So here’s a picture of the oven/cooktop wall of cliqstudios cabinets in our future kitchen. Looks nice, right? Well…
You can’t see it yet but directly above the 2-drawer base cabinets that will house the 5-burner gas cooktop will be a really cool glass and stainless steel vent hood. It has a stainless “chimney” cover so no cabinet has to be installed to hide it. The problem? The mechanical people installed the vent pipe end 6-8 inches too far over to the left! How frigging hard can it be to look at a cabinet installation diagram and see 18-36-18-33 for cabinet dimensions? Not to mention that I also went over it verbally with them — Wayne says he was there when they measured too.
But WAIT, there’s more! (Sound like any infomercials you’ve seen lately?!) The gas pipe/shut-off that’s going to power the cooktop? Well, it’s 4″ too high… oh, and that’s not all… directly centered on the joint between that drawer base and the 18″ base cabinet to its left there are… wait for it… 2 electrical outlets. Ack!
Sadly, even that’s not all…
The plumbing that’s supposed to come up into the island was installed/positioned incorrectly because the plumber used cabinet numbers from the installation legend instead of their actual dimensions to calculate where the supplies and drain would go. Then he moved it almost a foot in the right direction BUT it’s still almost a foot off! Surge (finish carpenter) cut a hole in the subfloor at Wayne’s direction and, although the piping is PEX and is a little flexible, it can’t tolerate the severe bend that would be necessary to get where they need to end up. Some days just aren’t easy…
The tile prep work began today with installation of hardi-backer board in the master shower. I was highly concerned to see that the sheets of backing were being installed without staggered seams! You would never do that with sheetrock or subflooring — I’ve never seen it done with tile backing… According to the tile company, it’s fine to do because they fiberglass tape the seams and go over them with mortar similarly to how you would go over drywall tape with mud. Then they apply a thick waterproofing material — so they maintain that this is common practice and is perfectly sturdy enough to prevent cracking of tile or grout. I’ve registered my concern with Wayne and he’s on the hook for 7 years for things that would make the house inhabitable. I know this doesn’t meet that standard but I have his number and I won’t be afraid to use it.
Surge and his brother shared with me today that this same tiling crew installed a shower pan liner incorrectly in their last job by nailing through it just above the floor level. It’s supposed to be no punctures less than 8″ from the floor — I’ll need to keep a close eye tomorrow since they’re to the point that the master shower pan is probably going to be one of the first things on their agenda in the morning.
Western Pacific was supposed to have delivered the millwork today — we ordered all pre-painted casing, baseboard and pre-hung doors. Interestingly enough, all that came today was the doors and they aren’t needed yet at all! I noticed that there’s a fair amount of dings on the frames and that the doors were shipped without any protection on their just-painted surfaces. I saw a fair amount of scuffs, some of which were actually indented into the doors or their frames, that are going to have to be taken care of. I spoke to Wayne about it earlier this evening and he is going to call Dave at WestPac to come out and take a look.
Surge noted that some of the paint quality doesn’t look good on some doors — I’ll need to get him to look through them with me so I can be very specific with Dave about what needs to be addressed. Wayne says that the trim package should be delivered tomorrow (or possibly Wednesday) as well — I’m hoping it is delayed by a day because there’s currently no room in the garage to store the stuff. We need to move things around but there are a bunch of steps that need to be taken in order for that to happen.
Daniel, Emmett’s laborer, did 3 hours of grading work for us in anticipation of pouring the driveway. He’s supposed to meet Wayne at the house tomorrow morning to go over the next thing that needs to be done: a thorough cleaning of the house interior. At the top of the list is scraping all the drywall mud remnants off the subfloor, sweeping it up and going over the entire thing with a vacuum — he’ll concentrate on the main floor first. Surge made a good point: Emmett has the subfloor covered with plastic before drywall and painting starts. That way, when the messy work is done, they just scoop up the plastic and tote it to the dumpster. No additional expense associated with hours of scraping, sweeping and vacuuming…
Once Daniel gets done with the interior, there will be an exterior clean up and then work on the deck/ramp begins. Wayne should have the material take-off tomorrow so we can get the materials ordered and delivered when Daniel will be ready for them.
Then the hardwood flooring needs to be hauled into the house to acclimate AND free up space in the garage for the trim that’s supposed to be delivered in the next day or so. I think I’m going to rent a commercial dehumidifier to run in the basement for a couple of days to try to dry out the slab — the moisture readings shouldn’t be higher than about 10 when you’re going to install laminate or hardwood on a surface but the basement is hovering in the high teens. Even though we will waterproof the entire floor before putting down the moisture barrier underlayment, a dryer starting point has to be better…
Tomorrow, Bob the plumber is supposed to be arriving first thing to take care of moving the hot/cold supply lines and the drain that purportedly couldn’t be moved because of a joist in the way under the floor (not!). He also has to extend the shower drains in both the master bath and bath #2 because the shower pans are so deep that, if left where they currently are, there would be a veritable funnel from the shower edges to the drains. Not good — really hard to navigate an angle like that while keeping all 4 shower chair wheels safely on the floor. It’s not a place we’re willing to compromise!
Sound Heating has been called back in to move the kitchen hood pipe and relocate the gas pipe for the cooktop. Fortunately, in the drawer base, there’s a huge gap between the drawers where the pipe can sit, not be in the way and not get bumped around — all they have to do is move the pipe down about a foot and, since it’s behind the cabinet, the wall patching doesn’t have to be perfect. Once the vent pipe has been moved over to be centered over the 36″ cooktop cabinet there will be a patch job awaiting on the ceiling. Wayne says the painters should be able to do that repair and then touch it up so that I won’t know it was ever there. I hope he’s right because I’m not likely to keep my mouth shut if I can tell a repair was done.
The electricians are supposed to be coming tomorrow as well — they were going to be 
starting the outlet and switch installation but they’ll need to address those pesky outlets behind the cabinets first. Since I bought the recessed can trims and bulbs, they can also get to those right away once they move the kitchen outlets and get through with the other outlets and switches they’re to install. I also have about 20 surface fixtures already in-hand that I can take over whenever they’re ready for them. I’m still waiting on my kitchen pendants (ELK Geologic — see the picture! I love these lights!) and I have a few fixtures I’ll be ordering tonight. The replacement Progress fixtures arrived earlier this afternoon and I’ll be opening them to check them out in a little while — I sure hope the replacements are in perfect working order so I can mark that off my waiting list.
I’m working on the July construction loan disbursement package to send off to Kathy, our banker, before I turn in tonight. I am floating an ungodly amount of money on our credit cards right now — I need to beg her to process and then send the money directly to our checking account so I can get a couple of mammouth bills paid on the 4th. It should be do-able if I send her an error-free package so I will be checking and re-checking.
Yesterday, Jim got into the house for the very first time! We’d gone to dinner at the Melting Pot with Ariane and Jeremy (Jacob was with his favorite sitter, Rachael) and, afterwards, we stopped at the house. I’ve been taking tons of pictures so I don’t think there were any real surprises but he did comment that he thought it felt smaller than the pictures had represented — he said that was a good thing! Obviously we couldn’t go to the basement because the elevator isn’t in yet and there’s no exterior path that anything short of a billy goat can navigate… soon!
Tonight Wayne said that he thinks the house is going to be done by the end of August! That would be an absolute miracle and is dependent on all the little pick-up stuff getting done in a timely manner so that the finish work doesn’t lag behind. Jim’s reaction to this good news is that it can’t happen quick enough. We’re both so very tired of the elephant herd that lives above us here in this apartment… and the noise from the traffic can really jolt us out of our much needed sleeping time. The good thing is that we have a lease here until October 31 should we need it so we don’t have to rush if something isn’t going as it should. In the meantime, I guess it’s time to start researching split king adjustable beds so Jim can start sleeping nearly sitting up if he wants but I can still sleep almost flat — that should be the only thing I have to think about over the next month or so but I’m thinking it’s just the tip of the iceberg!
