It's All Downhill from Here

Where do I start?? Well, moving day came and went. In the on-and-off rain, 4 fearless and wonderful friends came out to complete the two trips it took in the truck to move everything out of the cottage and in to the garage (both upstairs and downstairs). It's packed to the brim! The master bedroom was painted and the floors polished so that the bed could go in. Remember the lovely mural on the wall? That's now covered up with a gorgeous green and lined with brand new base boards and polished hardwood floors.

The electrician was finally able to finish all his work after the rain stopped, so the inspector was called out to give the ok to board everything up. We failed....

There were three things that needed to be fixed, two of which were easy and my GC stayed late to do it himself that night so the inspector could come out the next morning. The third thing that was a bit tricky was that darn load bearing wall. He said the structural engineer's plans didn't match what was done to support the header beam in the ceiling, so he failed us.

The good thing was that he ok'd us for the electrical and plumbing so that the drywall could go up and the painting could be done so that the cabinets and tile could go up.

The drywallers finished yesterday, the painter is here today and the cabinets and the rest of the tile are going up tomorrow!!

Here's a picture of the kitchen as it is now. It looks 100 times better than it did already! You can't even tell the ceiling was uneven. The ceiling is white and by the time I get home from work, it should be a lovely green!

Here's a picture of the tile in the bathroom. They did the floor and the wall without the plumbing so that the last part of the job will finish in less than a day (which should be tomorrow). I can't get over how gorgeous it looks! Every day when I go in I stand there at the door and stare at the wall tile in awe!! I can't wait to see it all done!! When I think of the pinkness that was this bathroom a mere 4 weeks ago, it's amazing to see the difference a small change makes.

Yesterday I found a web site that is having a contest for best remodeling project. I'm going to submit both the bathroom and kitchen "before" and "after" pictures!

This time tomorrow I should have the semblance of a kitchen forming in reality (rather than in just my head). These next few days are going to be really exciting with how quickly the last important bits are going to come together and finish the transformation. All the roadblocks are behind us now, so it should all be downhill from here!

T-minus 5 days until move-in day

The countdown until move-in day is on! It's Wednesday tomorrow and moving day is Sunday. What's the significance? The shower isn't going to be done by then. Ooops!

The electrician and plumber were both well on track to finish last week. But then on the last day of the electrician's schedule, it rained, and apparently he can't work in the rain. Then the next day it rained. And the next. And it's Tuesday and STILL raining!! So, not only can the electrician not finish his work outside in this weather, this holds up the city inspection, which holds up putting up the dry wall, which then holds up everything else from moving forward. Gah!

On the upside, here's a photo of my new gas line for my gas stove! It's routed along the ceiling of the basement, so this is where the picture is taken.

The bathroom floor tile and part of the wall tile is done, which brings me hope that my showering abilities won't be limited for much longer. More photos tomorrow!

The Wall is DOWN!

The tent is down and all the bug-bugs are gone...and today that darn load bearing wall came DOWN!!

Our visit at lunch produced a very nice scene. The wall (luckily the correct one!) was gone and no major problems were found. The two interesting items of note were that the ceiling height is different between the kitchen and laundry by about 1/4". Second, there is a jog in the wall where the kitchen wall meets the laundry room.

This won't be a problem, luckily, because that's where we planned the fridge to go and it will fit nicely in that little corner. The pantry cabinet that will go next to the fridge will stick out a bit, but depending on how that looks it might stay as-is or we'll have the "Wizard" carpenter cut it to fit.

No work is planned for tomorrow, but adding the header and finishing off the structural work will be done on Saturday. The rest of the linoleum from the kitchen will go out on Sunday.

We're movin' right along!!

And the demo begins!

Last week was a whirlwind of activity! Escrow closed on Tuesday and I got one set of keys, we got permits from the city for ALL our work (we hadn't provided the electrical plans, so this was a nice bonus), and started demo yesterday!

Here's a before photo of the kitchen. The only improvement in this image is that there are no rotting bananas on the counter!

As the guys started wielding their hammers, dust started floating around the kitchen, as you can see by the white blurry specs in the after image here.

They took out the fridge and cabinets above first, then worked their way around the room.



Soon the sink was coming out. This was time stamped on my camera at 11:45...they started at 8:30! It's amazing how quickly and easily things come out.

Here lie the remains of the appliances...(in the background you can see the Budget truck we rented to pick up Pete's stuff and the Ikea cabinets, which I'll get to later).

The fridge is sitting in front of the washer and dryer in the soon-to-be former laundry area.

So, after all the fun at the house, we still had to go to Pete's to pick up his mattress and other items that couldn't fit in my car. And while we had this truck we were planning on getting all the kitchen cabinets from Ikea. So off we went to Ikea.

On our last visit to Ikea a couple of weeks ago, we finalized our cabinet layout and put in a draft order so we thought this pick-up visit would go quickly. For the in-store style we selected, you buy and take-away the items that day. So, down we go to the register, get a huge, long receipt detailing all the items we just bought, and head over to the "Furniture Pick-Up" area. And due to our large order, the nice man said it'll take about a half hour to get everything.

Yeah. TWO hours later they finally call us. Big winner! Our order filled 7 carts full, so one at a time we started loaded the truck.

But we hit a hitch. The first was that they couldn't completely fill the order. Two of our items were not in store and we would either have to come back at a later unknown date or go to another Ikea to get them. So, while Pete diligently loaded the first cart, I sat with the return guy to work out getting the items from the Hayward Ikea.

So on we go with the loading.

Then came the second hitch. On the second cart, I noticed that one of the large pieces looked darker than the Birch cabinets we'd ordered. We reviewed the inventory list and verified that everything indeed said "Birch." But this was definitely not Birch. It was more like an Oak. So, I marched back in to the store. One of the sales women came out to look and agreed that indeed it was their Oak veneer and not the Birch. We realized that the box had actually been damaged and the label had come off, so was incorrectly tagged.

So back to the same return guy to return this one and place the order at the Hayward store.

And back to the truck. This is what the load looked like when we were done. We got to the store at 4 o' clock. We drove out of there at 7:34pm.

And on to Pete's! We filled the rest of the truck with as much stuff from Pete's apartment as we could, then headed down to Sunnyvale to unload. We filled the garage up, loaded some things in to the room above the garage, then returned the truck and headed to my place to crash. We were in bed at 11:45. That was one looooong day.

Construction will commence on Thursday after the tenting is finished. Besides the little bathroom wall, the linoleum in the laundry area will come up and a crawl space access in the closet (soon-to-be washer and dryer closet) relocated to the pantry (soon-to-be coat closet). Then I think the electrical guy and plumber come to do their work.

Here's a link to more demo pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/oliviaryu77/Demo?authkey=j7WFse_oKV4&feat=directlink