I spent the day at the courthouse reading the Nolo Press book on neighbor law today. Why? The lot next to my house has “red-tagged” seven trees, meaning the owners have applied for a permit to remove them, most likely because they mean to build a house there. Naturally my neighbors and I have opinions […]
Somehow, moving back into the kitchen, music room, and dining room; enjoying home-cooked meals; and cleaning up the entire first floor post-construction has been even more time-consuming than camping in the construction zone was. But I finally found a free hour or so to put together a final set of Before and After pictures for […]
This week, Jon’s been hiking somewhere, and George put in a few half days doing some little stuff. He sealed the backsplash, put a second coat of sealer on the floor, installed oak trim around the hearth, and did some cleanup. Jon’ll be back on the job on Monday. I leave tomorrow for another week […]
Last week, Jon and George got my kitchen working at last. George finished up the undercabinet light valances, most of the other misc. bits of trim, outlets, and switches, and Jon hooked up my faucets, disposal, drains, dishwasher, and refrigerator. On Friday, the two last big things remained: the range and the hood. These were […]
I love my contractor. I almost can’t believe Jon’s fastidiousness. It has really come out in his tilework for the backsplash. Every time he comes to an outlet or switch, he makes incredibly fussy, perfect cuts around it, even though the edges of the tiling will be covered by plates. Each time the backsplash turns […]
David, my violinist, has been incredibly patient about this whole ordeal. (Doesn’t everybody have a violinist?) (Just kidding. He’s my housemate who plays violin, and he’s the cats’ beloved uncle.) He has some of the same incentive I do–that we’ll have an amazing kitchen (and dining room and music room) when it’s all done–but as […]
Jon was right when he said things would start seeming fast–they sure have. I’ve been a bad blogger again/still, so I have some catching up to do. Wednesday two of the Granite Guys came back to finish up the granite work, cutting out the bar sink, drilling faucet, airgap, and soap dispenser holes, fitting the […]
Project managers usually keep track of pessimistic things like delay, critical paths, and occasionally in an optimistic (usually fleeting) moment might contemplate “slack,” which is how much freedom a given task has to start early or late without affecting the overall outcome of the project. Something so rare that its name is stupid actually happened […]
My friend Deirdre once described a list of “petty little yucky picky picky picky problems” she’d gotten back from French localizers, and the phrase promptly entered my repertoire. Last week we dealt with several of them, most notably with phone lines. There was a phone line in my kitchen’s ceiling, and it had an amateurish-looking […]
Jon said that it would all start feeling faster now, and he’s right. The cabinets are now all installed, so Granite Guy came on Friday to measure for the granite. As feared, the job oozed over two slabs into three, so in a twist of the usual “As long as we’re at it” syndrome, Jon […]