Timelines and deadlines

We opted to not have the painters around sanding and painting during the Thanksgiving weekend. With as much dust and mess as it made today, I am glad we made that decision. Plus I really do struggle with dust and odors because of my asthma. It’s been hard coping with that tonight. (Clean up is always done really, really well by AWDB — but the “fallout” is just hard on me physically.)

Now we’re looking at the possibility of having the painters here Saturday AND Sunday next week. These are the only days of the week that we have to get work done at home, especially laundry and cooking ahead. We’re trying to decide what to do. We have to do laundry in order to be ready for the work week, and both my daughter and I have a lot of homework that we get done on the weekend. I’m really not excited about this option.

But — the alternative is that we would have to push out our completion deadline AGAIN. The floors can’t be sanded, stained and sealed until the painting is done. And then the final tweaks on the plumbing and electric, the house cleaning and re-setting the furniture all get delayed…

If we delay  those things again, I have to bump out other things like Christmas baking and decorating, entertaining, etc. I would love to have the time between Christmas and New Year’s to ourselves. Heck. I’d love to have  kitchen I can use by Christmas.

This is not an easy decision. And it’s giving me a headache!!! 😦

 

A quick P.S. on this – Wednesday night –

The current plan is to be out mid-week for a few days. Cats and all. Will put a “vacation feeder” in for the fish and hope that the snake does OK… The painters are working long days and one extra one on Saturday. We’ll adjust.

Home Inspector

Henry thinks that the new granite countertops go nicely with his fur. He also approves of the proximity to watching birds, squirrels and the whereabouts of his humans. I will have a little re-training to do with his “cat-i-quette” once we are occupying the kitchen.

Wish me luck!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Courtesy of the folks at Anthony Wilder, we were given a gift card to the restaurant of our choice. It’s one of the ways that they help ease the stress of not having a kitchen for so long. We opted for a gift card to Clyde’s at Tower Oaks. Since we were not going to have a kitchen for Thanksgiving, we opted to use our card this week. (Actually, since I had to work at the hospital on Thanksgiving Day, we went out to dinner on Wednesday night. It was still packed!)

It was first time we had dined at Clyde’s as a family, but everyone found something delicious for dinner. (We are glad we are past the “chicken nuggets at a restaurant” phase of parenting!) It was a nice change of pace from the microwave, the crock-pot, and the grill, our main methods of cooking right now. We enjoyed Thai-seasoned calamari and artichoke-crab dip for starters, and parmesan crusted trout, shrimp linguine and filet mignon for the entrees.

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And we also saved room for dessert: hot apple pie with cinnamon ice cream, crème brûlée, homemade chocolate ice cream and cookies and best brownie sundae ever. We shared. We liked. We had none for take-home.

And we are really grateful for this extra TLC offered to AWDB clients. Thanks!

Just for fun…

Mark, one of the folks at AWDB office, offered a friendly wager on THE game Saturday. (If you are clueless, that refers to the OHIO STATE vs. Michigan football game on Saturday.) I accepted of course, even though it’s an easy win.

The loser buys the winner a bag of Twizzlers. I let him know that I like the red Twizzlers, not the black licorice. Just in case he wants to buy it in advance. 🙂

Temp kitchen #2

Since our college girl will be home for a week we decided to move the temp kitchen out of her bedroom. For most of the rest of the construction time, we will have (inside) overnight access to the basement. For a few weeks, I can deal with a few flights of steps to find my coffee! 😉

We split the stuff between the storage shelves in the laundry room, and the workspace in the man cave. It’s a little crowded when we’re doing laundry, or when there’s projects in process in the workroom. But we’ll manage.

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Progress!

Things are happening, but I confess to having less patience because it seems glacial in its pace. I would like it all to be done now. However, I appreciate that the AWDB team is taking its time and doing things right! So yes – we will be patient. We’ve got about 3+ weeks to go! But here’s the progress we CAN see!

• The sink and faucet are installed and working
• The footers have been poured for the new patio
• The crown molding is starting to go up
• The fridge is in place!!! (Here was a headache that George, the über-carpenter had to solve: the older, narrow doors on this house meant that the doors and drawers had to be removed so that they could get the fridge inside. Note to self: remember that in future appliance choices in remodeling!)
• The replacement baseboard is up in parts of the first floor.

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Henry (main dude boss cat) has checked out the window overlooking the bird feeders and back yard and pronounced it good. I’m glad that is settled.

Next week the electrical box repair/heavy up should happen and the painters begin their prep. In the midst of that, our college girl comes home for Thanksgiving break, I have 3 days straight of on-call for  the holiday weekend, and we are negotiating how and where we will have Thanksgiving dinner. (For some reason, no one wants to come to the hospital with me and have a cafeteria food! Go figure!)

Door handles

Geez.

Who knew door handles could pluck my last nerve? Well, they have. Since it has become a “you say poTAYto and I say poTAHto” kinda discussion, it is just not worth going on about any more.

Let the record show: I am officially NOT going to decide on what door handles go where, including the finish and design. I’m just not. I’ll use whatever is there once it is installed. And I am totally good with that.

The End.

Christmas shopping…

Look honey, some of your presents came early! 🙂

WOWZER!

The countertops are in. And I love them. Here’s some pictures from different angles.

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Monday was brought to you by the letter… T!!!

T: for Termite Treatment of the perimeter of the house. In the absence of Chlordane, there is some other kind of neurotoxin that keep termites from chewing up the house. I already own Rachel Carson. No lectures.

T: for Terrace. The start of the patio, actually (it’s not terraced — I admit I was reaching for another “T”.) We’ve asked the weather guy to send the rain elsewhere. We’d really like to see that finished!

T: for Timeline. Things are on track for December 7th-ish.

I could probably come up with another “T” or two but I’m too

Tired.