2009

Happy New Year!
So far it's been a very happy one for us - we've finally moved in and now we're living amidst chaos. Check out the dining room:

Those are BOXES. I think we had around 250 packed up from our last move. There's even some furniture too:

It's not staying like this (I promise!) Some things are going and others will be moved around. The aluminum group chairs are not good on our floors - they've made that patch of floor over by the desk a mess. I don't know if it's because the floor was recently refinished or if it's because they are old or if it's just the type of wood they are, but they are soft.
We've been doing a lot of painting and most of the trim is done. Check out the stair risers:

More work was done to the bathroom. That's my Dad doing touch up to the plaster:

My Sister has been working on patching and sanding the bathroom window. It just needs a coat of paint. I still haven't decided on a wall color!
We now have our IKEA HÖLLVIKEN sink hung on the wall:

The plumbing is currently hooked up - that was taken just after it was hung.
And here's the new bathroom faucet:

All of our kitchen appliances have been delivered. It was hard getting them into the kitchen and after the first attempt failed, another date was scheduled, two doors (on our mud room) were removed and the appliances are now in the kitchen. All of that and only one huge scratch down the front of the left refrigerator door. Another door has been ordered and is on its way. Nothing ever goes smoothly.

Speaking of nothing going smoothly, I don't think I mentioned the footprint. There was a footprint in the final coat of poly right in the middle of our living room floor. The floor people have been back 3 times since then to "fix" it and it now looks like a weird 1 1/2' (yes foot) square patch in the middle of the living room floor. They are scheduled to come back and completely re-coat the entire living room and dining room next Wednesday. This means that all of that stuff you see in the first photo of this post has to be removed and found another home in the interim! And that the toilet from our miniature bathroom has to move upstairs this weekend (yay!) and that we won't be able to put furniture in those two rooms for at least another week after they are finished. :(

We also have our new washer and dryer in the basement. When they were delivered we realized that the ground was too uneven where the plumbers put the hook-ups. We've also been getting water again in that corner when it snows. Everyone we've consulted seems to think it's ground water. We will eventually have to add a sump pump in the future to end the water issues. As for the washer and dryer - we had to move them over, under the basement stairs and that meant longer hoses (not readily available at most plumbing suppliers.) We finally found 8ft hoses at Sid Phillips. They are not hooked up yet.

Our kitchen cabinets were delivered at least two months ago and are being installed TODAY. I'm very excited to see the results...

snow day

So the title is a little misleading... this post is not about snow even though it is snowing outside. Just thought I'd show off the extent of our Christmas decorating this year:

Yes, that's all.

Here are a couple of photos showing the bathroom's current state:

We actually don't have swine bathing in our tub. That's grout, joint compound, plaster dust - all kinds of icky stuff that's fallen in there during the work. I haven't scrubbed it yet because it's not finished being filthy yet.

The tiles still have haze on them from grouting here - this was just after the grout was finished. We're showing you the current status of the bathroom. It's sort of like reality TV except here you actually get to see reality. The walls need more skimcoat, the baseboards and trim need patching and painting, the overhead lights are not in yet because we need to paint the ceiling first (and can't decide on a paint color.) Reality.

This is our new soap dish embedded in the wall:

It was designed by my Father and Fernando and the nice people at the place where we bought the wall tile (Monumental Marble) made it for us. It's carrara marble and was cut to mimic the shape of the tub. On top, there are two small indentations for soap. It's quite heavy and partially sits on a beam about 2" inside of the wall for stability. If we are lucky, it will never fall out. ;)

Happy snow day!

I'm going to turn into a zombie just in time for Halloween.

I'm still alive! We've lost almost all of our workers in my blogging absence. Stanley stopped showing up in typical contractor style (I'm guessing he has another job or two) and he was sending his people over to work without supervision. The problem with that is that his workers are clueless without someone telling them what to do every moment. Areas that were patched and ready to sand were primed and painted before being sanded. Regular sheetrock was going up on my upstairs bathroom ceiling instead of greenboard. All of this and we were PAYING them to mess up our house. Two weeks ago we said enough and good riddence. All of the major things except for the upstairs bathroom are pretty much finished anyway. We have a lot of finishing work and painting to do and of course the dining room molding repair (I'm dreading this the most.)

We have not interviewed any new replacements for the work left. We've just been doing it ourselves. I'm exhausted.

My Father has been putting our upstairs bathroom back together again - and doing an amazing job. He did a bathroom for my Aunt and for my Mother in the past but I didn't realize that he could skim coat! We're hoping that it will be almost entirely done over this coming weekend.

Fernando, my Sister, my Mother and I have all been working on getting the trim sanded, primed and painted. Here's the foyer trim freshly painted in Benjamin Moore's Winter Snow:

I'm dreading painting the ceilings and walls so we may have to hire someone to do that after the floors are done. I'm not very good with a roller and it's hard for me to get walls and ceilings coated evenly. In our last apartment, I painted our bedroom ceiling. It was so uneven and I never got around to covering everything and painting it again. I would lie in bed in the morning and stare at all of the mistakes.

You can see how gross some of our doors were (right, silly) and what they look like now (left) here:

That's our poor kitchen up there. It's definitely going to be the last room we finish. The new cabinets have been ready for weeks and we're going to just have them delivered soon and installed at a later date.
We finally had our little sink re-installed in the powder closet on Sunday. The new faucet is by Pegasus and is from the Halo series. It was only available in brushed nickel which was not my first choice - I usually prefer polished nickel or chrome. Since we don't have any other major things going in here to match to it, I'm sure the brushed finish will be fine. I do like it and it makes washing hands in this small sink easier because with the faucet so high, there is more space to move around. Unfortunately, we didn't plan anything for underneath the sink... so I'll have to figure something out to make it look a little nicer.

Speaking of plumbing, when we did our waterproofing project (now finished) we found a cracked waste pipe in our yard! Most of the ground happens to be clay and the clay was packed around the pipe covering the old crack and stopping it from leaking. As soon as the dirt was removed the yard was getting a little "wash" everytime we flushed. Luckily, we had an amazing plumber named Christopher fix it for us for a nominal fee. Christopher also fixed the pipes behind the wall in our upstairs bathroom and installed that little sink for us.

Here's a shot of the cracked pipe:

And here's Christopher in the hole fixing it:

How brave is he? That hole was underneath our mud room... cramped and scary.

We also had a vintage ball lamp installed in our vestibule. It's on a motion sensor - which makes it even more fun.

I do have a better photo somewhere... next time.

more covers than linda ronstadt

The electricians are finished. Well almost - they will be coming back to hang two of the fixtures (after they get re-wired.) We had all of the outlets and switches grounded and all of the fixtures checked for safety. They added two sconces in the dining room for two vintage fixtures that we found last weekend. They also ran a lot of new lines for the attic and kitchen and installed a bigger breaker box. We have been assured that our electrical was of the highest quality when it was installed and that it should be safe. Yay!

Now, we just have to replace all of the switch and outlet covers.

Upstairs we have plaster progress! All four bedrooms have been getting the full treatment and are almost finished with their three coats. In the back bedroom (formally of the floral wallpaper) the cracks were repaired and not covered with sheetrock. This was really important to us - I prefer the look of plaster walls to sheetrock. So far, Stanley (Plaster Master) and his team have been living up to our expectations.

We have also officially hired plumbers. They should be starting work later in the week. We can't fix the plaster in the dining room and kitchen until they are finished, so I can't wait to see some plumbing progress.

On the roofing front we're almost finished. There's a little more pointing to be done and the gutters and leaders have to be installed but they have finished the roof and flashing and wood repair along the eaves. It's not going to look pretty and perfect until we have the trim painted but that will have to be a project for next year. Our main priority is making the house livable inside!

New roof without gutters and leaders.

Close-up of the chimneys and shingles/ before the wooden eaves were repaired. The tar on the chimneys is from an old roofing "repair."

humpty dumpty

We hired a plasterer last week. It's all making me very nervous. He came highly recommended and I have been assured that he is a "plaster master." But I'm still nervous. You see, our crown molding is not wood - it's plaster.
The main room I've been fretting about is the dining room. There was A LOT of water damage on the ceiling from the bathroom upstairs. It is still leaking (still trying to finalize a plumber) but not heavily. One of the plasterer's workers removed the ceiling and was able to save the plaster medallion but... there was molding damage! I've been told that it is normal - the water damaged the molding and he managed to save most of the pieces... still, can it be put back together again?

Before.

During demo.

Exposed rafters and pocket doors.

Look up - the missing molding!

No money. Just creepy cobwebs.