SonicChicken blog

I’ve been pretty busy at work and home since Christmas, and I can’t find the USB cable for our camera. Both things have kept me from blogging as much as I would like, especially regarding our remodel. But a few things have happened recently that are definitely worth posting.

First, we’ve finished our new bathroom! (Why is this a big deal, you ask? Because I share this house with my wife and two teenage daughters. Having two bathrooms is HUGE news!) Our plumber was out about two weeks ago and finished hooking up the shower/bath and the toilet. And I finally got all the vanity outlets, lights and switches wired up, along with the exhaust fan. I still have one fluorescent can light in the ceiling that’s burned out two tubes within a few months, which I need to investigate.

Second, our cabinet maker got all the trim and touch-up work done on the cabinets and installed the foot rail under the bar. (Here’s where I’d really like to insert a few pictures. Why in the heck did Kodak have to use a proprietary cable on their camera?!?) He also got the under-cabinet lights working reliably–looks like they were drawing too much power, so he installed some lower wattage bulbs. The lights haven’t given us any trouble since.

Third, our big fancy stove is finally 100% operational. (The two “extra low” burners hadn’t worked since we installed it back in December.) It took the service company four visits (and 3 parts orders), but they finally got it working on Tuesday.

That’s all the big news. I also updated the punch list and got to mark two rooms (the new bathroom and the nook) as “complete”. There are also some rooms/areas that are very nearly finished: entry, great room, kitchen, laundry/utility room, bedroom hallway, and the kids’ bedrooms. We still have quite a bit of work to do in the game room (the old dining room), garage, attic, and the exterior of the house.

We still a lot of work ahead of us, but the house is getting more and more comfortable.

Our hood is wired up, so we have lights on our fancy new range!

I was so pumped about the range in my earlier post that I forgot to mention that we got our washer and dryer hooked up again. Being able to do laundry at home is another one of those things that people take for granted. (Hmm, I think I’m going to have to do a post on that theme.)

Louie, who did our gutters, came by yesterday and installed the last of our downspouts. Rick was also out yesterday afternoon and got the kitchen tiled, including all the appliance bays. Lots of finicky corner- and edge cuts, plus he had to deal with the floor transition. When Barb and I got home, we spent some time discussing tile designs for the entryway with him. Between the fiddly tile work, the time we spent talking, and the fact that we didn’t come to a decision on the design, the entry didn’t get tiled last night.

No worries, though. Rick is going to have one of his guys out today to grout the floor tile that’s been installed so far, (about 90% of the total). Priority areas are:

1. Laundry/utility room — We really want to be able to do laundry at home again!

2. Bathroom — One of the chores that’s beginning to annoy me is dumping the water from our condensing furnace. Once the bathroom tile is grouted, we’ll be able to install the vanity, and then we’ll be able to plumb the condensation line into the drain system. No more hauling 5-gallon buckets of water, hooray!
   

3. Kitchen — We’ll be able to install some of our appliances once the kitchen floor is grouted, although we’ll still have to wait for the backsplash grout before we can bring in the new range.

Looks like we’ve got a busy weekend coming up. We’ll be putting in baseboard behind some of the appliances (like the refrigerator), and installing as many of the appliances as possible. If the backsplash in the kitchen is grouted by Friday, we should have or kitchen up-and-running over the weekend. w00t!

We passed frame inspection! Woo hoo!

Lots of things are going to happen pretty quickly, now. Insulation goes in tomorrow (Wed). Drywall starts Thursday. Our plumber and HVAC people are also scheduled to be on-site Thursday to hook up the gas and fire up the furnace, respectively. (We need to have heat for the drywall tape and texture, which is scheduled for all of next week.) Our cabinet maker has already finished our cabinetry, so he’ll bring them down from his shop late next week or on Monday, Nov 12. Of course, this project wouldn’t be complete without at least one major scheduling glitch: our tile guy is going on vacation for two weeks, starting on Nov 14. We’re trying to work something out between the tile setter, the cabinet maker, and the drywall crew, to see if we can get the kitchen sink and counter tops done before the tile setter starts his vacation.

All the stuff above is being done by tradespeople. In the meantime, we have a few things to do as well. Tonight we need to prep for insulation, so all the exterior walls, (including between the house and the garage), need to be cleared and any outstanding wiring issues need to be finished, (e.g. telephone/network wiring, running the few remaining branch circuits into the breaker box). Wednesday night we need to make sure that the entire house and garage are completely empty, so that drywall can be delivered in each room and installed on Thursday morning. We’ll need to pick up a pair of high-efficiency filters for each of the HVAC returns by Thursday afternoon, so that our furnace doesn’t get ruined by drywall dust. This weekend (probably Saturday) we’re going to meet with our tile setter and figure out how many tiles need to be bullnosed in which direction(s), so we can get that started next week. Once we’re ready for tile, I think we’ll resume working on Barb’s quilt studio.

The end of our project is looking a little closer… Well, the end of phase 1, at least.

Construction started on our remodel/addition project six months ago, today. We were hoping to be finished by now, but at least the end is in sight! I’m almost done with the wiring (finally!), and we’re just about ready to jump our next major hurdle–rough frame inspection. Once we’re past that, we’ve got about four weeks until our kitchen is operational, so we ought to be able to host Thanksgiving this year. Hooray!

I haven’t been posting many pictures, either here or on our flickr remodel collection–either I can’t find the camera when I need it, or (more typically) I’m just too busy to shoot any pics. Yesterday was an exception. We had our GC send out a crew to finish some of the framing yesterday, and I managed to get some photos of (what’s left of) our kitchen:

I also managed to get a picture of the laundry/utility room before the doors were installed:

The stucco foreman came out to look at the project yesterday. He gave us a rather long list of things that needed to be taken care of before he could put up the lath. But the good news is that he had his crew set up the scaffolding early so that we could use it to finish sheathing our gables. (That’ll be much easier than hauling sheets of plywood up a pair of ladders!)

Work remaining before rough frame inspection:

• (us) Finish rough electrical–mostly the kitchen, which I can start now that the kitchen framing is done;
• (plumber) Finish rough plumbing–water heater T&P hookup, utility sink vent reconnected;
• (us) Take care of the issues listed by the stucco foreman;
• (insul.) Insulate the original west wall of the house (insulation crew is scheduled for next Monday);
• (us) Sheath the wall after insulation is installed (rain forecast for Tuesday, so Barb and I will do this Monday evening);
• (us) Sheath the rest of the gables (after rough plumbing is finished);
• (stucco) House wrap and lath for stucco.

We’ve got a busy weekend ahead of us! But hopefully we can be ready for our rough frame inspection by late next week, which would leave us five weeks until Thanksgiving. It’ll be close, but I think we can make it.