Friday Morning Update

Apparently, Pete stayed late to put in these Billy shelves in the Living Room last night. The extensions above go in this morning.

Down below in the basement, Steve will be working on grouting the tile in the man cave alcove and Central Plant, which looks pretty good for a Central Plant. The tile needed to be fairly small because of the irregularities in the floor, so I got a 3"x6", and it's porcelain so it's very dense and durable. Looks like travartine though.

In a hurry to get it done, I told Steve to just use the same grout we used in the bathrooms. This morning, I selected an alternate that would be better, but he said the Mapei grout is all special order and we have no time. Oh well; as they say in the construction business, it is what it is. And in this case, it's light colored grout.

Billy Shelves Going In

Ikea calls them " Billy". Bookshelves. We picked up a boatload of them last week, and Pete is putting them in place, beteen the carefully dimensioned and crafted walls so they'll fit like a glove. The beech wood color is the perfect foil for the flowering herbs wall color. What's that on the shelves you're wondering? Those tubular things? That's the glue for the wood flooring that's also going down tomorrow and Saturday.

We are entering our last week of construction craziness. On Monday and Tuesday, Ray the Plumber will be coming to install the showers, sinks, and faucets in both bathrooms, along with the water heater. If the plastic laminated arrives on Tuesday the way it's supposed to, Ray puts in the kitchen sink on Wednesday. (What are the chances, right?) We'll see....

Tom Le the flooring guy is supposed to come Friday, maybe Thursday and Friday both, to put the last two coats on the oak floor. Then we start moving in over next weekend, November 1 and 2. Whew; it's going to be down to the wire totally on everything. There will definitely be some stuff undone, that we'll just have to get to as soon as we can. (As if we will still have all the energy; this has been exhausting and stressful, but we need to keep the momentum up.)

Can't wait to sleep in a house that's finally warm for goodness sake.

Sunny Remembrances

Golly; it was so sunny yesterday when I took this picture.

Entry & Kitchen; Just Pics

Monday Catchup

There's the Kitchen "before" view on the left, taken on June 4, and the current view is below, taken from about the same location. Not much different, are they? Maybe when all the finishes are in you'll notice it more. I ordered the wall tile the other day for the backsplash - it arrives maybe October 29, just before we start moving in. Down to the wire, baby.

Notice something else? There's built in lighting again for the first time, too! Dishwasher still needs to go in, the doors on the sink front won't go in until the sink goes in, which can't go in until the plastic laminate arrives, knee bone connected to the hip bone, etc. The trim in the picture isn't blue by the way - just a peculiarity of the lighting.

Steve's preparing to put down the flooring in the utility room too; here's a shot of the Central Plant in the cleanest condition it's ever been. Washing machine and dryer are moved temporarily out into the media room. And dig the light fixture in there too! You can tell, I've been busy, and Darren helped almost all day Saturday. Hence all the progress.

Kian's man-cave has its own light for the first time also. If you look carefully at the bottom right of the photo, you can see a little sliver of the new bamboo flooring that Pete will start installing sometime tomorrow he tells me. Still kinda looka like a basement; we'll have to get some nice interior design work and foraging sessions to finish out all warm and cozy like.


Lastly, the much ballyhooed and long awaited pull-out pantry has been partially installed today

Here it is with three of the four pull out shelves in the partially pulled-out position. Seems like a lot of shelves, for some short things I guess. We'll have to probably reconfigure it a time or two before we can consider it optimal.

So as you can see, there's been much progress, which is really one of the big reasons I haven't been able to update this blog for a while. (Not to mention the haiku blog, which takes time too.)

Where've I Been?

Well, lessee.....Since Wednesday....

On Thursday evening, there was no post because Heather and I went to the final dress rehearsal of a new play at the ACT Theater, commissioned by a friend of mine as a birthday present for his wife. It's called "Becky's New Car", and Charlie Staadecker of Staadecker Real Estate presented it to his wife Bonita, (whom Heather decided she wants her to be her mommy) at a very heartwarming ceremony full of love and humor, and of course, suggestions that more people do the same thing. VERY funny play; we are going to go see it maybe with the Quacks soon- highly recommend seeing it.

But we got home very late and no post that night.

Then on Friday, I took the day off and did loads and loads of electrical work all day long until fairly late, after which Heather and I went to get something to eat fairly late, after which I just crashed, and then got up early on Saturday to do more electrical work, but I also started a new blog that took my morning time instead of this one.

It's called Election Haikus for Starbuck Cards. Why not? Win a $5 Starbucks card and get in the drawing for the big one.

So here it is, Sunday, and H and I need to head for Ikea to get all the bookshelves so Pete can install them next week. Sounds like the flooring guy can come in at the end of the week and get that done, the walls in front are done to the point that Steve can pour the stoop maybe tomorrow if the weather holds, and we're in good shape for the big move coming up. Yah sure you betcha!

Where

Lots of Deliveries, Not as Much Installations

One step closer to being a real kitchen today; Pete installed the oven in the wall cabinet! You can even see the LED timer is on now. It's just the right height that we don't have to bend over to see if anything's ready yet, too. Don't have to the bendover to check on the turnovers.

That deep cabinet to the left of it is the pull-out pantry, and we have the hardware for it apparently, but don't have the cabinet front panel. However, we have about 6 panels that we can return. Something got goofed in their ordering system, and we just have to make a trip down to Ye Olde Swedish Warehouse Uff Da.

The wall cabinets now have the glass doors, too. They're frosted glass with a mid 20th century modern etched pattern. Actually, it's more of an early 21st century international home style pattern (aka Ikea pattern). Again; it's one baby step closer to kitchendom.

In the front yard, Steve has started stacking the blocks for the planter walls. Not much more in the way of siding today; looks like the effort was on the blocks.

And the main bathroom light fixtures came; picked them up on the way home tonight, but didn't have time to install them yet.

And the closet doors from Home Depot finally arrived today; I ordered them way back on September 19, and they had to come all the way from Oregon. 3 1/2 weeks and they look like they were assembled in haste. I'm a bit disappointed, but I also don't think most people will notice. I ordered three more doors for the basement from the same people. At any rate, Pete got one half of the entry closet installed; Heather's closet doors go in tomorrow perhaps. Then it's kitchen flooring time!!!

So what's up? Did you watch the debate tonight? I had a DRB meeting to go to at 6:30 so only was able to catch the first half hour. It sounded like McSame was going for the jugular, but BO just kept his cool, slammed McSame for not denouncing the crazy people who've been yelling "Kill him!", and all in all stayed very presidential.

Only 16 days left until we're supposed to be ready to move in, and only 20 days left until the election. Big days ahead for sure. Take care.

Siding and Flooring and Blocks; Oh My!

The weather surprised us with more sunshine for the most part today; Steve thought it was going to be a day of inside work, but he focused on two big outdoor projects instead. First item; more siding, on the south side mostly, but also by the basement door and Danny's man-cave. The second item was the shuffling of the massive amount of concrete block for the planter walls. No picture, but there's lots of block. Two pallettes worth. And of course, it wouldn't be an outside day without more dirt being moved; he also dug a trench for the footing of more of the block walls. Gonna look good I tell you...

And while Pete continued to make progress on the kitchen, mostly bit-by-bit, the bamboo flooring also showed up today. It's all in Danny's man-cave now getting acclimatized, though I don't know how effective that is when it's still in the plastic in the box it came in. Hmm..

Stopped by Stone Way Electric to pick up a connector so Pete can install the oven tomorrow. Ordered the tile for the basement floor bump where we can't put the bamboo floor. Confirmed the plastic laminate order for the countertops. It's just buy, buy, buy right now.

And I put in Daniel's bedroom light and dimmer switch, and put dimmer switches in for the living room and dining room (hat-box) lights. Painted ceilings last night in the Danny's room and utility room look very good. And it was a Tempero do Brasil night tonight, this time with my buddy Jonathan, who's going to Boston on Thursday for a rowing regatta. We'll be doing yard work and electrical work. Yee ha...

Less Than Three Weeks of Time; More Than Three Weeks of Work?

Yesterday I mentioned that we turned the first lights on in the basement, but hadn't posted a picture for proof, so you might have thought I was just pulling your leg. Not so. here's the north wall of the media room, the big screen will someday be plugged into that outlet on the left wall there. I was thinking the recessed area around it should be painted black so that the screen just pops if you know what I mean, but the editorial board so far says no. Stay tuned.

And that glowing hatbox in last night's pics; here's a small closeup of it. My tennis buddy Barbara says "mid century modern, huh?" Well; yup. It's still got the plastic wrap around it too, which really makes it authentic for me because my mom kept the plastic on her mid century modern lamps forever, back in those days when it was just modern and the year 2008 was considered Jetsons territory.

Pete's been cranking away at the kitchen cabinets; today he was able to install some of the drawers and cabinet doors. The hardware is pretty cool; it's got dampers so you can't slam the doors and drawers shut; they close slowly on their own, nice and quietly. Saves wear and tear on the assembly, and keeps the noise down. Very cool.

And I finally got the sizes of the plastic laminate countertops to order. Dig this; if we went with my original desire to have granite or composite countertops, it would have been about $5,500, minimum, at "profesisonal discount" pricing. For the plastic laminate material, it's less than $200. I'm likin' laminate.

So here's a peek at what the kitchen looks like from the new dining room; (the color's washed out because I was standing next to the hatbox).

That's the breakfast bar sticking out at you in the foreground. The big question is, should we put in the second sink - the small barsink - in the peninsula? It's plumbed, but we haven't purchased the sink nor the faucet. Editorial board so far says no.
Take the poll!

The Hatbox Glows!!

Heather's hatbox is successfully suspended above the future dining table now- all three-way switched and everything. Starting to look like a Sunset Magazine photo, huh?

Our friends Darren and Charl came in all the way from the Sammamish Plateau yesterday so Darren could help me get electrical work started. We spent three hours trying to figure out how Sparky had the place set up to work, and ended up only able to get Heather's Hatbox mounted and glowing. Looks great. I'm just wondering how many times we're all going to bonk our heads on it before the table is put into place. The count is two at the moment; wait 'til Steve and Pete show up tomorrow.

This morning, we found some #*&%@~$ egged the house. A half dozen or so, splattered the living room window and Tyvek walls. Unbelievable. So we lost a few hours today while Heather had to get some cleaning supplies and get everything all mopped up. Dang.

And today, I was able to turn the living room lights into a 3-way switched group, and then I moved to the basement where I hung Kian's bedroom light and the man-cave light, and yesterday I put in all the recessed MR16 wall washers and got the ones in the media room working today. (Another 3-way group!) Also got all the media room outlets installed and plated, along with the quads in the man-cave, though they aren't all powered yet.

Tuesday Darren is supposed to come into town again to work with me, we have some four-way guys to do, and in general find a lot of power because some of the places Sparky has the power running aren't quite easy to find. Hmmm...

That's it for now; another long weekend, including the Sunrise Heights gig last night, and then it's back to work in the morning. Oy!

Cial!

Hump Day; Here We Go

That guy pretending to Wolfgang Puck is Pete, hamming it up for the cell phone camera. And why not? That's his handiwork all over - the wall cabinet is on the wall, the base cabinets are all where they're supposed to be, and it all fits like a cozy pair of socks. It's looking good. That gave us the opportunity to measure for the plastic laminate. Looks like a 4x12 and a 4x10 sheet together would do the job, with two joints. (Those joints are always butt ugly; they need to be where the counter is short, like between the front of the sink and the edge of the counter, not in the middle of the six foot long and three foot wide peninsula.)

This morning, I met Steve on site to go over the layout of the block walls for the front of the house. He was late arriving, due to the need to purchase the wood for wrapping the column at the front entrance, so we had a chance to review that as well. The one column turned out to need about $400 of pre-primed trim. Holy Moses! Good thing there's only one of those on the front of the house! Now I need to seriously think about doing that on the back of the house for the trellis. Maybe not! But then again- it might be the right thing to do....

And remember yesterday I said I didn't see much progress because of the rain? Not quite correct. Steve had been in the front, preparing for the pouring of the entrance stoop and steps, stacking more concrete rubble and digging for the foundation for the block walls that you can now see on the right side there. He also got flashing up for the planters to be up against the house.

And this picture is pretty much totally unrelated. It's pretty much self expalanatory though.

Enjoy!

Little Boxes, Little Boxes...

Hey! It's almost looking like a kitchen today!!! The unpleasant skies of October maintained their drippy 'tude all day, so there wasn't much in the way of outdoor improvements when I finally came be in the evening. Steve did manage to get the Trex decking onto almost all the treads and the lower two supersteps, but I wasn't able to pick up much of anything else outside.

Pete was an indoor dynamo today, creating mass quantities of recyclable cardboard as he dug deeper into the stack of Ikea cabinetry, all in its factory induced state of flatness. Ikea really has an ingenious system for furniture delivery. They've taken all the airspace out. You buy the stuff and it's all packed tightly into neatly stacking cardboard packages, filled with wood and wood-like products, and lots of glue of some kind. The necessary connector hardware is tucked in there somewhere, and all you have to do after transporting it is figure out how to read the all-graphic instructions and assemble it all. It's become such a huge part of everyone I know's furnishings in the Puget Sound area that it's surprising to learn that there isn't an Ikea store almost everywhere. Like Sana Fe, NM for instance; it looks like the nearest one is in Phoenix for goodness sake. Well; we are so blessed...

So Pete sent me down to Ikea today to pick up the two missing pieces that didn't come with the big order - the cabinet above the refrigerator, and the drawer front panels for the unit under the peninsula.

But I did discover a boo-boo today by Pete (I think I did, anyway - he's so much more experienced than me but still...) In the second photo, the wide open cabinet in the middle is where the cooktop goes. Just to the right of it will be a cabinet with three drawers. Currently, that three-drawer cabinet is located so close to the cooktop cabinet that the drawers aren't going to be able to open up; they'll bang into the side of the cooktop cabinet once its two drawers are in place. Oops. Also - that cabinet on the far right is where we might put in a bar sink (everyone in the world says "Yes!" but H says "No!". (I think her thought bubble is "If Howard and Lori put in a bar sink would you do it to?") Anyway, the drain line for that bar sink goes down through the bottom of the cabinet into the floor, and where Pete located the cabinet, it won't be covered by the toe-kick panel. It'll be sticking out there right in front of you and me and everyone we know. )) <==> (( if you know what I mean! Extra points if you get that reference!

Gotta See This

The VP Debate From SNL

Weekend Exhaustion, Chapter Three

Gee; guess what we did this weekend! We painted, then we painted some more, and after that we shopped for more paint and painting supplies, then we painted again until we got tired of it, so we ate dinner and slept and painted again just to make sure we wouldn't forget how much we love painting. This shot of H in Kian's Man-Cave was early on Saturday, after I had cut in and painted the ceiling and wall tops. She gets the less body-twisting jobs of rolling on the walls. (The white is primer, the yellow is the paint.)

Pete on the other hand, didn't partake in the painting fun. Instead, he started on the kitchen cabinets, assembling the two tall units for the wall oven and the pull-out pantry. Funny thing - now that we're getting into the kitchen layout, we discovered two electrical booboos. I spank myself for not catching these earlier- they're both items that I assumed Sparky had figured out and I didn't bother to check them. First, the wall-oven and the pantry had to change places because the power for the oven was located too far to the left. Second, I just noticed the dishwasher outlet is way out of place about three feet to the right behind the sink cabinet. Like I said; shame on me for not catching it sooner, but oh well.

Did I tell you I gave up a golf trip so I could work on the house this weekend? It was the annual Single Malt Golf Tour, the 13th edition. (Check out my boss, exercising the time honored tradition of savoring every drop of single malt.) This year it was the Bend, Oregon area. We were there three years ago on a fabulous trip, and the spectacularly beautiful Aspen Lakes course was included in this year's trip too. This last photo is from this morning, sent by Andrew from Lost Tracks. Looks like another great trip.

So instead of golf, I used the money that would have paid for the golf on the cork flooring, and almost finished painting the basement. Only three weekends to go, and less than four weeks! The countdown begins. And by the way - it looks like Saturday, November 15, will be the Open House. (It's also H's birthday, but she didn't want to include that in the announcement.) So save the date; we'll have it catered by The Brazilians possibly!!! Ciao.

The Deck's Decked!!

Even though it rained most of the day, apparently Steve was able to get enough dry moments to finish the main surface of the back deck today! It looks totally awesome, and I had to open the Nanawall to get the full effect of the inside/outside union. I think H will be very happy.

I also picked up the cork flooring for the kitchen today on my lunch break, from Ecohaus. They gave me a nice professional discount with it, and was able to walk away with the last 5 boxes they had on site. So maybe Pete can get cranking on that soon.

It's exactly four weeks to October 31 today. That's four more weekends. Tomorrow and Sunday will be all about painting. I think Pete will finish off the woodwork upstairs tomorrow, and then will shift into building the kitchen cabinets. I need to get moving on the electrical work with Darren (he hasn't called this week), and Steve will be doing siding outside probably most of the week. It's going to be very busy here soon, and I may have to do the full week off work in a week or two just to focus on making it all happen.

Stay tuned; this is where it gets interesting.

After the VEEPs; The Blog Report

Steve put about half the decking on today, in addition to finishing up the taping and mudding of "his rooms" in the basement so H and I can finish the painting the weekend. The decking looks awesome; though it's a little darker than I thought it would be, he's countersinking each screw neatly and all in all crafting a very nicely built surface. It's that recycled plastic material called "Trex", and instead of the extremely fake wood-look surface, we special ordered the smooth material. Steve says no one he works for ever wants that fake wood stuff, but it's the only thing Home Despot carries, so you see it pretty much everywhere else. The same is true for the Hardi-plank siding. It's easy to get the wood-look stuff, but all the projects Steve does use the smooth surface stuff. Go figure. He also made sure I ordered the Trex in "Winchester Gray", and not the usual brown, which he said always fades. This stuff still looks dark to me, but I'll take his word for it.
And, as is the case in this Tale of Two Brothers adventure, while Steve's outside, Pete's inside doing finish carpentry around the windows, adding the casings and sills. It looks like he almost has enough of the old stuff saved to do the entire upper floor, and we'll switch to a more modern look in the basement I think. I'll have to check that out with the boss to be sure.

I can also go ahead and order the remaining basement doors; a 5 foot french door for Danny's closet, a 6 foot french door for Kian's closet (biggest closet in the house thank you), and two single doors for the central plant and Danny's room. All on one of my two new Home Despot cards.

And this being Thursday night, it was Tempero do Brasil again, this time I finally got to see Antonio and Bryant do "Mas Que Nada", and H even got up to samba a little for that one. It's actually 1:30 in the morning right now on Friday; for some reason I couldn't sleep. Maybe all that spicy but yummy food.

Tuesday, September 30; One More Month!

First, be advised that I am still sick, pretty much as a dog, but our landlord insisted on showing the place today, so I had to leave for that, and I had to be at Danny's doctor's office at 2PM for a joint meeting with his mom. So on the way, I dropped by the house. Of course.

This first shot was from last Saturday; just wanted to get you a pic of the jerry-rigged contraption I tried to describe to paint the ceiling above the stairs. Watch that last step on the way down - or "Mind the Gap" as they say in London.

This next pair of pics might strike you funny if you remember way back when in June when Sparky moved the panel to its new location, which was great, but in so doing he just cut through the existing siding and slammed on the unitstrut and conduit for the mast without much coordination with Steve. One of those sequencing things that didn't really happen. I guess Steve's just used to that, and what he's come up with to deal with it is just a big fat piece of wood (in this case a 2x12), carefully scribed and cut and routed out in back for the unistrut, to conceal all of Sparky's handiwork. If you look carefully at the closeup photo, Steve was pretty accurate with the cutting along the scribe - he even accounted for the metal bands and escutcheon plate. The left side 2x12 will go on tomorrow, and it'll all be caulked nice and neat when he's done. So at the end of the day, it'll look like it's embedded neatly in the exterior skin of the house. Maybe that was intentional and I should just hush!!

And in the interior, Pete was working on the window sills, using - get this - the window sills from the old windows, run through the planer so they're bare wood again instead of paint. Clear fir. Looks great. (Less filling.) He got the windows where the countertop will be first, since they'll be so hard to get to later.

Another issue the Bros have been trying to deal with is that there's a big bump in the concrete floor where the old garage floor was sloped up for drainage and we took out the wall between the garage and the rest of the basement. It's right in front of Daniel's bedroom door and the basement bathroom door. The wood flooring just won't go on there well without maybe trying to bend it, but it'll either crack or flex all the time, and in general be a problem. Grinding it all down right now would be a real difficult and troublesome thing, take a long time (read $$$), and something the Bros don't want to do very much. So we have to do something else there than the bamboo floor. That's all there is to it. It is what it is, as they say. After the doctor appointment, I tried Seattle Tile to see if there's any good rectangular floor tile with a bamboo like color or texture that could work. That would be better than carpet or vinyl or marmoleum, that's for sure. Jury's still out.

On my way back home, I couldn't help but sneak by Home Depot again (I really AM sick!!!), just to browse for a couple things we still need to get. (Planter wall blocks - which to use; exterior lighting - gosh they've got nothing but uglystuff at HD; and bamboo flooring among other things). My eye caught glimpse of some rolls of what looked like red rubber with little bits of what looked like the leftover flecks of that cheap styrofoam packing material - the crap that gets all static-electrified and you can't seem to shake it off into the trash. The little white balls are attached permanently to a red rubber vapor barrier, and it's an underlayment for wood floors being placed over concrete. Hallelujah - I've been looking for something like this ever since the guy at the wood-floor-over-concrete-seminar I went to said you need this kind of thing if you're putting wood floor in a basement. I got 700 square feet of it. Yee ha. No light fixtures though. They hurt my eyes.

By then, I felt like last week's sausage sandwich left on the counter. But at least I don't seem to be sniffling as much. I wonder what that means....

And as I dropped off those rolls of red and white underlayment, I saw Richard (yes- "thumbs up Richard" doing a little home improvement himself across the street. Looks like he's prepping for a paint job here pretty soon. I wonder if they'll ask us over to view brush-outs of the various colors they're thinking of using like we did with them last year.

Move-in date is only a month away now. So many more little things to do, and only five more weeks to do them all. I can't wait.

Quick Stop While Sick

I got myself out of bed long enough to head over to The Black Pearl for some of their fabulous won-ton soup, and stopped by the house on the way to see what got done. Took the opportunity to shoot maybe the last pic of the back of the house before the siding and the decking go on - they arrive tomorrow.

Sure enough, Steve finished the installation of the Kayak Storage Facility door, with the same key as the basement door. How convenient. Next step in that crawlspace is to put the insulation layer underneath the joists. I bought it a couple weeks ago but have been too focused on painting to do that work so far. After that, I'll put in a duplex outlet, two three-way switches, and plug in my halogen light. And then Kian's old go-kart's wheels will wind up being the kayak guides. That's a project unto itself.

It didn't look like Pete had stopped by today, until I poked around in the basement and noticed that yet one more layer of Duram's Fix-All had been layed down on the floor again in various patches in preparation for the bamboo floor that we need to order soon.

All this stuff here and there that no one will ever see, but takes time and extraordinary effort. This simple little 96 square foot addition really has had a lot of hidden required efforts.

But it's all good. And soon - five weeks from now - we should be back in the old homestead. That'll be here before we know it. Well, I'll just keep on telling myself that anyway.

Some Before & After Fun Shots

It's Monday, September 29, and I'm home sick today. Got a bad cold, probably from working too hard on the house and letting myself get all worn out. I went in for a while, didn't feel too bad, but also felt like there was something about to get worse, so I left, stopped by the house, and Steve was building the Kayak Storage Facility door, so I popped over to Frank's and got the same lockset that's on the basement door with matching keys. Then I came home to rest up.

So I thought it would be fun to do some of that before/after comparison thing. Here are a couple from the construction phase to now.

This first shot is looking at what used to be the dining room on the left and the old kitchen to the right.

The "After" shot is looking roughly in the same direction, but what used to be the dining area is now closed off with a wall that will soon have bookshelves, defining the living room as separate from the entry.

The next one up is what Kian's man cave looked like back on May 22, then on June 12, after the furnace was taken out, and then what it looks like today. The flooring is going to be in by mid October. It'll be bamboo - very sustainable, and very light colored to keep it bright. After the floor goes down, the hydronic baseboard heater that's in that box below the window will get installed by Evan Conklin.

That's it from now. Live from Sick Bay; have a great evening.