Glitches

Rob called this morning with two pieces of bad news:

1) The saw at Alberene Soapstone is broken, and it could be several weeks before it's fixed, so we may need to get our kitchen countertops elsewhere since they won't be able to cut any slabs for us.

2) SAI has decided to terminate their contract with Ian, the tile guy, because he is taking too long to get the job done. They have a new tile guy lined up to start on Saturday.

I was sorry to hear both of these things. We picked out the soapstone for our kitchen countertops back in October, and designed the rest of the kitchen around it -- particularly the color of the tile backsplash. We also liked the idea of getting it from Alberene because it is located in Virginia and their soapstone is locally mined rather than shipped from Brazil, which is in keeping with our 'green' renovation.

As for Ian, he's a nice guy and does great work, but he seems to have taken on too many jobs and spread himself too thin. The SAI crew is at my house every day from 7 am to 3:30 pm, but you never knew when Ian was going to show up and how long he was going to stay. Still, I'll be sorry to see him go. I just hope the new guy is as meticulous as Ian is -- but works a little faster. There's still a lot of tiling left to do, especially in the main level bathroom. I'll need to go over the tile design of that room with Rob and the new guy later this week

Rob told me he had picked up a sample of a similar-looking soapstone and was bringing it over to the house so I could take a look. I asked if he had my sample of the Alberene soapstone so I could compare them. He didn't, but said he'd retrieve it for me.

I went over to the house in the afternoon and saw Rob talking to a nicely-dressed older woman in a Lexus in front of my house. She turned out to be a realtor who was curious to know if my house was going to be for sale, as she had some clients who would be interested in buying it. I almost asked how much they would be willing to pay, just out of curiosity, but I chickened out. A similar thing happened when Josh and I went over to the house last Sunday. A couple pulled up in their car as we were walking up the stairs and asked if the house was for sale. It's nice to know people are interested in our house without even seeing what it looks like inside.

After she drove off, Rob and I went into the house, leaving our shoes by the door -- which was much easier for me since I was wearing flip-flops instead of heavy work boots. It was neat to be able to walk barefoot in my house for the first time in months. The floors felt a little rough, but Rob explained that they hadn't been buffed yet. Once that is done, we'll be able to re-enact Tom Cruise's famous lip-syncing scene from Risky Business. (Rob said he and John tried to do it earlier that day, but didn't slide very far on the un-buffed floors.)

Rob showed me the soapstone sample he had picked up that morning in Chantilly. He was on the way back when he called me earlier, so as soon as I asked about the Alberene sample, he pulled over, called the person he'd lent it to, and ended up driving all the way out to Gainesville to pick it up. (For those of you who aren't local, that's a lot of driving in suburban Northern Virginia!) Here's the Alberene on the left and the new sample on the right, along with a piece of the kitchen backsplash tile.
Colorwise, the new sample goes pretty well with the tile -- it has lots of green crystals in it -- but it also has a fair amount of veining. One thing I particularly liked about the Alberene is that it doesn't have much veining, so it is a fairly consistent color. I asked Rob whether we would be charged for the delay if we insisted on using the Alberene, so he called to ask. As I suspected, the answer was "Yes," so that doesn't really leave us much of a choice. At least there is a silver lining. This other soapstone comes in much bigger slabs than the Alberene, so we will have far fewer seams, if any, in the counters.

I noticed that although the floor guys had just finished, well, finishing the floors that morning, there was no chemical odor. Instead of the stinky polyurethane, they used this stuff:
This is Bona Traffic, a waterborne, low-VOC finish. I was a bit puzzled by the warning at the bottom: "CAUTION! DO NOT TAKE INTERNALLY." Why on earth would someone do that? Maybe all floor products were required to add that warning as a result of that old Saturday Night Live skit: "It's a floor wax -- AND a dessert topping!"

You can still kind of tell the difference between the red and white oak floor boards, but it's not quite as pronounced as it was before they stained the floor. You can compare this photo and the next one to the pictures I posted on Friday.
Outside, one of the floor guys was staining the oak strips that go around the baseboard trim. I asked him why they appeared to be a slightly different color from the oak floors, and he explained that they were mostly red oak. He said that it will all blend together nicely when they are done, so maybe it will look a little different once the floors have been buffed.
Out back, John and Rob were working on the posts for the back porch. I'm not entirely sure what they're doing, but it looks like they are wrapping some kind of white sheathing around the supports and holding them together with tape while the glue dries. I'm sure it will look much better when it's done...