15 Minutes

We need to make a decision soon on the kitchen cabinets, so I gave Dane a call this morning to see where things stood. He was concerned about the 8-week lead time on the Crystal cabinets that we met about on Saturday, so he was trying to get us more information about the other two companies we looked at. He asked if he could stop by and drop off some samples of the Executive Kitchens cabinets we'd met about last month. The phone rang just as Dane knocked on the door. It was Steve W. calling to tell me that he was at an Earth Day event at the Senate with a color expert he'd worked with before, and she was willing to come by the house to give us some guidance on paint colors. They agreed to call me in the afternoon to set up a time. Then Dane and I looked over the samples he'd brought. Most of the stain and glaze colors had names like chocolate, mocha, nutmeg, and cinnamon, so we started getting hungry trying to figure out what combination of stain and glaze looked best.
After Dane left, I tried to get caught up with work and laundry. I have developed a deeper appreciation for my washer and dryer now that I've moved back into an apartment. The laundry room is on the other side of the building, which means I have to schlep everything down 2 flights of stairs, go outside, walk around the building and back up half a flight of stairs, and then into the laundry room, which requires a key. Inside, there are only 2 small washers and 2 small dryers, and each load is $2.75 to wash and dry, so it cost me $11 in quarters to do 4 loads of laundry! Fortunately, we scored $40 in quarters from our friend Rob on Sunday night, so that should tide us over for a few weeks. I can't wait to have my own washer & dryer again!

I got a series of calls in the afternoon trying to coordinate a time for Sally Fretwell, the color expert, to meet me at the house. We finally determined that she and Steve B. would get a bite to eat somewhere and meet up with me a little after 5. I told Josh about the plan, and he decided to leave work a little early and meet me there, since he's already been thinking about paint colors. We both arrived at the house around the same time, and took the opportunity to see what was new and take some photos before Sally and Steve arrived. Even though it was after 5 and the SAI crew had left for the day, the stucco guys were still hard at work.


Inside, it looked like Paul and Jim had finished stapling up all the duct insulation between the floor joists. It must have been quite a challenge to work around all the plumbing pipes in the ceiling.
These huge bags in the living room are full of fire-proof insulation for the north wall of the house. Because our house is less than 5 feet from the property line on that side, we are required to have a 1-hour fire-rated wall there.
They had already started installing the insulation in the front bedroom downstairs.
Upstairs, in the master bathroom, I noticed that John had autographed his handiwork. These metal pieces form the framework for the arched ceiling over the tub that John has been working on. "Skerdilajd" is John's real name -- he's from Albania -- but he goes by "John" since even he doesn't seem to know how to pronounce it. (Rob asked him to tell me his real name once, and John made Rob do it instead.)

I also discovered that John's last name is Pali, so my April Fools joke about "Pali Floors" was an unfortunate coincidence. I didn't want to implicate our builders or their crew, so I made up a name by anagramming "April Fools." Since they were in the process of meeting with flooring companies, the word "Floors" seemed a good choice. I just invented "Pali" out of the leftover letters! Oops...

Since the insulation is going in soon and this will all be covered up, here's yet another example of all the writing on the wall. I think this is a calculation of how much tile is needed for the shower in the master bath -- seeing as how it was written inside the shower in the master bath.
When Steve B. finally arrived, we were surprised to see that he had brought an entire entourage with him. In addition to Sally Fretwell, he was accompanied by Susan Colwell, founder of My Green Cottage (MGC), her husband Cerphe Colwell, a local radio DJ, and Shannon King, a web developer/IT expert who moonlights as a cameraman for MGC. SAI and MGC have some sort of partnership, so they have been filming the Steves at different job sites and were interested in getting some footage of our house. MGC also works with Sally Fretwell and uses her low/no-VOC paints, so they also wanted to film her doing a color consultation with us.

Here are Steve B, Shannon, Susan, and Cerphe in our living room.
And here's me with Steve, Shannon, and Cerphe.
We walked around the house with Sally while Shannon filmed us. She had a big bag full of paint sticks and showed us how different colors would work better based on the natural light in each room. Unfortunately, there was a raging thunderstorm outside during most of this, so it was a bit dark in the house, but she was still able to find some nice colors that worked well with the tile we had chosen for the bathrooms and kitchen.
Then they had us film a segment where we spoke with Steve about our project. We had to stand in the upstairs hallway under the skylight because it was so dark in the rest of the house. (Nevertheless, the stucco guys kept on working outside, despite the torrential rain, wind, and lightning). As you can see, neither of us had anticipated being filmed...
As we were winding down, we told Susan and Cerphe that they were welcome to come back to see the progress of our project, since they are local. They were both extremely nice and told us they thought our house was beautiful. That's always nice to hear, especially from someone who works in the industry.
Shannon promised to send me some video clips, so I'll add them to the blog when I get them -- unless we look really dorky...