One Aging Geek

Friday, July 14, 2006

House progress

There will probably come a day when my life contains more than just remodeling the house so I might post something else here... but not yet.

The tile is done. Done. Finito. All laid in the correct direction and grouting all done. It looks great!

Last night we jammed all the furniture from the study/library and dining room into the breakfast area and living room so the wood floor installers could come pour leveller into the low spots in those two rooms. When we took the carpet up in the dining a couple of weeks ago we discovered there had already been some leveling done. There is about a 1-inch hump in the dining room that was probably worse before that leveling. The wood floor guys will work to minimize it but there's just going to be a little hump there. On Monday they'll come spread the moisture barrier onto the dining room and study floors. They also want to be able to level the floor in the living room but... I don't think we can put the entire floor's worth of furniture into the breakfast area.

Saturday the new cabinets will be installed in the kitchen. That starts that room back towards normalcy. At least the kitchen contents can once again come out of boxes and go into cabinets. But the granite place released the slabs we had put on hold so we're waiting for their next shipment. The tile and counter guy will be out Monday to measure for the counters. With that info and some granite in hand it will take a couple of weeks to shape the counters. Along with the counter install will be the undermount sink install including redoing the plumbing and new garbage disposal.

The big pink couch and a giant chair left to be reupholstered today. The new couch arrived yesterday. Once all the pieces come back from being upholstered I think that takes care of furniture.

Mrs. Geek is doing a plaster texture treatment in the powder room. When she's done with that we'll either have someone install the new sink or DIY. Shouldn't be a big deal either way. I'll put the toilet back in myself.

This weekend will be consumed with assembling and installing the cabinet bases that are going in the library. We want those in before the wood... just because. They're going to be permanent so no reason to have expensive wood floors under them. Also it simplifies our life a bit if the baseboards don't have to come up and be reinstalled on top of the wood floors. If I have time I'll also rip out the sill on the end window in the library and box in the area that will be a sort of window seat. We're finding that most of the inside trim is particle board. Easy to yank out at least. And if I have more time I'll be unpacking the boxes in the garage into the cabinets out there.

We're now at two weeks without a kitchen. It's kind of like living in a motel that has no restaurant, the lobby under construction, and the maid service on strike.

The general grubbiness level is going down as we get time to clean up stuff that got coated in dust from the tile removal. But the chaos level is still pretty high.