views this prospect with a sinking feeling, having had poor experiences with other manufacturers' customer "service" departments.

Progress on the hardscaping and other elements of the exterior work has picked up the pace.

Outside the house, the hardscapers completed the grouting of the stonework in the front yard, and very smart it looks too. They immediately moved on to laying the stone in the side yard and where the pergola will be. Not content with the jigsaw that is the ashlar pattern, we have asked for the pergola area and side path to be constructed of irregular, crazy paving style stones. Amazingly, the main stone guy is doing a fabulous job of fitting it all together. He really is a highly skilled worker.

The stucco subcontractor completed the finish coat on the house and also on the front wall. It's looking quite striking out there, even imposing. The stucco is a creamy white color. I must say that Hubby and I are finding that quite appealing, and wondering if we'd like to leave it light rather than having it painted Brewster Gray like the house.

The technician from Pool Covers Inc arrived and installed a bright blue pool cover. This is, alas, the wrong color. It should be grey. I only noticed him out there at the point when he was finishing the work. To say he was a bit downcast when I told him would be an understatement. Well, this will stay on the pool for a week or so, and then be replaced by the correct color, so no harm done.

The solar heating for the pool seems to be working fine.


This morning I got rid of our filing cabinet through Freecycle. We also had our new bed delivered - moved the old bed into the new guest room and enlisted friends to put it together - and also had the piano moved back into the family room...just in time for Mothers' Day tomorrow. No 6:30am wake up call from Little Starlet.


Hubby finally unpacked his new espresso maker. It may take us a while to really understand out how to use it....

Shopaholics

I took Hubby and the kids down to Scandinavian Designs in Cupertino this afternoon to check out the bed. After much discussion of whether we wanted mocha (his choice) or cherry (my choice), we plumped for the cherry. I poisoned his mind by commenting that the mocha had a purple hue under the table lamp lights. We held off buying night stands (bedside tables to the Brits) as we don't think they'll fit in the space where we're planning to put the bed. They can always be bought later if necessary. Follow this link to see a picture of the bed ("Reflections"). We also chose a new mattress from Beauty Rest. This will be delivered next weekend.

We took a break in Peet's Coffee, then headed into a store we'd not visited before, called "Nu Image Furniture for Modern Living". Very stylish stuff. We ended up making an impulse purchase of a funky coffee table which has two glass surfaces and chrome legs that allow the surfaces to swivel across each other; four kitchen chairs in orange and white plastic with chrome legs; and three matching bar stools in orange/white/chrome. These should arrive in about two weeks.

We are definitely in stage two of the remodel now. Stage one is when you spend all your money on updating and extending the house. Stage two is when you spend all the money that remains on furniture to fill it up and make it look like the remodel was a good idea. Home Beautiful magazine, here we come.

Creeping Toward the Finish Line

This morning the hardscapers are outside on their hands and knees washing down the stone that they've laid so far. It really does look nice - I'm impressed by Damien's artistry and skill in getting it together just right.

Inside, the installer from California Closets arrived almost an hour early. He arrived with a plan for the interior of the closet that was wrong. I was able to find the correct one to give him. He didn't seem too fazed by that, so hopefully he carries enough of all the right bits in his truck for the installation to go correctly.

The cabinetry men are also here, going around the house looking at the minor issues in the office and kitchen, and delivering the TV cabinets. I gave careful instructions for the installation of the door pulls on the hallway cabinets this morning.

We don't seem to have any painters here today. They cleaned up most of the windows yesterday and the interior woodwork is pretty much finished. After much debate and several color brush-outs, I decided that we'd simply paint the walls of the guest bathroom Swiss Coffee, same as all the ceilings. I think there will be enough interest in that room with the tile and counter top to worry about the paint color! Our Architect noticed yesterday that the Vetrazzo deck on the tub is sticking out too far. It's a bit late to put that right without risking breaking the Vetrazzo - and that ain't cheap, though it wouldn't be for us to pay a second time - or having to pull out all the floor tile that has already been laid; so she came up with the idea of giving the sticking-out part a curved corner with the same radius as the corner tiles to eliminate the potentially dangerous point. As she commented, we'll just have a "more generous" tub deck than usual.

On Wednesday I ordered the bench cushion for the family room. It's going to be a single cushion, 108" by 27" and 3.5" deep, upholstered in purple (plum) fake suede. I'm picking up the purple accent from the guest bedroom. And I get to buy more cushions!

Down to the Detail

There was a fair amount of activity around the Cardboard Box today, despite the rain, but nothing very photogenic to offer. We have now reached the stage in the project where most of the labor is going on detailed finish work. The nice thing about this is it is relatively quiet and unobtrusive. One of the guys was installing base boards (skirting boards to my British readers). Another was on the exterior window trim, which they are now able to get to because of the lovely concrete in the back yard. A third was fiddling with interior doors.

The tile for the bathroom has arrived and I have taken some so we can choose appropriate paint colors. We're probably going to to for an off-white in the bathroom, a lavender in the bedroom, and a pale grey in the family room. The living room is currently a sage color. I don't think repainting it is in the scope of work, but I imagine we'll get round to redoing it, or it will look yukky next to the rest of the rooms. If we do, we plan to keep it a similar color, which comes across as fairly neutral without being dead boring.


Outside, the forms have been constructed for the front yard concrete. Over the weekend we raised the issue of the landing pad outside the guest bedroom. It isn't as drawn on the plans and there seems to be some confusion about what is needed to meet the building code. Needless to say, the confusion is not with Jim's Bunch, but with the hardscaping crew. Our Landscape Designer will be here tomorrow to view and consult. We were supposed to be getting lovely concrete in the front yard tomorrow, but this discussion is likely to lead to a day or so delay. The rain/hail doesn't help either.

In good news, Site Supervisor II announced that the remaining exterior doors would be arriving on site tomorrow afternoon. This is the last remaining piece of the construction puzzle. When they are in place, everything is built, and we just need the finishing to be done (both inside - doors, cabinets, floors - and outside - completion of weep screed and new stucco where the old was cut).

The end is definitely in sight.

Activity Before the Rain

It poured on Friday night. The weekend was dry and fine, but the sky is darkening now. The Cardboard Box is surrounded on all sides by people working away, trying to get things finished before rain starts up again. We are forecast to have rain tomorrow and all through the rest of the week, peaking on Friday with another monsoon.

In the back yard, the hardscaping guys with the CAT have been digging trenches, back-filling and compacting all morning. They've just finally ripped out the remnants of the lawn in preparation for puttin gthe disipator into the ground. At this moment the digger is getting tangled up in the gopher-resisting net that our gardener installed under the lawn a couple of years ago. The guys look a bit surprised.

Out front, the men from Jim's Bunch are busily wrapping a 15 lb felt moisture barrier around the exterior of the additions. Site Supervisor II explains that this is the final frontier for penetrating damp coming in from the outside. The additions will be pleasingly black and shiney when they have finished.

The roofing people were out this morning too, replacing all our remaining old gutters with new galvanised steel ones. None of them are painted though. I expect that painting them will turn out to require yet another "change order" and an additional expense. Presumably the activity can be picked up when the house exterior is painted. The forthcoming rain will be a good test of their weather-worthiness.

In the kitchen, not much happening today. The dry wallers are there again. That may be putting a stop to the cabinet installation. I shall go and have a nose later on.

Noisy drilling on the outside of the house outside the kids' bathroom resulting in the removal of a strip of stucco and the peeling back of the chicken wire underneath. Hmm. Can't quite see what that is for, though Azmir worked away at it with a will for over an hour.

Over the weekend we chose paint colors for the kitchen and the office/laundry addition. Honeywheat for the office and Golden Labrador (can you believe it) for the kitchen and laundry. Swiss coffee for the ceilings (that's off-white to you). We also went back to Artistic Tile to make yet another selection of tile for our kitchen floor. We went for something that is similar to the last one, but a little colder in tone. The main thing was that it wouldn't take weeks to arrive, as the tiler reckons he'll be ready to start at the end of this week.

Bring on the Ark

Truly astonishing amounts of water falling from the sky today. Enormous puddles all around our house, some of them inches deep. The "empty" pool has about two feet of water sitting in the bottom. Even so, there are builders hammering away in the bedroom addition. What can they be doing?

I had a meeting this morning with the Arborist and the Landscape Designer. We went over his invoices, which hadn't made a lot of sense, and worked them through as both a work order and a math problem. We eventually made sense of them and I wrote him a check for $7,779.40. (I particularly liked the 40c.) The Arborist's firms work is good, but the office is clearly a bit on the flakey side. The Landscape Designer gave him a hard time and, to his credit, he did not roll over and die, which he might have done since she puts a fair bit of work his way.

After he went away, the Landscape Designer showed me samples of the stone veneer for the BBQ island and a selection of granite choices for the countertop. I agreed to the stone veneer - I think it will look quite classy - and chose a grey and black speckled, honed granite for the counter top. She offered to leave the samples for Hubby to see, but I said no, take them away!

Ooh, thunder.

Rain, Rain, Go Away, come again on Friday

It rained a lot over night, and our back yard is doing its best Somme impression.

The Jolly Demo Guy was out in back again this morning with his jack-hammer. Quite what he could find to dig out this time was beyond me, but he managed to produce yet more bricks and rocks. Astonishing.

He is also working away at the front clearing rubble. We are the proud foster parents of a CAT in the back and a BobCat in the front. Yesterday the back yard CAT was busily removing piles of debris from the pool, and then it stopped. This morning I noticed that we still have two large piles of rubble in the far corner of the back yard. Are they, like, someone else's rubble to deal with? Do the demo guys only deign to take their own rubble? Oh come on.

The pool has a puddle in the bottom from the rain. I'm not sure what comes next for the pool, could be the tile or the new plaster. The new coping is supposed to be arriving next week some time.

I approved new doors for the house interior today. Chose MDF over Douglas Pine on the grounds that it is (1) harder and less prone to denting, (2) easier to prep for painting and gives a smoother finish and (3) is cheaper. This may be the first item in the whole remodel that we've chosen (or had chosen for us) the cheaper option.

Hubby is still engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the landscape designer over his choice of BBQ grill for the outdoor kitchen. He keeps saying "I want charcoal" and she keeps sending over plans including a gas grill. I said to her last week, there's a "Man he make fire" thing in play here. Hubby will either get his way or she will grind him down and make him change his mind. I'm just an innocent spectator on the side lines.

Quite a lot of banging today from the bedroom/bathroom addition. It's a little frustrating because it is now impossible to have a nose about and see what they're up to. At the end of each day the workers nail up temporary shutters on all the openings to the outside, which is good for security, but bad for curiosity. I know the electricians have been in today. They stopped me to ask what some switches operated, and of course I didn't know. I never know. They must think I am some gormless bimbo, or that I am a recently acquired trophy wife! (LOL, as the young folks say.)

Kitchen again

The cabinet guys left the stain samples on our doorstep today, while we were out, so late in the afternoon. They were supposed to have left them yesterday around that time. I think they must be in a different part of the space-time continuum, because they seem to deliver everything precisely one day later than they were asked to.

Hubby is in a huff about the kitchen situation and refusing to look at the colors today. He has moved onto grommets, the all important question of where the wire management holes will be in our office desk tops and what color the inserts will be.

Outside it is raining gently.

Inside we are worn out from a two hour shift wrapping gifts in the warehouse of the local Family Giving Tree charity. They distribute gifts to 75,000 children for Christmas. I bet we only wrapped about 25 each, but it felt like many more!

Tomorrow the arborist is due to be here with his crane to dispose of the Monterey Pine.

Still no sign of any neighbors in the house next door.

The Saga of the Kitchen

Confusion reigns. We naively thought that we had selected cabinet stain color, floor tile, and made a good stab at the countertop. Now we learn that we can't have the cabinet color we had chosen unless we move from alder to maple for the wood, which will add some $4,000 to the price. If we stick with the alder, then we think the floor tile may look a bit anaemic. We also wonder if a dark countertop would work. Our Architect thinks the light Caesarstone ("Oyster") that we'd selected as an alternative would look ok, quite 1950s in fact, but that it might look too washed out overall with light cabinets and floor.

Yesterday the cabinet guys were meant to drop off door samples for us to take the the countertop viewing. They didn't do that. Today they did drop off the door samples, but they didn't leave the stain samples, so we have nothing to work on. We have friends coming in from the UK on Monday, and we just don't want to spend lots of time on this now. I hauled Hubby out of the office on Friday afternoon to look at countertops, and I can't keep doing that. We are now under time pressure to make these decisions. The reason for that is the way everyone was dragging their feet on the Great Corian Countertop Reuse Question.

Today I spoke to Achilles twice and also the Architect. We also took the door samples and Caesarstone samples to a party this evening, and solicited opinions from our friends. They voted for the alder; but of course we aren't quite sure what color that would be for real.

Anyway, I'm fed up of the whole thing.

The Rime of the Ancient Renovator

There was an ancient renovator,
and he stoppeth one of three:
"Pray listen to my story
Of choosing countertops" quoth he.

I travelled down to Sunnyvale,
I went into the store.
"Show me all your Caesarstone"
I said "And nothing more."

The woman coughed into her hand
And said "Here it is to see;
But there is also Europe Stone
and Zodiac and Corian
And wood cut from a tree."

I cried "Hold fast! Tempt me not!
Lead me not astray!
I came to look at Caesarstone
That's why I came this way."

And so we spent a happy hour
Peering at small tiles
And holding up a maple door
Tutting, sighs and smiles.

At last we walked out from the store
A list clutched in my hand.
Two stones we'd chose and only one
Was Caesarstone, of course.

The Agony of Choice

Just look at the lovely collection of items our architect left today. Hubby will be so thrilled to see the different things he needs to help choose... fabric... grommets... paint... Caesarstone...