In the Closet

Dane set up a meeting for me with a closet systems consultant this afternoon, so I went over to the house a little early in case Rob had anything he needed to go over with me. I was pleasantly surprised to see Dane there, since he's been supervising another project in DC and I haven't crossed paths with him for several weeks. He and Rob were upstairs in the master bathroom, and when I walked in, Rob took the opportunity to show me a problem with the tub filler we had selected. Apparently the spigot is not long enough to reach the tub if it is installed on the deck as we had planned. D'oh!
Rob also wanted to go over the details of the beadboard wainscoting in the other upstairs bathroom, but I was having a difficult time visualizing what he was describing, so I said I'd have to look at some photos online when I got home. Fortunately, the closet guy showed up, so I extracted myself from the bathroom to meet with him. Noel Sweeney is the owner of Eco-Nize Closet Systems, which -- believe it or not -- designs and installs customized 'green' closet and organization systems. Here is Noel taking measurements of the walk-in closet in the master bedroom.

I asked Noel what made his company 'green' and he explained that in addition to the materials they use, their business practices are also more eco-friendly. They don't have a showroom or office -- instead they operate out of a converted farm in suburban Northern Virginia where they use energy-efficient lighting, recycled products, and minimize paper use by limiting correspondence to email and doing all the design work on a computer. He showed me some samples of different finishes, colors, and door/drawer styles. But based on the budget the builders have given us, we'll have to stick to the basics. Ironically, while we discovered the hard way that white kitchen cabinets cost more than wood cabinets, the opposite is true for the closet materials. So whatever design we end up with will definitely be white!Another "d'oh!" moment: We had them install a conduit in the closet in my office so we could potentially put a server in there and network the house. But we forgot to have them install an electrical outlet next to it so we could plug it in. We'll have to have the electrician remedy that at some point...
By the time Noel and I were done with our meeting, everyone else had left for the day, so I locked up the house and checked my email on my phone. There was a message from Rob asking me to get floor and door stain samples to him ASAP. Ugh. We had agreed to test another floor stain color and to determine which stain color best matched our old doors, so I had to make a trip out to Home Depot to pick up some samples. The nearest Home Depot is in a part of Arlington called "Seven Corners" -- which is basically a cute way of describing a horribly congested and confusing intersection of several major roads. It's no fun to go there at any time of day, but I didn't notice until I was halfway there that it was 4:30 -- the start of rush hour.

By the time I got there, it was about 5 pm, and not long after I walked in the door I got a call from Josh warning me that a severe thunderstorm was just about to hit. In fact, it happened while we were on the phone. I missed most of the drama since I was inside a huge warehouse with no windows, but there was lots of rain, thunder, lightning, and even some hail. Josh suggested I stay put until it blew over, so I tried to think of other useful things I could do while I was there. Unfortunately, they did not have a sample of the color of Silestone I needed to look at for the upstairs bathroom. They were also just about to restock all their dimmer switches, so they told me to come back tomorrow for those. I tried to look at doorknobs, but they didn't have samples of the different bronze colors (Old-Rubbed, Aged, Venetian?) on display so I couldn't tell which one we'd want to order. I even struck out with the wood stains -- they only had sample sizes of 2 of the 3 colors I was looking for. I finally got frustrated, paid for my two cans of wood stain, and headed home. I discovered that the only thing worse than trying to drive to Seven Corners during rush hour was trying to drive back from Seven Corners during rush hour in a thunderstorm.