Test Pattern

Yesterday morning, Josh and I went to a lighting showroom to look at LED undercabinet lights for the kitchen. They're still relatively new, but we like the concept and they are very energy-efficient. We found some by Philips that we liked, although they come in odd sizes so we'll have to see how/if they'll work with our cabinet layout.

Then we went to the paint store and tried to find sample sizes of all the colors we picked out. Sadly, they only had two, but we grabbed a couple others for comparison and headed over to the house. Josh took the opportunity to test out the big soaking tub in the master bath.
Then we painted some test patches to see how the paint colors looked in the house.

We're trying to decide which of these colors would work best in the common areas of the house (living/dining/stairs/hallway) or if we should just play it safe and paint them white.
Outside, the driveway looks like a beach with all the sand from the stucco operation. They still have a few spots left to do, so I guess all this stuff will be here a while longer.

Trim & Neat

Rob asked me to come by the house by lunchtime today to drop off a check and some additional speaker wire. Josh had asked them to wire the family room for surround sound and run the speaker wire into the living room so we could put additional stereo speakers in there -- but the original 100 feet of wire we gave them wasn't nearly enough. I ran out to Radio Shack to pick up some more and got to the house around 12:30. Rob, John, and Justin were just finishing up their lunch, so Rob suggested I check out the living room.

I hadn't noticed on my way in, but they had re-installed the mantel and bookshelves, which had been in storage down in the basement. It doesn't look very pretty at the moment as there are a lot of finishing touches left to do -- repainting, filling in the gaps on the sides, extending the stucco up to the mantel, etc -- but I am sure they will do everything necessary to make it look good.
They seem to have made a lot of progress on the trim. They finished the openings between the dining room, kitchen, and family room
And trimmed, framed, and hung the doors for the dining room, bathroom, and bedroom. Jim was filling in all the gaps and nail holes with putty (the orange stuff).
The electrician had neglected to install the wiring for under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen, so they had to cut some holes in the drywall to remedy the situation. Fortunately, the patches will all be hidden by the lower cabinets. They also installed the electrical outlets and wall switches. You may have noticed there aren't any wall outlets in the kitchen. That was not another oversight by the electrician. Instead, we will have what are essentially hard-wired power strips installed under the cabinets (like the lights), so they are hidden but easily accessible for plugging in small appliances.Upstairs, the master bath is still pink and purple with a green slate floor, but now it's been prepped for wall tile.
And they cut a hole for the window between the shower and the tub alcove. Since this is a steam shower, it needs to be completely sealed, so to keep it from getting musty between uses, the window can be opened to let fresh air in rather than having to leave the door ajar. (There's also an exhaust fan inside.)
In the master bedroom, they used a slightly smaller trim around the three small windows above the bed so we wouldn't end up with just a half-inch gap in between.We'll have to figure out what to do about the trim around the arched window in the front bedroom upstairs, since there's not much space between the top of the window and the ceiling. Rob has some ideas, so I'm sure we'll come up with something that looks good.
Josh and I ordered all our light fixtures and ceiling fans online over the past couple weeks, so we've been keeping the UPS and FedEx people busy delivering them to the house. It looks like all the ceiling fans and a few of the lights have already arrived and are neatly stacked down in the basement.
Also in the basement: our washer and dryer. Oh, how I miss them! The machines in our apartment building are tiny, ancient, expensive ($2.75 in quarters to wash and dry each load!) and inconveniently located on the opposite side of the building, requiring us to schlep everything down 2 flights of stairs, outside, back up another flight of stairs, and into a locked room that I always seem to forget the key for. I can't wait to have my own washer and dryer back! I'll never take them for granted again...
Despite having been dug up and transplanted in the back yard, our roses are doing remarkably well, and have already started blooming. Of course, they were dormant when they were moved in February. The true test will be how they handle being moved again in the middle of the summer. I don't envy whoever has to do that job.
Back in the family room, John is working on door frames while Rob teases him about his fashion choices. Can you accuse someone from Albania of dressing like a 'redneck'? Justin was tasked with trying to repair our front door, which is original to the house and incredibly heavy since it is solid wood. With all the construction, the door frame has shifted a bit, so the door has been getting increasingly more difficult to open and close properly. Justin pulled off some old metal weatherstripping from the bottom and sanded the edges, and Rob was helping him reinstall it when I left. We'll check out his handiwork when we stop by the house this weekend.

Low Man on the Totem Pole

I got a call from Rob this afternoon asking how far down they should lower the plumbing for the shower in the main level bathroom. [When we were going over the tile layout with Ian and Rex last week, we realized that they had plumbed the bathroom for a fixed showerhead rather than the handheld shower we purchased for that room -- so they needed to lower it to accommodate both the shower configuration and the tile design.] I told Rob that was a difficult question to answer over the phone, but I could come over later in the afternoon and take a look. He informed me that the plumber was there now and needed an answer, so I suggested he ask Ian, since he could address that based on the tile layout. Rob said Ian had gone to lunch, so I told him I'd be there in 20 minutes and the plumber would just have to wait.

When I got to the house, Justin was on the front porch cleaning our old door hinges with a foul-smelling, slimy goop. Justin is a college student who works for SAI as an intern, so he gets all the crap jobs that nobody else wants to do... but he's remarkably good-natured about it.
The plumber was waiting outside for me, but when we went in to the bathroom, it turned out Ian had come back from lunch and had already worked out the best placement for the shower plumbing with him. All I really needed to do was say, "Yeah, that looks fine." Good thing I dropped everything and rushed over there....
Since I was there, I took the opportunity to see what else was going on around the house. John was working on retrofitting our old doors for their new positions.
And later Justin helped him build a frame for the doorway between the dining room and the hall to the bathroom/bedroom.
Upstairs, Ian had laid most of the floor in the laundry room before discovering that one box of tile was a slightly different size from the rest. They are sending Justin to Architectural Ceramics tomorrow to pick up a replacement box so Ian can finish laying the floor.
And now we have an even more unexpected color scheme in the master bath: hot pink and lavender with white stripes and polka dots! Gaah! It turns out the hot pink stuff in the shower is a waterproofing material. Why it comes in hot pink is a mystery to me...
OK, I looked it up, and this stuff is called RedGard. It goes on bright pink, and turns a dark red color as it dries, so you can tell whether it is totally dry or still has a few wet spots. I guess that makes sense, but that still doesn't quite answer the question: why pink? I can't wait until the tile is installed and our bathroom has a nice, soothing sage green and white color scheme.

Since Rob seemed to be on an unreasonable demand kick today, he also asked me if I could give him my samples of the countertop material we'd picked out for the kitchen and bathrooms so he could hand them over to the Turkish Mafia. (I am NOT making this up!) My best explanation for that is they must be working with a countertop supplier who originally hails from Turkey, and he wanted to make sure they were giving us a quote based on exactly what we wanted by providing them with samples in addition to product names and descriptions. Beyond that, I'm not really sure what that was all about, but I ran home to get them and dropped them off at the house before heading to the farmer's market and the grocery store.

When I left, Rob was desperately trying to finish installing the trim around the window in the master bedroom before he had to leave to meet up with his Mafia buddies. And, of course, Justin was sweeping up.

Rolling Thunder

I haven't had a chance to post an update for a few days -- it was a busy 3-day weekend!

Friday evening Josh left work a little early and we drove out to Leesburg, VA to see if we could find any good bargains at the Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn outlets. We still need to find cabinet hardware and mirrors or medicine cabinets for the master bathroom. We did see a few mirrors/cabinets that might work, and the prices were great, but of course neither outlet had two matching ones in good condition. Our only real find were some chrome knobs and drawer pulls at the Pottery Barn outlet for the other upstairs bathroom. The original prices totaled up to $60, but we got them for $26.

Saturday morning we looked at the selection of knobs and pulls at Restoration Hardware and saw a few possibilities (albeit somewhat pricey), and looked at lighting at Lowe's, where we purchased some outdoor floodlights. Then we grabbed some lunch and went to the house to pick out paint colors, as I had promised Rob we'd have our selections to him by today. Josh found a piece of cement board that was about the same size as the mirrors we were looking at, so we tried to determine where they would go and if they were the right size.
Josh's mom also stopped by to tour the house one last time before she decamps to Vermont for the summer. She'll be gone until September, so it will look very different the next time she see it! Then we had to focus on paint colors. Since we now have all the tile at the house, we pulled together the pieces for the master bathroom to help us find a good shade of grayish-bluish-green.
This has turned out to be a very challenging task, since -- except for the tile -- there's nothing in the house to coordinate the paint colors with. Most of our stuff is in storage, and the lighting in our apartment is very different from the natural light in the house, so the colors don't look the same. We decided the best we could do is go through the house with the color wheel and see what looked good with the lighting in each room. We made it through about half the house before we started to run out of steam -- at which point we got a well-timed call from our friends Jason & Elizabeth inviting us to a cookout at their house.

Sunday morning we had a yoga class, and then we planned to go canoeing with Josh's parents, so we stuck the roof rack on the car and headed over to their house. What should have been a 10-minute drive ended up taking us 45 minutes. We had forgotten about Rolling Thunder -- the annual convergence of tens of thousands of veterans on Harleys in Washington, DC to commemorate Memorial Day. They are everywhere, and on Sunday afternoon, they had a parade through DC to all the war memorials, so many streets were closed off. (When we lived across the street from the Iwo Jima memorial, we used to leave town every Memorial Day weekend because it was so noisy!) We bailed on canoeing and walked over to The Mall instead, where we encountered the tail end of the procession.
Although there were thunderstorms in the forecast, and we did hear some actual rolling thunder above the din of the motorcycles, it only sprinkled a bit, so when we got back to Josh's parents' house, we grilled steaks and chicken and ate out in the back yard.

My aunt was in town visiting my cousin Nirmita (her daughter), who is in grad school at The George Washington University, so we arranged to meet at the house Monday morning so they could take a tour. They were both very impressed, and my aunt promised she and my uncle would come for a visit again soon so they could see the finished product. Jason & Elizabeth also stopped by as they were eager to see what was new since their last visit. They had to take turns touring the house since there are far too many hazards (nails, power tools, no stair railings!) for their two little kids to come in with them. Once all our tour groups had departed, we tried to find the best placement of tile on the stair risers. Each stair will have the same tile going all the way across.
And then devoted some more time to working on paint colors before heading off to yet another barbeque at our friend Rob's place. It threatened to rain all afternoon -- and we heard more thunder -- but fortunately it held off until the party was over and we started cleaning up.

I'm still not sure if all these colors will work together -- or go with our stuff -- but at least it will be relatively easy to remedy if we end up needing to make some changes later.

Rob emailed me this morning asking me to get the paint color selections to him by lunchtime, so I went over to the house a little before noon with our list. Rob, John, and Justin were installing the trim around the windows upstairs.
And Ian was laying out the slate floor in the master bath. It looks really nice -- and it does actually seem to make the room feel bigger, just like Rex said it would.
It absolutely poured rain last night, and there's plenty more rain in the forecast, so I doubt the roofers or the stucco guys will get much done this week. But at least Ian is making some good progress on the tile, and there's still lots of trim to be installed, so there should be some new things to see over the next few days...

Window Vista

When I stopped by the house this afternoon, I was happy to see the final window had been installed in the master bathroom. Now ALL the windows are in!
Here's what it looks like from the inside. It's set into an alcove above the tub, with a matching arched opening and ceiling. Josh and I were inspired to create this space by a photo we saw in a magazine. We're very happy with how it is shaping up.
It looks like the floor guys are already done installing the new flooring. They still need to sand, stain, and refinish the floors, but they'll wait until everything else is done so the floors don't get scratched up in the interim. This is the landing on the stairs. (We have instituted an "Adults Only" tour policy until the railings have been installed...)
With the dumpster gone and the back door open, I had a rare chance to see the back of the house. You can see all the different phases of the exterior here -- the blue insulated sheathing, the gray cement base, and the white textured stucco.
Ian was upstairs installing cement board on the laundry room floor. I warned him that I take a lot of photos. His first instinct was to run away every time I pointed my camera in his direction, but I explained about the blog and how the photos are kind of dull if all you can see are a bunch of empty rooms, and he eventually came around. He seems like a nice guy -- and a good sport.
In the photo above, Ian is trimming a piece of cement board to fit in the empty spot below. Once the cement board is in, he'll lay the floor tile on top of it. I'm excited to see all the tile installed. We spent a lot of time picking it out, and I think it will be one of the highlights of the interior of the house.Apparently, lots of interested parties are excited enough about our house to put a sign in our front yard -- they're sprouting up like weeds! I do think the plumber's sign is a little much -- if you have to dig two post holes in the homeowner's front yard, you may want to rethink your sign design...
Have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Floors and More!

I have some catching up to do -- I haven't had a chance to update the blog for a couple days...
The stucco is nearly done. They just have to wait for that last window for the master bath and the back door to be installed so they can do the last few bits.
Even the fireplace has been re-stuccoed.Upstairs, we now have hardwood floors (oak) in the master bedroom.
And stacks of flooring are waiting to be installed in the front bedroom.Even without a window, it's now quite bright in the master bathroom with the two solatubes -- one in the main part of the room and one in the shower.
Yesterday, I was happy to see that John was back on the job, after spending some time working on a project at Steve B's house. He'll be installing the trim around the windows and doors and finishing up the stairs.
The floor guys had pulled out some of the original flooring in the family room so they could tooth in the new stuff. This room feels huge now -- it used to be the size of the little square of old flooring.
Since I have a cold, I didn't want to bring anything homemade over, so I picked up some cookies at Trader Joe's. Rob made a valiant effort to eat them all... Here he is doing his Cookie Monster impression.He also insisted on taking a photo of me, since I don't make many appearances in my own blog. I was really helping John measure the windows, but Rob handed me the pencil to make it look more authentic.
This morning, Josh and I had an 8 am meeting with Ian the tile guy and Rex from Architectural Ceramics to go over the tile layout in the bathrooms. Here are Rex, Ian, and Josh discussing some details for the shower.
And Rex and Ian working through the complicated tile scheme for the main-level bathroom.
Meanwhile, a big truck arrived to cart off our overflowing dumpster. Since our street is very narrow, it was challenging for him to back into the driveway.
A deluge of foul-smelling water poured out the back when he lifted the dumpster onto the back of the truck. Yet another drawback to all the rain we've had lately...
Once the dumpster was in place, it was nearly as challenging for him to get out of the driveway, especially since Rob told him to steer clear of our little dogwood tree. Rather than going to the dump, all the waste from our renovation is sorted and recycled by Con-Serv Industries.
Back inside, the floor guys had started integrating the new flooring with the old in the family room. The floors will eventually all be refinished and stained to match -- so hopefully it will be difficult to tell what's old and what's new.
The kitchen will have oak floors now, too.
The highlight of the morning was when the arched window for the master bathroom was delivered. Yay! I jokingly insisted that Rob drop everything and get to work installing it. He was just as excited to see the window as I was, and assured me it would be in by the end of the day.
The window goes in this lovely alcove over the tub.
Josh stopped by the house on his way home from work and said the window had indeed been installed, so I'll have to go over tomorrow and get a photo.