Whoa, Nellie!

Things have been proceeding apace recently, the schedule calls for the painting to be completed this weekend, the tile floors to be laid Monday and Tuesday and the cabinets to be installed by the end of next week!

The painters came for the first time yesterday to prime coat everything. I walked in after they had been there for only a couple of hours and I was instantly upset.

Any professional painter will preform certain very obvious tasks before he applies a drop of paint to any surface; He will inspect all of the surfaces to be sure they are ready to accept paint, he will mask off any windows to prevent getting paint on them and creating a terrible clean-up problem for himself later on, and he will remove all of the wall plates around all the light switches and electrical outlets. NONE of these things had taken place and these ladies were gleefully slopping paint everywhere in no particular order.

Three of my rather expensive dimmer switches had paint on them, many of the plates already had paint on them because of the technique these people were using to apply the paint to the wall which was to load their rollers very heavily and then to press hard on them as the rolled creating heavy lines and splattering paint everywhere, including on themselves. They had not even taken the time to cover my new lamp or my chair. I was on the phone at once.

I then proceeded to remove all of the plates from the wall myself while these three "professionals" looked on in surprise as if I was out of my mind. I managed to clean the dimmers of paint and they appear to still slide, but there is nothing connected to any of them so I was unable to check their function. We can only hope.

We have decided to apply the brakes to our schedule and slow down. More care is being applied to correcting the drywall issues and a new drywall crew will be coming out to correct the faults of the first. We have dismissed the painters and are again planning on painting ourselves, this will enable us to control what rooms and when get painted so that other portions of the job might continue if not exactly on schedule then at least with more alacrity than previously being applied.

We will be doing a detailed walk-through of the job later today to find every minor flaw that currently exists and to mark them so the crew can repair them before we begin painting again. This will also give us a bit extra time to await the arrival of our doors. (Lead time on doors is not to be believed!)

Every job of this type hits at least one snag and ours was going along far too smoothly so it was inevitable that we would come up against something somewhere. I'm glad we discovered some of these issues now instead of in a week, after they had spread all of our very expensive paint all over our walls only to have to do it again.

I will be paying much closer attention from now on I can tell you.

WooHoo!

 

We have received our cabinets!

 Though it's hard to tell that from these pictures isn't it?

Trust me.

Odd Feeling Really

Now everything is out of the house, well mostly, and it is really an odd feeling walking in to the house and looking around. The emptiness itself is just weird but the changes are astounding to me. Having seen this place when it was first built makes me compare it to what is going on now, brings up a tonne of memories to be sure, but I have to say that this is an exciting moment. 

The demo is complete. The construction is complete. The texturing is complete. It is time to begin painting. It is time to begin the uphill portion of this project. Painting crews will be on site tomorrow and the priming will begin.

We have added a ceiling fan to the second bedroom, something that I have always thought should have been there in the first place. But when the house was going up Dad did not want to spend the extra couple of hundred dollars they were going to charge him to put the box in the ceiling. Makes me laugh now though.

I mean everything is gone, wires sticking out of walls no fixtures (save our temporary toidie.) and in some cases large holes in the floor. It seems like a ghost town.

Setting up for a safer door.

Closet? What closet?

An empty hallway.

One of the good things is that due to Laura's diligent scrubbing the place no longer smells of smoke. Indeed now it smells of freshly sawed wood and drywall mud. Both things I have always enjoyed the smell of.

You can see the patch at the top of the arch in this picture where one of those big ol' hooks once was. Not flattening out that arch is one of the things that has saved us a few bucks.

Lots of spots where the texture guys have been. I was really startled at how much better I like those windows without the picture frames around them. I was so used to seeing them that way that when we took the trim down I just stood and stared. I am still really pleased by the lack of the trim and can hardly wait until we put new colour on the walls.

This picture doesn't do it justice but you can see that the beam has completely vanished. It's now textured just like the rest of the walls and you just cannot tell it was there. Colour will really do the trick. Pretty close now.

The changes that they have made in the kitchen are the most dramatic of course. These two pictures only partially convey what's been done. The crew that we have been working with has been just spectacular and the quality of work has impressed me greatly. 

In just a couple of more days the cabinets are due to arrive so we are hoping to have this room painted and floored at least but we'll see. we may have to stash the cabinets in the house until such time as they are ready to be installed.

I really do wish we had had the budget to do windows as well but hey, you have to draw the line some where. This room is going to be a great place to gather once it is complete.

You can just see the gouge in the floor we had to make in order to put electricity in the new island. Of course in a day or two more you will have no idea that it was ever there. You can also see the spots in the ceiling for our new magic lights, very very cool indeed! And the new location for the dining room lamp which we thought was positioned badly before. Can't tell it's been moved can you? I tell you these guys are magicians!

Anyway, yes it does feel like a ghost house right now. I echos and the A/C runs funny because there are no vents, and you can't really stay after dark due to the lack of interior lighting, but it is sitting on a cusp. We will be moving the boxes of flooring into the house this weekend to "acclimatize" them and as I say painting should begin tomorrow.

I can hardly wait. 

I keep wondering what Dad would think of all of this.

Prep

 Things look as though they have slowed down but really it's because what's happening is the drywall guys are preparing the walls for texture. We weren't sure this was going to necessary at first, but re-texturing will give us a consistent surface through out the house prior to painting. It's going to be a good thing, it just takes a while to do is all.