YAY! Friday, September 2, 2011 was a red-letter day! At 10 a.m., the King County building inspector came to ensure that the last 2 items required by him had been taken care of: the elevator landing doors needed to be auto locked (non-operable when the elevator isn’t parked at a given floor) and the fireplace gas needed to be turned on. They were, so….. we passed!
The bank’s appraiser was out on Friday as well. He wasn’t aware (still!) that the house had grown by 800 square feet and was appreciative of getting the basement floor plan that I brought with me. He asked for, and I emailed, a copy of the finalized inspection on our building permit. I also sent him a “bank package” that I’m not sure he ever saw. It goes into much more detail about the features and materials in the house. It should support the numbers we need to have for the construction loan to convert over to a standard mortgage. Our banker expects to have the appraisal in her hands around mid-week and then it’s just a matter of re-working the paperwork to reflect a revised date and the monies associated with that date… everything else is in order — just waiting on a good appraisal.
Phew… getting the final inspection was such a huge hoop to have jumped through! I gave notice to vacate our apartment early by September 30th (the lease isn’t actually up until 10/31) so the race is on now. Even though we’ve gotten our final inspection under the old belt, there are still things to do before we can move in. I have to start getting quotes from moving companies to not only empty our apartment but also to transport all 3 storage lockers full of our belongings from the other side of Issaquah to our new home! Hopefully CenturyLink will get our phone service up in the next couple of days — can’t get the elevator inspected until we have a phone!
My botched finish plumbing job has 6 areas that need to be addressed and re-done to cause the happiness quotient to rise.
- Master sink supply lines re-positioned to accomodate the sink shrouds that currently won’t fit – 2 locations
- Basement bath sink supply line repositioned to be directly centered on the wall-hung sink, replace crappy metal and black ABS trap pipes with attractive chrome stuff. Raise sinks installation height to 34″ instead of the munchkin height they’re currently at – 2 locations
- Shower arm connection in bath #2’s shower needs to be altered to accomodate the Brizo fixture that the plumber ignored.
- The instant hot water dispenser needs to be installed at the sink in place of the air gap that’s currently there.
We’re waiting for 4 – 16′ pieces of pre-painted casing so that the final doors and windows can be finished in the master bedroom. The entry door and sidelights are now in the hands of the manufacturer, Buffelen, to be refurbished from raised panel to recessed panel as they should have been in the first place.
After the attempted break in, the top panels of both garage doors still need to be repaired (maybe the left one) or replaced (definitely the right one) and then painted to match the others. We’ve been waiting for a plan from QPI who originally sold us the doors — there’s been some communication problem between them and their Oregon facility that’s apparently controlling this repair project.
Touch-up painting still needs to be done. The exterior doors at the deck and basement family room need to be painted the trim color on the outsides (Sherwin Williams “Naturel”) and polar white on the insides to match the pre-painted moldings. Once the entry doors and sidelights are installed, they’ll be stained nearly the color of the maple hardwood on the exterior and painted polar white on the interior. But since we don’t have them back yet, it’s not at the top of my worry list.
The final cleaning started on Friday afternoon but a death in the cleaners’ (and the finish carpenters’) family had everyone packing up only about two hours into the task — understandably. They probably would had to leave right around then anyway because the painter was lacquering the elevator cab and the fumes were just overwhelming.
There’s a bunch of landscaping yet to be completed. I’ve bought the first batch of plant material and had 13 yards of mulch delivered — Daniel and Nacho got started on it Friday morning but there’s more to go. We still need to build a paver patio surrounded by a retaining wall for Jim to use as an escape route or that we could use as a place to sip some tea on a nice day! I wound up having twice as many retaining wall blocks as we needed for the front terraces so at least those won’t have to be added to my ever-expanding over-budget total.
All of the closets need their shelf/rods purchased and installed.
The pantry and utility room storage area need to have melamine shelving purchased and installed.
The master closet needs to have its closet system purchased, built and installed.
I was so disappointed with the finish plumbing done in the master and basement baths that I’m now in search of another plumber to affect repairs. Emmett’s plumber, sadly, has not returned any of the half dozen calls I’ve made to him in the past week. To cover my bases, I just purchased a “big deal” from Angie’s List for 16 hours of work (2 men for an 8 hour day) for $449. They say that they do complete bathroom remodeling and, since they’re a painting/drywall company at their core competency even if they have to damage the drywall to make the changes we need, they should be able to replace, retexture and re-paint those areas and finally make me happy. I’m thinking that it might be a good idea to extend the refrigerator cubby framed wall too so the whole unit can be contained rather than sticking out (I’ll have to get in touch with my cliqstudios designer, Patty, to see about getting an extension for the refrigerator panel as well to even it out). They also indicate they do basic electrical so I may be able to get an outlet in the master closet that I’d forgotten we really need for the oxygen concentrator and maybe a flip-down ironing board… And maybe those folks could also do the closet finishing… I’ll be calling them on Tuesday morning to go over the honey-do list.
As far as finish carpentry, that last bit of casing needs to be done in the master and there are a few other things as well. Putty and caulking of the pre-painted molding needs to be completed, the drawer peg organizers need to be cut and installed, there are a few more pieces of cabinet hardware yet to be installed and all the cabinets drawer and doors still need to be adjusted so they’re straight and travel on their runners properly. Oh, and there are some grab bars still to be installed as well as the last few pieces of bath hardware in the basement bathroom.
A bigger deal is the kitchen floor… our spiffy new, expensive Samsung refrigerator had a defective water filter (yes, a $40 water filter is this evil!) and leaked a ton of water out all over the hardwood kitchen floor. The plumber found it last Sunday but it could have been going on for well over 24 hours before it was discovered. In any event, the entire floor now needs to replaced: it’s cupping and wavy, some of the edges now have finish that’s actually bubbling up. There’s a significant amount of squeaking going on which shouldn’t be happening since the floor was nailed down on its tongues. The fear is that when the flooring is pulled up, there will have been a lot of water that sat on top of the waterproof underlaying that I had used. The water could easily have crept out into the great room or down either hallway and might make the area needing attention much larger than initially suspected.
I’ve been in touch with Samsung’s executive customer relations department and they’ve opened up a product liability claim. I need to send them photographs and a quote for the replacement labor. Serge is getting me a proposal on labor to remove the damaged material and replace it with new boards. Thank goodness I had 19 extra boxes of maple flooring! My only issue with Samsung is that they asked for photos of the damage and, no matter what angle I take them from, photographs just aren’t showing the problems clearly. When you stand over it and look directly down or if you stand at one end of the island and look towards the fridge it’s abundantly clear. We have to see how that can be addressed.
I’m still waiting on the replacement stainless steel vent duct cover from Windster. It supposedly was shipped last week but I still don’t have tracking info or know specifically when it should be here.
Number1direct is sending a replacement top and 3-sided exterior (not the front of the machine’s cover) cover for the damaged Samsung dryer. It appears to be a shipping or storage issue rather than a manufacturing defect so at least it’s not that all Samsung appliances are crappy…
I have to finish the vinyl flooring in the storage rooms — that’s probably about 4 hours total of my time still needed.
The re-arrangement of our cliqstudios cabinetry is working out beautifully! The 30″ wall cabinet and horizontal spice drawer/wine rack was easily swapped out for the 36″ wide 30″ tall wall cabinet. Serge skinned the 36″ innards with maple panels and it looks great. He moved the soft closers that were on that cabinet’s doors to the 30″ cabinet we moved and now everything is as it should be. The only thing I’m still pondering, and I have an email out to my designer, Patty, is whether it makes sense to get a 36″ valance to install at the top of my new cookbook cabinet on the island. It kind of looks bare but I have to see what it will cost for shipping — it’s not the valance itself that will break the bank. Maybe I can wait long enough to just have them ship that and the additional refrigerator panel along with the kids’ cabinet order… they’ve broken ground now so I would have those pieces before Christmas and I can probably wait that long!
I’m off to see if I can’t find closet goodies for the master closet and avoid the $1600 price tag I’ve been quoted. Wish me luck!
Living a Rewarding Life in the Great NW 