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| This is how McKayla Maroney feels about our contractors right now. You'd see us feeling the same, but someone had to take the picture. (What: you think we came back from the Olympics without souvenirs?) |
After spending a month abroad, Abby and I were understandably excited to come home and see all the progress that's been happening at the house. Okay, so we only got one picture the entire month from the contractors-- and only after some heavy hinting that we wanted something-- but that's okay, because they must have been humming along so well that they had no time to take pictures, right?
Right?
All of the ductwork is done. Excellent! And the HVAC people even managed to hide the basement ducts so they don't run in front of the fireplace pediment, and they don't intrude on the storage space running along the wall. Good stuff. No actual system, but ductwork in is a good thing.
Okay, I see some electrical work has been done, too. There are a few places where the outlets are in weird places, but that's kind of our fault because we didn't specify, for instance, where the beds would be. Lola's bed will be a built-in, and there's an outlet right in there that'd be blocked. One's behind Isaac's bed too, and behind where we're going to put Abby's grandpa's huge armoire. Oh, and there's a sconce outlet behind the armoire too. And in the guest room, there is wiring strung across an opening we had specifically noted we had wanted to be kept open to get into the under-stairs storage. Okay, we can deal with that; it's easy to change the placement of a few outlets.
The recessed lights are in, but there are no lights in the kids' closets, and only one in the center of ours, even though it's nine feet wide. Is that going to be enough light? And speaking of closets, mine still hasn't materialized.
The toilet's roughed in. And it's not in the right spot-- it's basically smack dab in front of the bathroom door, so when you look through the back door from the outside the only thing you see is the toilet. It was supposed to be to one side, with the door on the other, so we could divide the room in two and both kids could use it at the same time when, for instance, they're getting ready in the morning, since they both go to the same school. I guess we could have the door frame moved. But the toilet? How hard will it be for them to rough it in again? Hmm... At least the upstairs toilet has been moved to where it needs to be, right? No-- the rough-in's still where it was a few months ago when I talked to the plumber and he said it wouldn't be a big deal to put a 45-degree pipe in to shift it over six inches. (He also told me it wasn't a big deal because he'd just "charge Mark for it..." which means I'd pay, even though it's not where we said we had wanted it to be.) That toilet has to move, because it's too close to the shower. It's still there, though.
And the painting is mostly done on the exterior. All of the dark green trim is done, so the black doesn't look as stark as it had. Still don't love it, but it's better. Wish it were still white. Abby likes the black, and it looks nice from the inside, so that's fine, and honestly, there's no way what's black will ever be white again, because there's so much of it. How many coats of white would you need to put on the black just to make it, I dunno, gray? That's fine, I'll get used to it. But there are still parts where there's streaking and someone needs to go over it with a finer brush or something.
And that's it. The wall didn't go up between the kitchen and the bedroom, so the cabinet people are still twiddling their thumbs waiting to be able to do a final measure. The appliances are all sitting in boxes in the living room. There are no outlets on the outside of the house, and no spigots. I don't know how to feel about this. I had expected so much more to have been done in the month we were gone. So many big strides were made in the month beforehand, and we put so much work into finalizing cabinetry and appliances while we were in London, that it's just a major let-down. I honestly don't know how much should have been done, but it just doesn't feel right. We've written to Mark & Rory to tell them the issues we have, and are trying to be upbeat about it. We have had no reason not to trust them up to this point, and I don't see why we would stop trusting them at this point in the game. It's just, well, I'm bummed about it all. It's the middle of August, we wanted to be in in the middle of September, we shifted our expectations to the middle of October, and I'm nervous now. We have to get this thing done, if only because we have a renter lined up for our current place, and he wants to move in in the second week of October. That was going to be a possibility, or at least a really close overlap. But now? Maybe I'm just being a Debbie Downer, and everything's moving along just as planned.
We'll wait for Mark & Rory to get back to us and all will be better. I hope.
