It’s been almost a month since my last burst of posts, and it’s been quite a month. Frustratingly little progress in terms of what we can call complete, but lots of work going on there an there, just more slowly than we want. The estimates of our move in date keep getting pushed back. Originally, we wanted April, then it was May, then June. Now I am wondering if June is realistic given how much is still left to do.
One bright spot, we recently found that our city does offer temporary occupancy for projects under construction. This seems well suited for us as most of what is left when we are ready to move in will be landscape related, which ought not to prevent us from living in the house.
Here is an update on everything that is going on.
Cabinet painting
Getting this right took quite a few return visits for touch up and repainting. I spent as much as 6 hours just inspecting all the cabinets for defects that needed repair. Here is one view of defects we found.
Having never built a house before, I don’t know if this amount of touch-up is normal. I will say that lacquer paint is much more sensitive to imperfections than the paint on the walls or trim for example, as it is more shiny. But the cabinet painters were stand-up guys, and did repair everything I pointed out.
Knobs and pulls
Our designers gave us an initial breakdown of what they recommended for knobs and pulls, and my wife has spent the better part of the last 3 weeks looking to “value engineer” the selection, replacing some of the more costly items with similar looking cheaper ones. For example, replacing a $15 pull with a $4 one will save us $1,600 alone! This seems like a never-ending task as there are so many different items to go through.
Tile & stone counter tops
Definitely one of the most frustrating things right now. Our sub-contractor is getting the work done in fits and starts, and it is starting to hold up work by other sub-contractors. We are hoping that we have sufficiently expressed our desperation at getting the work done, to motivate them to make us more of a priority this week. We have the plumbers starting to put on the fixtures this week and the electricians starting to put on the trim, so the tile and stone work needs to get done quick!
And in general, the tile and stone is in a very unfinished state everywhere, with not one area totally complete:
- Guest missing door threshold, shower niche, and counter top
- Powder room wall and counter splash tiled
- Living room needs fireplace tile installed
- Master bedroom needs fireplace tile installed
- Kids Jack and Jill bathroom needs door tile thresholds, sink floor thresholds, and back splash grouted (so the plumbers can install the fixtures)
- Mud room needs backsplash
- Bar needs back splash
- Kitchen back splash needs grout
You get the idea. There is an incredibly long list of about 30 items that need to be done and we are averaging 3 or 4 a week.
Still, what is done, is looking pretty good.
Plumbing
The plumbers start the final plumbing today! We’ve spent the last couple of months painstakingly looking for the best values for our plumbing fixtures. We ended up breaking the order among three companies; we pretty much bought whatever was cheapest through each company – and now we have all the fixtures ready for the plumbers to install, once the tile and stone is done.
Electrical
I’ve been going over the electrical trim options with our electrician for the last couple of weeks, looking to push the cost down as much as possible, and to make sure things are the way we want them.
One of the biggest money savers was moving from seeTouch Lutron wall switches to Pico switches. The seeTouch switches are around $300 each, while the Pico switches are in teh $45 neighborhood. Over 70 some switches, it make a huge difference.
The nice thing about the Lutron system is the ability to have an all off button in the place where you leave the house, so that you can turn all the lights off. (Yes, I am my father, as I now walk around the house turning lights off, and tell people to put on a jacket if they are cold. ) But in some places, like bathroom fans, and closets, paying even $45 for a switch doesn’t make sense. So instead, we are installing vacancy switches, which will turn off automatically after some period of inactivity.
Shower glass
Three of the showers are finally ready for glass, so the glass supplier is coming this week to measure.
Wood floors
Our wood flooring company has been anything but communicative. We just found out today that the flooring material is still held up in customs; we were expecting to have the installation start last week. This is starting to have a domino effect on other things as well. Things that depend on the wood flooring are:
- Stair rails
- Appliances
- Cabinet kick panels
- Completion of baseboards (which also need to be painted)
- Some finish carpentry, like the storage window seat in the yoga room
- Clearing out our storage roll-offs so we can move all the furniture into the house
- Moving from an office trailer into the house
Basically, a lot. It is probably safe to say that as our floor delays, so our move in delays, day for day. The information we got yesterday says the wood should be here Thursday or Friday of this week. Keeping our fingers crossed.
Stair rails
We’ve figure out the general design of our stair rails and I’ve met twice with the guy that will be building it for us. There was quite a bit of work involved in figuring out how much of each component we will need – newell posts, balusters, handrail, and handrail brackets. I didn’t know some of those words before this. I’ve made two trips down to a hardwood supplier south of us and am almost ready to place an order. But we still have to wait for the flooring install on the stairs to begin.
Lanscape / Hardscape
We started the final set of landscape retaining walls.
We are still looking to lock in a landscape contractor. In general, they all seem busy these days and more are ignoring us than returning calls.
Plaster
In addition to the large property line wall, the plasterers have been working on the bits and pieces of the house that need plastering, like the outside stairwell and the bottom of the house where it hits the dirt.
Painting
The painters finished almost all of the second floor (and the basement is done) and are working now on the pool house, and the first floor. They are making good progress and it is nice to see rooms almost done but for flooring.
I’ve probably missed a few things, but you get the point … a lot of activity, but not a lot I can check off our list at this time.