 | The painters are continuing their work, and doing a really nice job.
Loving the dark brown in the master bedroom. |
| The deck is coming along. Our 'finish framer' Sage is back to work
on it. He does great work. |
| "Someone" has been using our hot tub at night. They broke
the locking clips. So, we set up a webcam on Mark's laptop to see if
we could catch whoever it is. We also needed to drain the tub since
it'd been about 6 months since we filled it, so we drained it as well.
Bummer is then we don't get to enjoy it either. =[ |
| Electricians are coming on Monday, carpet layers on Wednesday.
Plumbers next week too. Progress, progress, progress. |
| If I had to guess, I think we'll be moving around Thanksgiving. Very
rough estimate. |
| The painters painted the trim on Friday and a 2nd coat on Saturday.
It is absolutely gorgeous. And the best part is that they took all the
masking down, and we have our house again. With all the masking up and
windows covered, it felt a little like we were going backward.
Supposedly they are done with their other work and will have the interior
painted by the end of the week. We'll see. I told Mark we should
use a sliding pay scale based on when they get done. |
| Saturday Mark & I sanded and caulked the garage doors, getting them
prepped for painting. Set them up in the maple leaf room and got them
ready for painting which Mark did on Sunday. We would've set them up
in the garage except they were about 3" shy of the ceiling so we
couldn't nail the braces on top of them. |
| Last week we had a deer come across the top of the driveway and then back
down into the ravine. Mark saw a doe and fawn last fall, hopefully
this was the fawn, all grown up. |
| We put a notice about our condo going up for sale (once we move) in our
condo newsletter and within 12 hours, before the newsletter was even
published, we had a gal call us about the unit. Good interest is good
for us. |
| We're going to stain the concrete on the patio darker to a slate color to
match the house and the slate better. |
| We extended the loan to November 15th. I've come to terms with this
and I'm choosing to look at it like the contingency fund part of the loan is
going to go toward buying time, rather than materials. |
| Finish To Do list count: 60 done out of 251. The done number
goes up slowly, the total number goes up faster. =[ |
| The painters have primed and sanded. They're due back Thursday and
Friday for tack-clothing (to remove the dust) and two coats of paint.
The house absolutely reeks. All of the windows are taped shut so we
can't open them. |
| Mark picked up the forgotten mud-room-to-garage-door and trimmed it out to
look like our other doors. We needed a special fire-rated door there
and none of the fire rated doors were in the 5-panel style of the rest of
the doors. So Mark fixed it, and it looks great. |
| We're both really tired. We've been fighting a cold and are just
generally run down. We're right in the thick of it, and it's hard
right now. We know it will improve, but we are starting to drag.
Work is increasing it time demands on me, so that gives us less time
together and less time for me at the house. It will all be worth it in
the end, but as Mark said the other day, "I think this is starting to
not be fun anymore." We're doing good between the two of us, but
we're both pretty tired and ready for this to be done. And we haven't
even moved or renovated the condo yet. ugh. |
| The work continues at the house. Painters are masking and are ready
to prime, sand, and then paint. To do the doors, they have taken them
all off and accordion-ed them in the basement. |
| The plumbers came back and fixed a leaky valve under my tub and then Mark
finished off the millwork in front of it. Beautiful. |
| We are going to have to extend the loan yet again. We would've been
ready by October 15th, except for the painters not doing their work while we
were gone. Since they're not done, we can't finish installing all the
light fixtures, we can't install the plumbing fixtures, we're kinda
stuck. So, the least expensive painters have really turned out to be
the most expensive painters. |
| Good news is that the neighborhood is up and coming. Check out the
listing for this nearby new house that is going for a $744,000.00.
Here's is the listing,
but I took a picture of it you can find in the pics.
Haven't been inside....
This is somewhat reassuring for us that we aren't over-building and that
houses in the neighborhood can have values like this. Our house is
definitely better than this house, simply from a lot/location
perspective. We have 2.62 acres and no neighbors. I don't know
how the insides compare, but ours has good finishes in it, and I'm sure I'll
get to see it at some point. |
| So Mark borrowed Cody's truck again to go pick up the garage doors.
Remember, they'd thrown them away? He goes to pick them up, and they
give him two sets of garage doors, four doors total. Mark said 'are
you sure these are all for me?' and they checked the orders and there were
two of them. So he took them. Uh, can you say eBay? You
can see what the doors look like here.
We have two doors like the right-hand door pictured, and just four glass
windows (instead of eight) at the top. |
| Mark picked up the bar stools, and they couldn't match better if we'd had
Canyon Creek paint them. |
| The kitchen cabinets, yeah. So we wanted them to be antiqued, beat
up, going with the whole new, old house theme. Except we know that new
stuff that is 'antiqued' often looks like, well, uh, new stuff that's been
antiqued. So Canyon Creek has three 'artisan' packages with various
combos of chisel marks, worn edges, worm holes, simulated cracks, dings,
etc. "..details are hand-applied, each cabinet will vary in
design.." and "...special effects are randomly placed.."
So, we picked one of the packages, and got the cabinets installed, and the
marks are anything but random. In fact, they are quite
consistent. So consistent that when two of the five upper cabinets
were broken, we re-ordered them weeks later and they showed up with the EXACT.
SAME. MARKS. ON THEM!!! This is one of those issues that I've
hesitated to write about because I don't want to expose all the problems
with the house so that when people came over they'd be looking for the
problems and not see the overall result. But the frustration level has
gotten to a point where I need to express it. We'll be working with
Canyon Creek to get some doors that are a little more random. |
| We've gotten so far along in the construction loan that they've cut off
our money. Apparently we have to finish the house before they give us
the last 5% of the money. How does this make sense? So, to the
back-up funds we go! |
| Last week when we were cleaning out the spa to seal the tile I said a
sentence that I don't think I'll ever say again, "Sweetheart, can you
get the toilet out of the shower?" |
| To Do list count: 50 done out of 231. Yes, both the numbers
keep going up. |