Pianoless Foyer

It's been a while, but that's because the physical work on the house has ended, so we're pretty much not doing anything else house-related. Um, no. It's just that we've been pretty busy, what with life and everything, that we are trying to do a better job at balancing house and life. Abby took a ten-day vacation to Greece with her mom, I escorted a group of 40-some fellow Buffalo Bills fans on a 1000-mile round-trip pilgrimage, and of course there's ballet and soccer and school potlucks and work. But stuff's going on, I assure you!

First off, we've submitted our paperwork to the Maryland Historical Trust. That long process two years ago, with all the approvals and denials and back-and-forth about the color of our roofing shingles and the width of our doorways? We filled out the forms, sent in a bunch of annotated pictures of various places in the house where there had been consternation on their part over what we were going to do, and are now sitting, crossing our fingers like we did two years ago. Except whereas the process then ended with their blessing for us to go ahead and begin work, the process now ends with a big fat reimbursement check. Needless to say, this process will hopefully end in celebration, just like that one did... Just without the use of sledgehammers on Christmas Day.

But in the meantime, life goes on, and progress has happened. During a weekend spent with my parents at the house a couple of weeks ago, my dad and I put together Abby's closet with one trip to Home Depot and about $40 in materials. (Sure wish other stuff worked that well!) It was a nice feeling of accomplishment, with my dad directing me as if I were working on my carpentry-for-dummies merit badge. But in the end, it looks/works great, and I had fun with my dad in the process. (Afterwards, he commented that it'd be nice to come over once and not talk about what's wrong or still needs to be done with the house, but I'll believe that when I see it; I'm convinced those are two of his favorite conversation topics!). Unfortunately, we weren't able to install the hot-water tap. The contractors had said they'd do it for $200 and I balked at the cost. So of course, when I call an independent plumber, they quote me over $600. I turned around and asked the contractors to help, like we swore we'd never do... And am still waiting for them to respond... And I don't blame them!

I did have one experience with lightning-quick response from the contractors since I last wrote. You may recall my grandmother's piano had been sitting in our foyer for a LONG time, since the contractors said they'd get around to moving it downstairs when they had enough guys on-site. That's because it arrived from Buffalo when we had no floors downstairs. Well, it had been six months since we moved in, and still the piano sat in the foyer. With Abby nearly ready to come home from Greece, I wanted a big "wow" for her, and knew a closet wasn't gonna cut it. So I cut a deal with the contractors: you have your guys come over to finish unfinished drywall in the storage area downstairs, trim the door to that room, and drill for and install the doorknob, and I'll pay someone else to come move the piano. I had never seen such a quick response from them. The workers came over the next day-- a day on which I *cough cough* felt too sick to work ;) -- and after a quick trip to Home Depot to buy five 8-foot-long sections of trim, the work was done. The same day, I had Johnson's Piano Movers come by and, after 45 minutes of figuring out how exactly the instrument could/couldn't fit down our semi-circular staircases, I suggested they take it all the way around the house and just go through the back door. Sure, they had to tip it on its side to wedge it through the mud room and had so little clearance once inside that removing the night-light from its socket made all the difference, but we now have a piano in our family room. And, way more importantly, we have a pianoless foyer. (It's actually really weird still, even two weeks later, to stand in such a "wide open" entranceway. And I still have to force myself to go down the west staircase, after being so used to it being blocked by the piano and its adjoining piles of stuff.

Speaking of Johnson's (as in the piano movers), one not-so-good thing that's happened in the last little bit is that more than half of the bushes I planted this summer have died. You may recall the eight bushes I planted on the hottest day of the year, when Abby and the kids were in North Carolina and some schmuck had just run off with my new bike. Four were from Merrifield Nursery, four from Johnson's in Olney, and all were expensive. Luckily, or rather, hopefully, buying expensive plants means buying warranteed plants. Now I just have to find a time to dig them up and replace them; maybe when my parents are over again next weekend. So three of our four Arborvitae survived-- only "Eileen to the Left" is kaput; but everything from Merrifield's died, including the really neat curly-haired cypress. All of 'em still have the tags on them; now I just have to dig out to receipts. But digging the actual plants out will be well-timed, actually, since we have a ton of bulbs that can go into the ground at the same time.

So that's the update for now. Lots of mundane stuff, but that's what happens when you actually live in a house, right? Little stuff, like last night was the first time we turned on the fireplace; i sat on the couch next to it and read "The Giving Tree" to Lola before bed. And our freezer door opens only half as much as it used to when the fridge door closes, thanks to a shim the contractors put under it; it's effectively leaning forward because of the slant of the kitchen floor, which used to be a porch floor, and there's only so much you can do to fix it. Thinking of getting childproof locks so we don't have to deal with a defrosted icebox every time one of the kids gets some juice. And this weekend is the big test: our first house party, for Isaac's birthday. In the meantime, though, just life in the house. And so far, it's working. :)

Wait-- where did the piano go?
What will we do with a pianoless foyer?!

 

The piano rolling down the sidewalk by the kids' rooms...

...and then through the backyard...

...then into the mudroom...

...and into the family room...

...where it belongs!  FINALLY!

It's Over

It's over, folks. Fini. 27 1/2 months after we closed, 2 years to the day after we received state approvals, 21 months after the sledgehammers started swinging. But also five months after we moved in, and a year after our desired date of completion. But it's over. All work requested of our general contractor has been completed. Let me repeat that, but louder: ALL WORK REQUESTED OF OUR GENERAL CONTRACTOR HAS BEEN COMPLETED. THAT FELT GOOD--er-- that felt good.

Final touches were done on the kitchen in the middle of last week: grouting the backsplash tile (black, Abby's idea-- surprised me, but looks great); painting the top sash of the far window that had, for some reason, never been painted; getting up under the little notches with black paint to give added depth (Abby's idea too, she wasn't sure I'd like it, but I love it). Standing in the far end of the kitchen at night, it feels like an old-fashioned modern French kitchen, if that makes sense. I love it.

And downstairs, a third of our mudroom has been gobbled up by the new closet that encloses the water heater. Actually, a lot more of the mudroom is left than we thought, and we might actually be able to hang some hooks on one side so as to get some coats up on the wall. We still need to paint it, but whatever-- it'll be white, like everything else down there. (My only complaint: there are too many angles in there now, but it had to be that way to allow clearance for the required access panel.)

There are a couple of things we realized that have not yet been done. For instance, the door between the guest room and the storage area has been hung, but the doorknob is uninstalled and there's no trim inside or out. When I mentioned this to Abby, she could not have shot back more quickly her desire not to involve the contractors in even one more project. Her take is that if we ask them to do something, they'll just pass it on to the subs, charge us too much, and take too long. Instead, we got the phone number of one of the workers we know who has done excellent work, and we'll ask him. (We've already asked him to help us with an odd job at the old house.)

The latter part of last week was spent trying to get the invoice out of them. I told them countless times that we'd want an invoice to turn in for the historical requirements, yet it constantly seemed like a surprise to them-- as if keeping records was anathema to their way of life. They sent a first draft invoice, which was hilarious because it just mimicked the loan numbers, which we all agreed were just placeholders. Plus, they included things like floors and doors and appliances-- things we purchased ourselves. After three drafts, we finally got an acceptable (if imperfect) invoice in my inbox on Sunday. But not after being pestered for more of the money we owe them. Abby had given them $5,000 midweek, and we're disputing some of their final charges. We say we owed them a bit under $8,000 before that payment; they claim it's a bit over $9,000. So I gave them $2,000 more on Saturday, since that was undisputed and we really need that invoice. We'll see what happens next.

But really, apart from the last $900 (or $2,300, depending on whose side you're on) and the movement of our piano from its resting place in the foyer down to the family room, we have wiped our hands of Servicez Unlimited. It's really a pity-- we started off loving Rory, then Mark took over and things went for a roller-coaster ride that ended with, if not hard feelings, a definite desire never to deal with each other again. I'm not so sure that they'll ever respond to a call from us should we need to make use of our warranty... and I'm not so sure that the two years didn't start when they started work, which, when you think about it, was more than two years ago now. Regardless, it may take more than the already-chipping exterior paint for us to call them again.

Things are not done. There is still a lot of work to do. We have a long road ahead of us with paperwork, with landscaping, with living in the house. But this part is over. We no longer live in a construction zone. We can unpack boxes with the knowledge that they don't have to be repacked-- possibly for decades. We can sit on the couch, and stare around, at OUR (technically) COMPLETED HOUSE. And yep, the allcaps there were deliberate.

White on White

With Abby and the kids in North Carolina for the week, I've been left to my own devices. And that means, in the last four days, I've made three trips to Home Depot, spent fourteen hours painting, and have somehow reinvigorated our contractors. Don't ask me how on that last one, because if I knew, I'd kick myself for not having done whatever it was a whole lot earlier.

Just like Adam Duritz of Counting Crows,
I have stepped into a fog where no one
notices the contrast of white on white.

First off, what I'm doing myself. Painting. And more painting. We have about three miles worth of trim in our house, and all of it is plain white-primed wood, just ready to be finished. No idea why it was put in prior to being painted, but I'm not about to pull it off piece by piece in order to make the painting process quicker, as my cousin Tim the contractor suggests. (Tim the out-of-state contractor, I might add; otherwise, he'd be Tim my contractor.)  I know pulling it off would speed up the painting process, but I have nowhere to do the actual painting once that happens-- no basement, no yard that isn't entirely mud (and would therefore likely force me to clean the trim after painting it), no workhorse things (isn't that what they're called?) to set up on the street outside. So for this project, it's the slog of alternating between a paintbrush and a mini-roller, laying on the ground and climbing ladders and choosing a shirt to ruin with paint-- my old, huge Albany tee, in this case.

The painting is satisfying up close, because I can see the paint going on wet, but frustrating from afar. That's because, after eight hours of painting on Saturday, I stepped back and saw pretty much no change at all. White paint replaced white primer. (At least all the furniture was moved away from the wall and my Albany shirt was sufficiently messed up, so I could prove to neighbors passing by that I had actually been doing something the whole day!) However, on day two, things changed. Only three hours of painting on Sunday left me with completed trim-- two coats-- throughout the entire upstairs. And since it's high-gloss, while you can't necessarily see the difference, you can feel it. Just run your hands across the door frame on the way to the kitchen, and instead of a blunt, matte surface, your hands are greeted with a smooth, cool surface that says "people might actually live here!"  Monday night I started downstairs, and after three hours I stopped, having completed a first coat in the bathroom and mud room-- that's it. Holy cow: whose idea was it to get trim?

This afternoon I'll have a choice: go back home and keep brush-painting the as-yet unpainted surfaces, or stop by Home Depot for a fourth time in five days to get a new roller so I can do the second coat. I tried the trick Abby told me about-- wrapping the roller in cellophane and sticking it in the fridge-- but rather than keeping it wet and usable, like the paintbrush, it just hardened the roller into a latexy rock.

"Now real people can use me!"

Well, while that excitement was forming in the refrigerator, something was actually happening just a 90-degree turn to the left. Yes, contractors were in our house, and they fixed the problem with the range hood-- namely, that it was positioned about nine inches above the range itself, so as to aid denizens of Munchkinland in their cooking travails, should they ever need to make use of our kitchen. In their defense-- the contractors', not the Munchkins'-- the range hood had been placed level to the bottom of the cabinets, so there was a pretty line from one side to the other. But then there was that whole pesky not-being-able-to-reach-the-back-burners issue to deal with. Rory called me at work, asked me a bunch of questions pertaining to the things on our list, and surprised me when he said he saw what I was talking about-- meaning he was actually at the house. His being sent out is probably a sign that I have pissed Mark off enough that he wants to shut me up, but I think that's a good sign. Especially since when Rory's on the scene, things get done.

It all probably emanated from my frustrated email last week.

Mark + Rory: What is going ON? No one has been here for at least ten days. Meanwhile, we're living in a construction zone, and people are downright laughing at us. We would be too-- this is beyond ridiculous. There is NO acceptable reason your guys were not here this week. NOT amused. We need action immediately on the items we emailed you with already three times. There are NO excuses. Gregory + Abby

I'm not usually an emphatic capitalizer, but come ON.  Actually, I bet it came from the fact that I copied Rory on the email, rather than just sending it to Mark; that's worked in the past, and I don't know why I had stopped doing it. Whatever reason, something was done yesterday, and a large piece of drywall was left on our front porch, so who knows what else they're planning for this week?

Other than painting and the stove, the only other movement on the house has been self-initiated. After seeing the constant influx of cricket spiders and regular spiders and fruit flies and now wasps inside and out, I made an executive decision to get us some pest management. Terminix came out and sprayed the place, and now there are clumps of dead little bugs in the corners of the bathroom that I have to sweep up every day. I was told to wait two weeks, then call for another round, at which point everything should be dead. The exterminator was amusing-- he started the appointment by telling us how he's pretty sure he and his friends used to get high in our house back when it was abandoned (then apologized if that offended us, which hopefully you know it wouldn't, especially since he's not the first to tell us he'd done that!), then told us our house had an inordinate number of bugs in it, finishing up by asking if he could grab a ziploc bag to take a few back to the office, since there was a specific bug-- teeny tiny white ones-- he'd never seen before. Always ones to be unusual, we are.

I also finished the row of bushes planted over the last two weekends by filling in the holes with nine bags -- 360 pounds -- of topsoil. The holes were the result of taking huge clumps of rock out of the bed. I guess I could have left 'em in there, but we want those bushes to grow, and I don't want rocks I left in the ground to be the reason all those bushes may get stunted. And as far as stunted bushes go, there's one issue I've been avoiding: our front yard.

They're gonna have to dig it up. And someone's gonna have to pay. A few weeks ago now, Mark was telling me that he was fighting the inspection issue with the county, because the inspector had looked at the retaining wall, regardless of their records. Rory concedes that he probably should have called to follow up with the inspector, who had been there to look only at the footer, but that he definitely had done the inspection. I didn't believe Mark 100%, but I do trust Rory. Thing is, Mark mentioned the inspection while noting he had explained to the inspector how it "would be unfair to have to charge the homeowner $4000 to re-dig."  No response from me, other than quiet bewilderment. So Rory mentions this time that they had feelers out to get quotes on the dig. So that sounds like they're at least trying to get the cost down... But I feel we shouldn't have to pay at all. It's not our fault, and although I'm now unconvinced that it's entirely the contractors' fault, it's not our fault. Similar to how I expect not to have to pay for the patching of two spots in the porch roof where recent downpours have revealed leaks, this was not a repair job-- it was a job from scratch, and we shouldn't have to pay to fix their mistakes.

But something tells me what I think ain't what's gonna happen. Sigh.

So for now, I'm gonna focus on painting enough that it looks like something was actually done when the fam gets back, and hoping the contractors do enough that it can be a decent surprise to both me when I get home from work every day and Abby on her return. Hey, stranger things have happened. Like, for instance, work restarting this week.

The Money Issue

I wanted to call this post "The Money Shot," but thought that would get too many hits for the wrong reasons.  And also, it's not nearly that exciting.

An earlier post of mine referenced that Tom Hanks and Shelley Long movie "The Money Pit," a movie about two crazy people sinking all of their money and their relationship into the renovation of a house, with terrifying and hilarious consequences.  I had mentioned that this project wasn't a money pit, but rather a time pit, since it was pretty much on budget, yet way, way behind schedule.  Well, that's still the case, but we've basically hit our wall.  Yes, we now officially have no money left.  Creditors beware.

I realize I may be overreacting here.  Some people are used to being in debt, whether from credit card bills or IOUs or whatever.  I am used to having a mortgage and some student loans, but I have never not paid a credit card bill in full, and have always been such a good saver. (Some would say I'm downright miserly, although I prefer the term "frugal.")  But this week, we've hit a wall.  And that wall is partially our fault, mostly necessary, and entirely freaking me out.

You may recall our meeting with the contractor in January where we decided we would be paying for all the remaining materials to ensure reimbursement was still available from our loan before it expired mid-February.  Well, that decision proved worthwhile, because all the materials magically appeared at our doorstep, from tiling to wood flooring to toilets to light fixtures.  What also showed up was a Master Card balance of $24,000, and that was fine because it was balanced off by a reimbursement check for $22,000.  No sweat.  My bank has no brick-and-mortar branches, so any deposits I make have to be made either by mail or by scanning the check in and sending it online.  Well, the limit for the latter method is $3,000, so I had to send it in.  Ten days later, as I'm wondering why the check is not showing up in my account (it usually takes 3-5 days), I get the check returned to me in the mail, along with a letter from my bank telling me that because the check was made out to "Servicez Unlimited and Gregory Wahl" they were unable to deposit it.  "Not a big deal," I think, because I'll just pass this check on to the contractors to pay for services rendered, and ask the bank to make the next check out to me alone.  We owe the contractors about $13,000, so I hand it over and tell them it includes a $9,000+ advance, which should pretty much cover everything else we're going to owe them.  Then I call Patty at the bank, who proceeds to tell me all checks have to be written out to me and the contractor together.  Can she write "or" instead of "and?"  No.  Can she direct deposit the check?  No.  In other words, when the next check, for $14,000, comes in, it'll once again be made out to "Servicez Unlimited and Gregory Wahl," and once again will be undepositable by yours truly.  

In the meantime, Chase would like its $24,000, so I attempt to muster up all of my money.  Seven grand from Citibank maxes out my home equity loan.  Ten more from savings pretty much empties that out, save for what we'll need to pay the mortgage.  And that's it.  So for the first time ever, I'm going to have to carry a balance on my credit card, and I'm not excited about that in the least.  Because we all know how this whole procedure has gone timewise, and there's no guarantee even that $14,000 check will materialize any time soon. That's because I have a more-than-sneaking suspicion that we have to have some sort of municipal inspection to certify the job's complete in order for them to release the final amount, and although we've made great strides in the last three weeks or so, we're still not completely done.

In addition, it looks like Pepco wants its money too, although not from us.  I guess the electrician set up the account, and now Pepco put his name and info on the bills, and is hounding him because (surprise!) he's not paying the electric bill.  (As an aside, the bill is $250 a month-- more than we've ever paid in DC-- since we're pretty much heating the neighborhood, what with all the holes in our walls...)  He apparently contacted Lee frantically, because Pepco was threatening to shut off power and he didn't know how to reach us.  Of course we'll pay it, so I called Pepco to sort things out.  The phone call was a bit ridiculous.  After explaining that my electric bill had mistakenly been issued in my electrician's name, I asked if they could put my name on it instead.  Heck, I can give them my credit card number now and pay the thing in full, plus set up automatic withdrawals.  Nope.  I need to go to the Pepco office in Forestville (FORESTVILLE?!) in person with documentation proving I own the home.  What?  Truly, I do not need to venture an hour out of a major city to deal with an electric company do I?  "Oh," says the guy on the phone, "I guess you could go to the office in downtown DC if you want."  D'oh!  I chalk this mistake up to the fact the guy's in a call center in Alabama or India or something, and doesn't realize how inconsequential the state borders are around here.  Only at the end of the conversation, though, does he casually throw in that I could just fax the documents in rather than trekking down to the office on the same day I need to run to the Azerbaijani Embassy to get my visa and then schlep myself out to Dulles to fly out.  Yeah, guy, thanks for that late addition.  I hung up, printed and faxed the document, and it was all done in about three minutes.  Sheesh.

Okay, so Forestville doesn't look as far on this map as it is psychologically,
but you understand that faxing is a much better option, right?

So where we currently stand money-wise is at the end of our loan, with no more credit line, with no more savings, with a balance on our credit cards.  It's not like we're broke, and that's making things even more frustrating.  When we started this process nearly two years ago, we had to put $50,000 cash into an escrow account to prove we had the financial wherewithal to complete the process.  In theory, if we were to flake out of rehab, they'd use that escrow money to complete the job themselves-- whoever "they" is.  But since we're done with the loan, and pretty much done with the project, that idle money is just pissing me off, because I know it's sitting there (earning like a quarter of a percent in interest) while I'll be paying something like 18% interest on my credit card debt-- something I only have because their check won't work in my bank.  But I have no idea how to get it back, and no idea whether it too requires that final municipal inspection-- and neither does the bank.  They'll "get back to me" on it.  Oh, and as if to rub it in, we get a mystery check for $900 in the mail this week from Montgomery County.  Apparently it's a "brownfields property-tax credit."  I don't care what it is-- it's an unexpected $900, and I'm all about it.  Only it's arrived soggy, and to the wrong address.  (How is it that the people responsible for my property taxes don't know the right address to my property?)  One or the other of those issues has made this envelope come about six months late.  The check is dated August 3, 2012.  It also says it's void after six months.  That means it was void as of February 3, 2013-- three weeks ago.  I called the county and they were as puzzled as I was as to why it came so late, although they're the ones who verified that, no, it was not a mistake and, yes, it was supposed to come to me.  Although to 9618 Dewitt Drive, not 9618 Dewitt Avenue, to which it was addressed.  A new check will be issued shortly, although that $900 could have been used very well presently.

I've never understood the theory of charging a tax to someone who had no money.

This all feels rather ridiculous.  So many people are out of work or have massive medical bills or are otherwise down on their luck.  Meanwhile, we have a second home for which we spent inordinate amounts of money on countertops and wood floors and a designer closet, and can't make one credit-card payment.  I understand these are truly first-world problems.  But it is what it is, and I live in the first world.  A month from now, when I'm on vacation with my family in Florida, this will all seem like a distant (or at least recently-dealt-with) memory, but for now I'm pretty freaked out.  And those of you who know me well can understand, because I'm the one who runs across an airport five minutes before my flight to grab free food from the airport lounge rather than pay six bucks at the kiosk at the gate.  I'm the one who buys the small cup at McDonald's and volunteers to go back and forth to get the refills.  Heck, my upcoming vacation includes airline tickets paid for entirely by airline miles, and lodging provided in a house Abby's family owns-- not exactly disposable-income luxury!  So yeah, this is foreign territory for me.

That said, all will be well.  Eventually.  Eventually...  Right?

And the Floors Fall Through

I knew it wasn't a good idea to write such a positive entry yesterday.

Remember everything I said yesterday?  Scratch that.

We didn't fall through the floors; the floors just fell through.

So those are three different ways I could describe all the things that happened today with the house.  Shall I enumerate?

1. We're stuck in traffic on the Rock Creek Parkway this morning, making the poor decision of driving to work since we could come in late due to the "weather" in the area.  We get a call from Jim at iDesign.  The bathroom tile we ordered is partially out of stock.  We need about 200 square feet of it, but the manufacturer doesn't have that much left.  Jim called us to ask if it was okay that the tile wouldn't be delivered until February 12.  We should have all of the tile in the same area of the house from the same shipment, because since it's a natural material it could vary from one shipment to the next.  But if we wait until February 12, there's no way to have anything else go in until then, and the bathrooms really need to be nearing completion at that point, if not completed.  Executive decision: have them send us everything for the first floor, so we can get going on that, and then once the next shipment is in we do the second floor with it.  Then, at least, we can have two full rooms completed (the bathroom and the mudroom), and go with Mark's bottom-up approach.  We haven't heard back from Jim whether this is possible, because he needs to make sure they have enough for the whole downstairs portion, but I think it should work.
2. After dropping me off, Abby heads up towards the house.  Her plan is to run by AllEcoCenter to get the name of the floor she really likes, just to see if iDesign can match the price.  Turns out even AllEcoCenter can't do that; it's out of stock until at least March.  Unlike with the bathroom tile, this isn't something we can wait for.  Panic.  She had planned to head up to Home Depot afterwards and buy paint for the kids' bedrooms, since it's gonna be warm for the next couple of days and she could take advantage of painting weather without having to worry about drop-clothing the floor.  Instead, she needs me to look up flooring stores in the area so she can start from square one.  Luckily, there's this crazy block in Rockville, starting with iDesign on Nicholson, where apparently every flooring store there ever was is located.  (I remember wondering why Delaware Avenue in Buffalo had so many car dealerships; wouldn't one be worried about losing business to another next door?  Then I learned in Human Geography class that the set-up was purposeful, because if everyone knew you could buy cars on one street, they'd just head there and were be sure to buy from someone on the strip.)  Anyhow, she didn't have much time, and after two stores considered turning back.  She considered not going to a third, because only 15 minutes were left before she had to turn around to pick the kids up from school, but went in and loved the first two samples she saw.  "It was meant to be," she said, because that's what she says, and because Jimi Hendrix's Watchtower was on the PA.  Only problem was that these samples were $12/ft.  She proudly told me on the phone how she showed them the sample from AllEcoCenter, told them how much it cost, as asked them to beat the price, without letting them know the one she showed them was unattainable in our time frame.  Good girl!  (We'll hear from them tomorrow.)
3. I can't use my cell phone at work, because I work in a "SCIF," which means "sensitive compartmented information facility."  Basically, since we deal with Top Secret Compartmented information, they don't want people bringing electronics into the area to bar against potential compromise of data.  Those of you who may have been unfortunate enough ever to reach any of my voicemail messages will remember the long, detailed message about when I could be reached at what number, solely for this purpose.  (This is why email always works best for me, since I can get it everywhere.)  Well, apparently the cabinet delivery folks decided not to heed my message, because when I was walking out of the Metro at about 5:15 I noticed I had a voicemail on my cell from about 3:00 asking where we were.  Yep, nobody was at the house to sign for the cabinets, so they weren't delivered.  I was furious, and called Mark asking what went on.  He gave a few excuses, starting with "I'm at the hospital" (his wife is sick) and ending with "I didn't think they would come because of the weather."  But when it came down to brass tacks, I can't find one single email I sent him telling him the delivery would be made between 11am and 3pm, and that I needed someone there.  So it's my fault, and hopefully everything doesn't get screwed up because of it-- remember, we are scheduled for a Wednesday and/or Thursday cabinet install.  I bring up the voicemail issue because, although it's my fault no one was there, the delivery company left one message, on my cell, and called it a day.  They had $15,000 worth of merchandise that someone obviously needed, and didn't think maybe they should call another number?  I had my office phone, Abby had her cell, and I was on email; they had all that info, both from the voicemail message and from the order, but no further effort was made at communication.  Not happy.  Used the "F" word several times as I entered the basement.  Need to fix this first thing tomorrow morning because, conveniently, the delivery service closes early on Mondays.
4. The fact nobody was home also affected our shower-tile shipment.  The UPS guy didn't find anyone at home, so he left a sticky note and took the five boxes of tile from GlassTileOasis.com back to UPS-land.  Luckily, Mark assures me that people will be at the house all day tomorrow, so when the man in brown comes back, the boxes should hopefully leave the big van.
5. And to top it all off, when I did get home, Abby and the kids were upstairs talking to our renter, Jamie, who was telling them that the dishwasher is leaking.  It's never leaked before, so of course it's going to start now.  But you know what?  The basement bathroom faucet's all jacked up, and the basement kitchen faucet's pretty much controlled by a poltergeist, so we called Grayton Plumbing (at 544-4366, a number I still know by heart from when we originally finished this house) and they're coming out for all three on Thursday.

So that all sucks.  But there was a bit of-- if not progress-- at least follow-through as to other projects we're expecting to work out this week.

1. Things are getting closer to us.  Okay, so the cabinets and the shower tiles only stopped by for a visit before going somewhere else, the tracking for our vanities shows they've been shipped.  It's a private shipping company from Brooklyn making the trip down, so I'm expecting a call any day now to arrange for a drop-off.  
2. Mark called Abby this morning to say Washington Gas wouldn't come and set a meter until we opened an account.  Abby emailed me at work to ask whether I could do that today at some point.  I dropped everything I was doing, called Washington Gas to create an account, and arranged for someone to come out and set the meter on Wednesday, all before replying to Abby and Mark within minutes.  Granted, when I was talking to Mark about the cabinets after five this afternoon he hadn't read my email yet, it was done and someone will be there on Wednesday.  Unlucky for them, Washington Gas thinks it's a cable company, and gave me a rough window of 7am to 5pm for the install.  But once they leave, the heat will be on.
3. Speaking of gas service, I called Acme Stove today to see about getting our fireplace done.  I keep calling it an "insert" but what we really want are no-vent logs.  We went a long time ago (weeks? months?) to the Acme Stove near Tysons and got a good idea of what we wanted.  I feel bad because these guys work on commission, but I don't want to shlep to Tysons when they have a store in Rockville, just up the road from the street-o'-floors Abby went to today.  So Rockville it is, and we'll meet with them later this week to look at what we want our logs to look like.  Only one thing: the guy mentioned sometimes people "can't stand the smell" of the logs, and my wife gets migraines.  Whatever, she'll deal.

4. 

   Glass tile in "Arctic Blue" for the
   first-floor bathroom

   Tiles for the walls in the downstairs bathroom are ordered, courtesy of HomeDepot.com.  (And I even used my MyPoints link and got 8 points a dollar on them... which I would be more excited about were it not for the fact that I'm going to be getting approximately 12,000 points... for the downstairs bathroom walls... which means I spent $1500 on them.)  You guests better notice those damn walls when you're taking a leak!  They're actually twice the price we thought they were, because Abby thought they were priced by the square foot, but they were priced by the tile, and each tile is only 6"x12".  But this is something we've had set for months, and going  back to do further research would be entirely demoralizing.  So they're ordered, and I'll use my points for a nice dinner-and-movie date with my wife, after which we will come home and use the first-floor bathroom just to enjoy the tiles.

Sigh.  Hopefully, tomorrow I'll have more good news than not-good news.  But movement is really all I need at this point.  Movement, and floors.  Floors would be swell.

Come to Jesus

I know I've had you all on pins and needles since the last post, and I'm happy to report that things appear to have improved markedly since that frustrating emailing session last week.  And although I'm proud that Abby and I stuck to our guns and toughed it out meeting with Mark, the real breakthrough was most definitely spurred along by something that happened about 100 miles up I-95: our loan was reopened.  Therefore, as we walked up to the house, with Mark standing there holding out his hand and only half-jokingly asking us whether we had any weapons on us, there at our feet was a UPS envelope with a check for $14,000 in it.  If you'll remember, Mark's main issue was apparently that the money stopped flowing, and that he didn't have the up-front capital to fund materials purchases and pay labor costs.  Granted, the money only stopped flowing because a) the work has gone much too slowly, and b) Mark failed for such a long time to supply an adequate timeline to the bank.  That said, a check for $14,000 will make anyone rethink their lack of capital.  And $5,800 in cash on top of that-- which is what we gave him at the end of the meeting, having tallied up what we owed him that went beyond the loan-- had him walking away happy... and us too.

We met in the community room across the street from the house.  For those of you unfamiliar with how it works, we pay into a Homeowners' Association at National Park Seminary, since our house is on the property, and one of the perks is the use of a beautiful community room that has meeting space, sofas, a flat-screen tv, computers with Internet access, a pool table, and a foosball table.  In other words, we can do some work, and the kids can be more than occupied.  So while Isaac watched Gangnam Style for the billionth time, and Lola watched something having to do with Cinderella, we sat down with Mark to go over our extensive list of demands.  (Although we didn't call it that, that's pretty much what it was.)

Our first demand was to know whether the deadline of February 15 was realistic.  That's the date the loan will close.  Mark hedged at that, and before he could really expound, I made it clear it was his responsibility to talk to the bank to secure the correct deadline.  Patty has told us in no uncertain terms that the loan will have no more extensions.  Mark said banks don't want to take write-downs, and in projects so close to fruition it does them no good to play along at the end, or so is his experience with previous 203(k) work.  I told him I didn't care, and that our plan was as follows: we will pay for any and all materials from here on out, so there is no excuse as to not having funds for them.  We will then be the ones applying for reimbursement, not him.  (Heck, I would have been fine doing this all along, since I get cash back on credit card purchases.)  We also told him everything requiring reimbursement from the loan (which isn't everything actually) must be completed by the loan closing date, whenever that is.  That's because, while we have the credit line to purchase things before being reimbursed, we do not have the savings to pay for things out of pocket.  (That's why we have the loan in the first place.)  If the loan closes, so do our pocketbooks.  I think we got our point across.

Second demand: under no circumstances will I and my family be living in the basement on March 1.  Period. No debate.

Third demand: it's imperative to know whether he is committed to completing this project.  We got a good answer to this, and I think this is where he knew we meant business, and where I satisfied myself with the direction of the meeting.  He told me a bunch of personal things that I don't need to write here, and which aren't really germane to the process.  But what they told me was that, yes, he was committed, and he wanted to see this thing completed-- correctly and quickly-- just as much as we did.

So then we came to the individual items and timelines.  To spare you all the gory details, I'll just list things bullet-style, for those who, well, don't want to be spared:

• Where are the four missing windows? A company in Wisconsin is finishing them up.  No timeframe available, but they are special order, and time consuming.
• The porch has been laid.  When will it be stained? Once most work inside is done, the porch will be stained.  The idea is to work from the bottom up, then out, to avoid ruining newly laid materials.
• When will the upstairs floors be finished? Again, bottom up, so as soon as the downstairs floor is laid.  That said, if there's a big gap in time with nothing going on, this is something that can be pushed forward to avoid a lull.
• What items do we need to go ahead and buy? Vanities, toilets, tiles, hardwood floors, shower enclosures, light fixtures, interior doors, door hardware.
• So no flooring has been ordered at all? None.  This was the main issue with the lack of capital.  
• Argh.

But at least we now know where we stand.  And here's what we've done with the last 100 hours:

One of the ordered vanities

Our kitchen sconces

Our porch lighting

Our cabinet pulls, old and new.
Or are they? Hmm...

• Two vanities, chosen months ago, have been ordered from DecorPlanet.com.  And luckily, right before I placed the order, I checked on the Internet for any sort of discount code... and found a 10%-off coupon.  Hey, for 30 seconds of searching, I saved about $250.  They are supposed to be shipped early this week.
• 80 square feet of small clear glass tile has been ordered from GlassTileOasis.com, a specialty tile retailer on Long Island, and should appear at some point this week.  It's for our shower upstairs.
• Two sconces for our kitchen have been ordered from West Elm in Georgetown, partially paid for with a gift card we got as a Xmas present from Abby's mom.  Unfortunately, they're completely out of stock nationwide, so we won't get them until March.  But they're exactly what Abby wanted, and we've got other lights in the kitchen ceiling in the meantime.  They've got Edison bulbs, with the prominent filaments that use up way too much energy for my taste, and look like Bell jars.  Very pretty, but at least they get their own light switch.
• Two sconces for our front porch have been ordered from LightingDirect.com.  They'll be on a timer, so no need for bells or whistles.  The copper finish was important to Abby, and the no-frills design was important to me.  I was pushing for Art Deco, but Abby said it'd be too Disney looking on the house with the paint job.  They should arrive tomorrow or Tuesday.
• 70 square feet of floor tile was ordered from iDesign in Rockville.  Then we realized we didn't include the mudroom in our calculations, so I had to call from work on Friday to put a hold on the order.  I heard the guy say "For Pete's sake!" on the other end of the phone, probably with his hand not over the receiver as much as he thought.  But after going up and measuring the mudroom floor, we added another 20 square feet to the order and called it a day.  Cool thing about this place was it has the same owners who tiled our bathroom in our DC house back in 2004.  When we first started looking for tiles for the Bungalow, we drove by the place they used to have in Wheaton, which is really close to the house, but it was closed.  Bummed, we looked elsewhere and ended up loving this place in Rockville, when out comes Bobby, the guy from the Wheaton store.  He actually recognized us-- from 8 years ago!  He remembered Abby's name, which is crazy, because sometimes I can't even remember my own kids' names.  How do people do that?
• 38 cabinet drawer pulls were nearly ordered from Amazon.com until I realized some were on back order and not all qualified for super-saver shipping.  Instead of paying $250 and having to wait for 12 of them to show up later, I googled the name of the pulls and found them at GoingKnobs.com (who names these places?) for about 50 cents cheaper each, with free shipping.  So instead I paid $197 and will get them all at once.  Weird thing is that we could find absolutely no cabinet hardware at Lowe's or Home Depot that we liked.  Abby remarked at one point that she really just liked the hardware we have on our current cabinets, and that couldn't we just get new ones and switch them off, we just went back and bought the exact same ones.  Hey, some things you just like, right?  (To be fair, this was all her.  At Home Depot my random pointing showed that, in 8+ years of using the kitchen cabinets, I could not tell what the drawer pulls looked like, or even what shape they were.  Yep, she gets to make that decision...) 

The big issue remains the wood flooring.  The flooring that caused all the trouble in the first place was engineered bamboo from Lowe's.  It was a special order, and takes 2 weeks for delivery.  We told Mark that we would go the next day and order it, but got sidetracked, and sidetracked, and sidetracked...  First, Mark said he really wanted us to get nail-down flooring, and the stuff we chose was glue-down.  Abby was unconvinced, and at iDesign she told Bobby and Jim, who I can only describe as Mr. Moreau, the choir teacher from my high school's slightly younger brother, about the predicament.  They told her the Lowe's stuff was really poor quality, and that she could do much better, but I thought they were just trying to upsell her.  So she goes to a few more places and ends up pretty much discarding the Lowe's flooring with two styles at opposite ends of the spectrum: one that's nail-down engineered bamboo from Lumber Liquidators at $4.80/ft, which is about 5% cheaper than the Lowe's glue-down stuff; the other is $10/ft sustainable hardwood from AllEcoCenter in Wheaton that's just gorgeous, but 100% more expensive.  She really, really wants the expensive stuff, but it's going in the family room, the kids' rooms, and the guest room.  And I love my friends and family, but are they worth paying twice as much for the flooring that'll just be under the bed they sleep in?  The problem is, here we are on Sunday night and we haven't chosen either.  That's because Jim from iDesign told us to give him until Monday to see if he could match Lumber Liquidator's price on the cheaper stuff, or to get a better price on AllEco's stuff.  I have more than a sneaking suspicion that Abby's going to talk me into the sustainable stuff, and I'll probably be fine with it, because it's gorgeous.  But yikes, it means our downstairs flooring will cost $12,000 instead of the $6,000 we would spend on the perfectly acceptable floors that obviously neither of us loves.  Yeah, you don't need a crystal ball, do ya?

So after bitching about spending five digits at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago, and doing the same over the past four days, we're seriously considering doing it all over again on these floors.  But on the way to my parents' house this weekend, we crunched numbers while Lola napped and Isaac bopped along to Katy Perry and Aerosmith.  Even with all of this spending, somehow we're still right on target.  Our unease is really the result of being so close to the end, and so close to reaching that target.  And if we go over, it really won't be by crazy amounts, only slightly crazy ones.  So, well, yeah.  Maybe our spirits were buoyed by the best news of all this week-- and I very much meant to save this 'til last: CABINETS!

I was notified by Home Depot that our cabinets were completed on Wednesday, and that we'd have delivery by this Wednesday and installation by Wednesday  February 5.  By the time I left work on Friday, that was pushed up so that our cabinets will be delivered on Monday, and installation will be completed by Thursday, January 31.  So by the end of the week, we'll have a real kitchen, save for the countertops, which have to be measured based on the completed cabinet install.  And that also means with the cabinets in the house before Wednesday, we'll be able to apply for the $12,000 reimbursement for them, since that was what we had budgeted.  And by February 5 we should have a nice giant check in our hands that we don't have to hand over to a contractor.  Along with a completed kitchen, a bunch of lighting, some tiles, some sconces, and two vanities.  And, if we play our cards right, we might even have floors.

The Six-Thousand-Dollar Question

Lately, I feel Abby and I have not exactly been celebrating the time we've been having with the bungalow.  Sure, we've run long, and we're living in the basement with our kids.  But you know, it's a huge project, and running three or four months over isn't exactly the most uncommon thing in the world.  Looking back, maybe we had an unrealistic expectation of things going well.  Maybe we were fooling ourselves that, having hired a general contractor this time around, all the projects would just fall into place, and the giant Rube Goldberg Device that is our bungalow construction project would make that little bird tip over and drink out of the cup exactly when we had planned.  But you know what?  We put ourselves in that situation.  We were the ones who said our renters could move into the house in October, we were the ones who trusted things to get done while we spent a month in London, or two weeks in Florida, or various weekends here or there, or every day not on the job site.  Heck, we were the ones who bought a house that hadn't been lived in since the Reagan Administration.

All that can be seen as our fault, although no, I'm not saying all of it was.  But it was stuff we could have been more realistic about.  However, there is a whole other echelon of stuff that just isn't happening the way we wanted it to happen.  If you're even a casual reader of this blog, you'll be able to enumerate these things on your fingers: the toilets, the bathroom door, the kitchen ceiling, the ductwork, the radiators, the water connection, the bollards.  And, of course, my shower.  Just this week, we've had to deal with the contractor telling us we couldn't have the stain color we wanted on the porch floor, and I'm sure we've got fights ahead for the exterior of the house when it comes to landscaping and the big ol' American flag on a pole I've always wanted for my house in my head.

So when we once again were faced with two different projects that we felt had defeated us once again this week, it was time to take a stand.  No.  This is our house.  We are paying a half a million dollars for this frickin' place, and I want a gosh darned granite countertop.  Or rather, I want my wife to have the gosh darned granite countertop she had decided on months ago.  And I want to treat myself to a closet that isn't going to crack and bow and warp and turn yellow after six months.  If I can't luxuriate in my hotel-quality shower, why the heck can't I go back to my hotel-quality bedroom, dag nabbit?  Let me explain.

We've ordered the kitchen cabinets through Home Depot, and we were shopping elsewhere for the countertop, since Abby didn't see anything she liked there.  You may remember we spent Columbus Day (THREE MONTHS AGO) verifying that I did indeed like the Virginia Mist matte countertop way the heck up in Jessup, Maryland.  Well, Abby was finalizing cabinet plans and mentioned this fact to John at Home Depot.  He said, well, we carry that too; would you like us to price it for you?  Excellent.  Only once the price came back, it was more than $9,000.  Yes, you read that correctly: nine thousand dollars for a countertop.  Now, I have only purchased one countertop in my life, and it was a wood-slab countertop from IKEA that we have had in our kitchen here since we renovated back in 2004.  I like it a lot.  But we can't have a wood countertop at the bungalow, because we have wood floors in the kitchen.  So I put Abby in charge of searching for materials.  First she wanted concrete, because it was supposedly really cool looking and fit her plan perfectly; after a bit of study, however, she found out that it discolored and scratched or something much more easily than other materials.  Of course things like corian and laminate are out of the question, so we're really only left with materials priced mid-range and higher.  Granted, we are going to have a very, very long countertop; we need nearly sixty square feet of the stuff.  We went to IKEA this weekend with my parents and looked at their stuff.  There are some perfectly nice countertops there-- in fact, the granite they have, which is their most expensive stuff, is actually not nice at all.  We liked this stuff called Caesarstone, and it came in "Raven," which is basically a rich, dark gray.  This really was fine, Abby assured me; she did like it, and $9,000 is a lot for countertops.  The Raven would cost us $6,500.

The real reason we had gone to IKEA (apart from meeting my parents for the afternoon and partaking of the ir awesome meatballs and cheesy mac) was to look at closet doors.  Not your average closet doors, mind you, but the IKEA PAX armoire.  (Sorry for the ALLCAPS on this, but that's what it's called.)  You see, on Friday night we had someone from Closet America come to the house to design our bedroom closet.  It's an extravagance, I know, but it's such a small space, and I wanted to see if there was anything they could do to it.  They came up with some really interesting ideas I wouldn't have thought of before, then showed us the product.  Their stuff is guaranteed for as long as you own the home-- anything goes wrong, and they'll fix it for free, forever-- as well as for the people who own your home after you.  It's furniture, just attached to your walls, and it is really, really nice.  It's like a nice hotel.  It's what I wanted in my bathroom, but probably won't get.  My boss from my previous job has a huge California Closets closet that I remember drooling over years ago at a cocktail party; why can't I have one too?  Only problem is the price.  Sure, I talked the guy down about 35%, but at the end of the day it's going to cost me $3,000.  For a closet.  I looked up the do-it-yourself closets-- the Martha Stewart ones, EasyCloset.com, Elfa at Container Store-- all of which come highly touted by friends and random reviewers on the interwebs.  We found that IKEA PAX seemed like the best bet, and had three business days to rescind our contract with Closet America, so we headed Stockholm-in-Greenbelt.  Only problem was, we have low ceilings.  Sure, PAX comes in a 78-inch height that would fit just fine.  But only with swing-out doors, which would not.  If we wanted sliding doors, we would need the 96-inch PAX, and our ceilings are only 90 inches in the bedroom.  (No jokes, please, about being several inches short of ideal in the bedroom, okay folks?) ;)  PAX was out.  But honestly, we had Closet America plan the configuration; we could mimic it with EasyCloset.com for about $1300, and could probably do it a bit more upmarket with Container Store for a couple hundred more.  Honestly, it was fine; after all, it's only a closet.

So here we stood: second-choice in countertop, second-choice in closets.  Everything was fine.  But I felt cheated.  I keep going back to that mantra: "I'm spending half a million dollars on this."  Why the heck can't I have my closet?  Why the heck can't Abby have her countertop?  I posed this question to her: A countertop is a countertop to me, but I understand it might not be to you or to others.  If we get the Raven, will it be just fine, or will people notice it above everything else we did, point to it, and whisper how we cut corners?  If we get the Virginia Mist, will it be what people expect of a kitchen renovation in 2013 (2013!), or will they point to it and whisper that, damn!, Gregory and Abby actually got a really nice countertop, despite how notoriously Scroogelike we all know he is?  No answer.  I knew the answer.  For less than $3,000, we can get a really nice countertop that Abby will love, that will make our kitchen look great, and will not be yet one more second choice for the house.  Similarly, for $3,000 more, we can get an awesome closet that we will literally never have to replace as long as we own the house, that will give me that little bit of luxury I was attempting to capture elsewhere.  Abby warns me that if we have a nice closet she'll want nice closet doors, but I don't care.  After all, "I'm spending half a million dollars on this house," right?

So as we head to the midpoint of the 19th month of homeownership, our 7th week of living in a basement, and the umpteenth already-finalized decision we have to revisit because our first choice just didn't pan out, at least we each get our own little luxuries this time around.  It may be the only ones we get, but at least we didn't give in to the monster that is this process, and I think that's worth celebrating.

The Tortoise and The Bungalow

Once upon a time there was a tortoise, who was ever so slow, but whose perseverance was known throughout the land, for he beat the quick but lazy Hare in a race for the ages.  What you might not know is that the Tortoise is well on his way to beating another foe, Bungalow.  You see, boys and girls, the Bungalow is a strange creature, who looks small from the front and big from behind.  His cute and unassuming face is offset by his grand and nearly see-through behind, as well as his cavernous insides.  But what really sets him apart from the rest is his ability to drag on and on and on; while the Hare's surprise loss kept readers rapt 'til the end, the Bungalow's sporadic fits and starts seem more to disappoint and underwhelm than to interest and delight the audience.  Ahh, the Bungalow is a creature who may prove, in time, to defy time itself and regress back into the very local timber and stone from which he was built.

Oh, wait.  I was told in a recent review at work that less frequent use of sarcasm might serve me well in my career.  Let me unsarcasmafy that last paragraph and state what I mean in clear, simple terms: "BUNGALOW SLOW AS MOLASSES IN ALASKA WAFFLE HOUSE."

"But no," you say, "your last post was about the drywall being completed, and this post contains pictures of even more drywalling, with news of even further work!"  "Ah," I counter, "but it also contains sad tales of woe-- or rather-- sad tales of whoa."

Drywall continued to go up after my post last week.  In fact, Abby went by the house today and found most of the second-floor drywall to be complete.  But it was supposed to take several days at most.  The first floor remains incomplete, with the initial work in the kids' bedrooms and the family room not joined by the rest of the floor.  This is because, understandably and ununderstandably, the front porch has to be ordered: understandably, because the front porch is what overlays that area of the house that was excavated, so it forms the roof of those several rooms and, without it, the drywall could get wet from precipitation; ununderstandably, because last week I specifically asked the contractors why they hadn't laid the porch yet, and they told me it was because they would wait until the end so as to avoid heavy foot traffic on the new flooring.  Yet, in the same email they told me the drywall was beginning.  So if they knew they wouldn't be able to complete the drywall until the porch was laid, why the heck wasn't the porch laid at least concurrently?  I believe it's a mystery.

Two nights ago I had to pee at about 2:45am.  After I accomplished the major feat of getting out of bed, trudging across the basement to the bathroom, and going back to bed, I managed to make myself stay awake for the next 75 minutes having an argument in my head with the contractors about the major issue of them having drywalled the first-floor bathroom without first having moved the door like we wanted.  Seriously, I was awake until 4am having an argument in my head with someone about a door.  Do I feel vindicated now that I know the bathroom is part of the area that has not yet been completed?  I don't know; ask me when it's all over.  In 2058.

Thing is, Abby asked the contractors at the house today why the door hadn't been moved, and got pretty much a blank stare of an answer.  She got the same answer when she asked why the toiled hadn't been moved.  She's pretty angry, and for those of you who know Abby, that takes a lot.  I'm pretty angry, and for those of you who know me, well, um, it's become par for the course lately.  Tonight as we headed across the neighborhood to a neighbor's Hanukkah party, I opined that this is the point where normal people would fire their contractors.  Abby didn't disagree.  (Only we're both wrong, because normal people would have done that a long time ago, methinks.)

And yet again, progress comes from next door, where Lee the Windmill Contractor (I picture him dressed as Don Quixote, since we've never met) emailed me several days ago about an issue they've encountered with the water company.  Seems as if the water company is requiring some sort of fancy-schmancy $200+ water hookup for the Windmill because of the way the line is set up.  Lee said the water company told him we would need that too, but I hadn't heard anything of the sort.  So I forwarded the email to our contractors and asked them to hook up with Lee to see what was going on.  Crickets.  So a day later, I get another email from Lee, saying he had talked to the property-management company and they had agreed to pay for the hookups, since it was only $200 apiece.  I forwarded that to the contractors as well, again asking they advise me and/or Lee on what to do.  I did receive a response of "let me talk to the plumber," but only, I think, because I used ALLCAPS when writing my email.  Now this would only normally be mildly annoying to me, despite the fact that our neighbor and their contractor, who is helping us, is potentially being put off by the lack of communication, were it not for another set of emails from my contractor only one day earlier. Yes, this set of emails involved the contractor asking us for the money for the extra insulation we asked for in the walls and floors.  I have no problem paying this bit the contractor claims to have not known about, even though we had mentioned it over and over and over again throughout the whole process.  But the problem is that the four or five emails we had on this subject all happened within about a half an hour.  No problem replying to my emails at all when it involves a check, huh?

But enough of the sarcasm.  Now, back to the serious business of returning to the normalcy that is living in my basement with my wife and two kids.  Luckily, the drywall down here was finished about four years ago by a contractor who was neither Tortoise nor Hare, but rather a dependable worker who showed up, did his job, got paid, and let us go on with our lives.

Inside Lola's room, with her bed area at left and closet center-right

Family Room, looking left as you go down the stairs,
with the doorway into Lola's room at right

Thanks for Nothing

Thanksgiving was supposed to be our first big holiday in the new house.  It was going to be the holiday when we asserted our adulthood in the family, hosting Abby's side from Tennessee, North Carolina, and Maryland-- maybe even Georgia-- and finally getting everyone back together on Turkey Day for the first time since her Aunt Linda died in 2010.  Since then, the family hasn't even seen each other, let alone gotten together for Thanksgiving like they had for decades.  I was lucky enough to take part since we started dating in 2000, and knew we would be the ones that'd have to take charge if it was to continue.  Well, tonight we had a great Thanksgiving dinner in Silver Spring, but alas, it was just the four of us using a Groupon to eat sushi.

Packing up was supposed to be exciting, putting everything into boxes and loading it into the Prius, bringing it up a little at a time as rooms finished up.  Bigger furniture would go in a rented van, or maybe we could coerce my father-in-law to come up and let us use his pick-up truck.  Room by room, we'd watch the house empty out, and the bungalow fill up.  We'd have a smooth transition, hire a cleaning crew to go through the house, and turn over the keys to our new renters.  We'd wave, maybe take a few pictures, and drive the fifteen minutes up to our new place, where we'd walk in, turn out the lights, and go to sleep.  Well, today we spent the day packing all right, but the boxes are being stacked in the attic and in the dining room, and the furniture's going to move into the basement, along with us, in less than a week.

We were supposed to be done already.  We were supposed to be SO done already that our loan has already expired.  Our cabinets and our appliances and my grandma's piano and dining room table and everything else is just sitting.  Waiting.  We're not that much over budget, but we'll be paying more than $2000 a month more than we thought we'd have to be paying from now until we move in, because we aren't able to refinance our loan until the house is done (about $500/month), we're going to have to pay to store a lot of our stuff that won't fit with us in the basement (about $200/month), and we're going to have to pay rent to our new renters for renting out our own basement from them ($1300/month).  The clock is ticking, the wallets are emptying, and I just don't feel our contractors give a crap.

Sure, they're nice.  Sure, they have great answers for us when we have questions.  Sure, sure, sure.  But I'm just done with this process.  Done.  Abby used to ask me how much money we had in the bank, just to make sure.  (We figured we had enough saved to go two years on the process without moving in; it will be 18 months this week.)  Now I'm nervous, even though the situation hasn't changed.  All along, even with my apparently unrealistic goal of Labor Day, and my secondary goal of Halloween, I hadn't thought we wouldn't be in the house by Thanksgiving, and certainly we'd be in by Christmas, no?  In August, when we were complaining nothing had been done while we were in London, our FHA inspector said there was probably a month's worth of work left.  It's been three months now, and our contractor is now saying there are two months left.  Two months.  That means we won't be in by Valentine's Day either.

Our renters are being extraordinarily nice.  They were supposed to move in before October 1, but ended up moving into the basement on November 1, and we let them stay for free.  But they need the place now, and even though they're telling us they won't move upstairs until we're out, and they're fine with living in the basement, enough is enough.  Our contractors may or may not be screwing us, but they're not about to screw my renters.  The buck stops here, I guess.

I agree with Abby that it'll be an interesting experience, living in our 600-square-foot basement just the four of us, in the winter, at Christmastime.  After all, we lived in this house for two whole DC winters without heat, pre-kids.  Fancy camping.  But I want to be an adult now.  I paid people to do this project.  I paid to keep my family in this house.  I want the work done.  I want my renters happy.  I want my kids to have Christmas in their new bedrooms, and open presents under the 12-foot tree next to their new fireplace.  I want to be hosting Thanksgiving.  Like an adult does.  Tonight.  Now.  

And I can't.  And it sucks.  Thanks for Nothing.

Tiny Morsels of Progress

Still waiting on the inspections, which are supposedly scheduled for the second half of this week.  I'll believe that when I see the green stickers on my window.

Our new electric transformer box, behind the house in the parking area.

BUT, there has been some progress at the house, seen by my very own eyes this weekend.  Pulling into our parking space, we couldn't help but look right at our very own, dark green, brand-new electric transformer!  Okay, so there's a caveat: it's not there because we asked it to be there, but rather because the contractor working with the Windmill next door got it put in.  But either way, it's there, sitting on the existing cement pad on the part of the lawn that's common area.  The transformer will serve our two houses as well as the Colonial (the yellow house that hasn't been sold yet), and can be hooked up to actual gosh-darn electricity as soon as bollards are installed.  (For those of you outside the DC area, who may not be familiar with the term, bollards are those cement poles that guard things like electric transformers or sidewalks or the White House from being damaged by runaway cars or trucks or terrorists.  We're intimately familiar with them here in the capital, and me even more so with my line of work.)  Anyhow, I got an email late last night from Lee, the contractor working with the Windmill, asking me in the nicest way if I might consider possibly talking to him about the potential for me to possibly hopefully be okay to maybe help them with some of part of the cost of installing the bollards, since we were sharing the transformer.  Really, he asked in the nicest, most polite, nearly Canadian manner possible.  It was actually very nice of him, because it very much is something that's my responsibility to pay for; it's just nice to be asked!  I emailed him back this morning with a very short note letting him know of course I'd be happy to pay a third of the cost (along with the owners of the Colonial and the Windmill).  Based on his reply back to me, I'd guess he's also not finding willingness to help a plentiful commodity during his work, because he was definitely appreciative.  Hey, in my estimation, I'm all about being as friendly and accommodating to my neighbors as I can, because in the end, once all the contractors leave, it's they who are going to be staring into my windows all day long...

So after the transformer, we headed inside to take a look at "the boxes."  "The boxes" are two, well, boxes that our contractors said they had to build on either side of the fireplace.  They told Abby about them late last week after we had discussed what kind of fireplace we wanted.  Although we have a real, working fireplace in the house, it has been impressed upon me by my parents that what we want is a gas-insert fireplace to put inside of that, so we don't have to haul wood around or worry about flue issues or have crazy losses of heat any more than we already will, what with 49 windows and cathedral ceilings and all...  I'm all about actually using the fireplace, and I was totally sold on my parents' gas fireplace they had installed in Grand Island; a flip of the switch and you're good to go.  So after installing the gas line, the contractors told us that code requires the hose to be completely closed in by some sort of housing.  They built a small box around it, just to the left of the fireplace.  It's a pretty low box, less than a foot off the ground and about a foot long.  But to make it even, they built a faux box on the right side to mirror it.  Looking at the fireplace with the two boxes in place, they don't seem to get in the way much.  The only problem, though, is what we'll be able to do with that space now.  It's hard enough to think about what kind of furniture's going to go in there, but now we've got to deal with these weird little boxes.  Plus, the wall to the right of the fireplace was going to have our handy-dandy, futuristic, tv-pops-out-of-it console that we are going to buy ourselves for our birthdays or anniversary or Arbor Day or something.  Abby says that box on the right has to be there for purposes of symmetry, but I'm betting it won't stay long.  In the meantime, hopefully I'll be sitting all warm in front of a nice gas fire while she debates the longevity of the right-side box.

The fireplace flanked by the two new boxes.
But since the boxes are uneven, my guess is one won't be staying long...

The left (functional) gas box up close and personal.

Next up: the downstairs bathroom.  As I mentioned last week, this is the most vexing of our issues with the house right now, apart from the inspection issue.  We want the bathroom to be split into two rooms-- one with sinks and storage, and one with the toilet and shower-- so that two kids getting ready in the morning can use it at the same time.  Right now, because of an ill-placed toilet pipe, that's impossible.  But my brilliant mind came up with a brilliant answer that hopefully won't be shot down by the evil needs of the inspector, who I think from now on I might call "Javert," since he's not exactly been nice to our cause as of late.  Anyhow, the idea is to move the door to the left, and be okay with a little jog in a dividing wall.  (Looking at the picture will help here.)  So right now, the doorway's a few feet from the left end along the wall between the bathroom and the mudroom, and opens straight into the toilet, which presumably would face directly out the door.  My super-brilliant plan is to have the door moved all the way to the left (towards the sink & storage section), to turn the toilet 90 degrees counterclockwise (so it faces the tub), and to create a zig-zag wall that runs behind the toilet, then to the right of the toilet, then back to the wall with the mudroom, so the two parts of the bathroom fit together like puzzle pieces, rather than just two rectangles.  (Listen: the reason I use the word "brilliant" here is because, for the amount of time Abby spends thinking about this, for me to look at something and have an idea she didn't think of yet?  Well, that's just brilliant.  Or crazy.  I'll take either one, as long as it works.)

The downstairs bathroom, as seen from the mudroom.
The doorway should be moved left, to accommodate that white toilet stub.

Looking back on this, it is kind of amazing that I view this as "progress," although I did preface that word with the modifier "morsel," so I think it's acceptable.  Or maybe I'm still not in the acceptance stage of this renovation.  Regardless, I'll leave you with one more set of pictures to show you more of the ceiling that was finished last week.  This time, it's a view up at the Great Room Balcony, which will serve as our home office once we move in.  The before-and-after will give you only a little taste of the difference in the house as a whole, since the balcony area didn't actually suffer too much at either the hands of the Army or time.  Still, though, it's a cool comparison.

Balcony after ceiling
and windows painted

Balcony pre-renovation