Week 21: Where has the time gone?

Time flies!

It has been busy, no lie. Between the constant progress at our Boulder Home 285 Martin Drive project, the busy real estate selling season and the “change over week” madness that comes with property management at the end of every July, I’ve dropped the ball on updating you. So bear with me…. there will be a lot of pictures in this post!

Since we last chatted, they finished the wood floor removal and installed new plywood subfloor on top of the old subfloor with lots of screws and glue – essentially curing it of those 60 year old squeaks that, at best, were my burglar alarm.  Three inch wide red oak was installed on top of that throughout the main level, up the stairs and along the hallway on the second floor. 

On the outside, they finished the roof. The black metal porch roof and little roofs over the upstairs windows.  True to the modern farmhouse look and I love it.

Two minutes before the first thunderstorm in a month, the gutters were completed!  (And tested well.)

The garage door is on the way, but in the meantime, we needed a placeholder, so it could be framed in, trimmed out and the garage door opener installed. Check it out!  LOL.  Gotta love the fake wood detail that is painted to look 3D.  I can only imagine what is going through the neighbors minds right now. 🙂  It’s temporary!  Despite what it looks like, I haven’t run out of money (yet).

Then it was time for the tile guy to arrive…  He has 3 bathrooms, the mud room and ‘pet peeve’ of mine to work on.  Ok, since you asked, let me tell you what has been bothering me for 7 years since the kitchen was renovated; One tile was installed with a square cut out of the end of it in the kitchen, close to the base of the island. It took me a couple of weeks to discover it after the workmen had left, but once I saw it, it could never be unseen. The truth is that someone cut the tile wrong. Maybe they had a plan or something… but it clearly went awry and rather than replace that tile, they must have just hoped I’d never notice and saved themselves some effort. Perhaps I could understand if there hadn’t been plenty of extra tiles left over that could have be used to replace this “oops” – but there were!

The master bathroom shower has it’s pan in place and ready to tile. The hold up? I chose a hexagon marble for the floor and subway marble for the walls. After a bit of deliberation (weeks!!!) I also opted to have a border with subway tile put around the hexagon floor. Here is where the issues began. Home Depot sells both these products but the hexagons are like 1/8″ thinner than the subway tile… meaning my boarder would be slightly raised – noticeably so! Since you cannot build up the floor under the hexagons without high risk of setting them unevenly (and it would be visible), the search began for subway tile that was a tad thinner. No joy. A spot of unsolicited advice for the tile folks; Try selling coordinating tile that is the same thickness rather than using millimeters for one, inches for another and not even giving it a decent go at getting those similar enough to use together. <sigh>  

Back I went to the website I found in June that sells all their coordinating tile in 3/8″ thickness. Hallelujah! I expect delivery from New Jersey next Friday.  Thank you www.marblesavings.com 

Aaron worked on trimming around the windows and installing baseboard inside last week. And the load bearing post was disguised as stair-rail beginnings… Which I’m very impressed with.

Earlier this week Ken and I went on my favorite kind of shopping spree – the free kind! Well… truth be told, I own all the stuff already and it came from 285 Martin Drive in March. Trust me, it was never free, but at this stage in the journey, going and picking out existing things from storage to re-use in the house is a beautiful thing.  I hit the storage hangar bright and early with my role of plastic wrap and set about getting the list of things we needed, ready to go. 

The list included:

• Finish kits for the solar tubes
• Pantry and kitchen cabinets
• Range hood 
• Spare tile

And while I was there, I wrapped the washer, dryer and refrigerator in preparation for their trip home in the coming weeks. There is a growing list of things that will not be able to be reused so if you know someone looking for a jetted tub, pedestal sink, single vanity with curved wood front, gas fireplace insert (designed for existing chimney), 6 panel doors in frames or vanity lighting, please reach out and I can take pics for you.

Naturally, it’s cabinet installation time. I was kinda thrilled to see the kitchen coming back together and just as excited to see the makings of vanities in the bathrooms too. 🙂

What’s on the agenda for next week?

Some tiling? Wood floor finishing? Garage door installation and paint? The rest of the trim work inside? More bathroom cabinet progress? I’m not sure. There is no shortage of projects and we are <1 month from moving in, so one thing is for certain; there are no idle hands around here! All I know is that I’m supposed to have picked paint and carpet by next week… And my brain is exhausted.

On the bright side, I found house numbers at Home Depot last night  🙂