Overall, Day 43 was a very disappointing day. I'll get to that after the positive stuff. I don't have a picture, but the original upstairs bathroom got an exhaust fan installed! This is such a pet peeve of mine. I think building codes should require exhaust fans, operable windows are NOT enough. Coming from a climate of extreme humidity (stinky towels), and seeing a lot of mold in my rental apartments here in Colorado, this issue is a big one for me.
Downstairs got all of the quarter round put on. That's the piece at the bottom. It covers the gaps by the floor and just makes the taller baseboard look more finished. Now it needs the painter to come back and caulk it, and finish the touch up painting bits.
The Water Closet got its toilet paper and hand towel holders. Now it just needs the mirror over the sink, and the fitting where the drain pipe goes into the wall attended to, and it will be done. Oh, and the exhaust fan.
Hand towel holder in the master bath. I'm thinking that eventually we'll replace those electrical outlets and covers with the oil rubbed bronze color. That's a minor detail though, and I want to get over the sticker shock of this job first.
Toilet paper and towel holder in master bath. We debated placement of that towel holder for awhile. The shower is to the left, but we couldn't move it to the left because the shower door would bang into the towel holder if we weren't careful, and it would be awkward to reach behind the open shower door for a towel. Over the toilet was no good because it would also be inconvenient to reach, and would have to be mounted pretty high to avoid having the towels lay on top of the toilet tank.
I'm not too sure about this double towel rack. It seems like if you put two wet towels on it, the one in the back still isn't going to get dry, even with an exhaust fan. We shall see. We'll probably still hang one towel over the shower door wall anyway.
But here comes the big frustration for the day - we specifically redesigned the bathroom so that I could mount the toilet paper holder to the RIGHT of the toilet. No one made sure that the guy who was actually mounting the toilet paper holder knew that, so he put in on the end of the cabinet, like they usually do, but which is to the LEFT of the toilet in this case. ARGHH! I was hoping that for the enormous amount of money I'm paying for this job, details that are of utmost importance to me would not get overlooked. Now I have 4 holes in the side of my beautiful cabinet, and they are right where I can see them Every. Single. Day.
And here comes more frustration, which is NOT ABD's fault. I've been losing more and more patience with the kitchen, as it gets harder and harder to live with the kitchen in the living room, the constant mess, can't find anything because half the stuff I need is packed away, and there is no good place for what I did keep out, etc. Its really getting to us and I finally started to lose it and begged our foreman on Monday to get our kitchen to the point where we can move in by the weekend. It sounded doable at the time, but then the snowstorm hit and we lost the whole day on Wednesday. Okay fine. They tried to get at least the dishwasher and oven in by the weekend. Ron was working on it Friday, and got the dishwasher in (purchased separately through Appliance Factory Outlet) and the darned thing leaked!! I called the store manager who gave me the service department, which is actually a separate company they use. They can come Monday, which is the best I can expect at 3pm on Friday, but they won't give me a 2 hour time window until Monday morning. WTF?? I have to block out yet another entire day for an appliance. I am livid. Ron took pity on me and tried to at least get the range installed, but he didn't have a gas line. He went and got a gas line, only to come back and find out that my power had gone out YET AGAIN (3rd time since the snow). Then he discovered that the gas fitting the plumber installed is actually 3/4 rather than the normal 1/2 inch, due to the 3/4 inch gas line I guess, but whatever, he still has to go back out and get the right size fitting. He did, and got the gas line installed, but by now it was too late to actually haul the range up from the garage and get it installed. So, moving into the kitchen isn't going to happen this weekend. And one more thing, the darned plumber never did caulk the kitchen sink, so now I still have to be careful about getting water around the sink while I still have to do dishes by hand. Ron was going to caulk it, but just ran out of time. I might end up doing it myself this weekend, darn it. The kitchen tile isn't going to be grouted until Tuesday, so the shelves won't go up before Wednesday. The doors *still* aren't fixed for the spice cupboards, so we can't load those up. We can't load up the lower pantry because the water line for the refrigerator still has to be run in the bottom. So, we can put some stuff on the counters, and load up several of the drawers, but we are still in kitchen limbo. Truly, I do understand that mine is not the only job, and the day we couldn't work really threw a monkey wrench into the schedule, but it seems like we are so close and it just isn't getting done. Still, I have to say, the workmanship is SOOO much better than whoever did the previous kitchen and additions, that I know I will be very happy indeed when its all over. Except for those holes in my bathroom cabinet which will bug me to the end of my days unless they become totally invisible. Really, what the heck to you put on the end of a cabinet to hide flaws?? Its not like I can hang a picture to cover it. I'm going to have another margarita...
