A Canadian in the Kitchen, an Italian in the Bathroom

Rather than bitching about what isn't happening at the house, we spent our Columbus Day driving around suburban Maryland in an attempt to finish up with some of the remaining choices we have to make.  Most importantly were the kitchen countertop materials and the bathroom flooring.  Isaac was sleeping over at his friend Alex's house, so my thought was to get up whenever Lola did, which is usually 7 something, head out to stores, maybe with a stop at IKEA for breakfast, and then come back by noon in time to pick Isaac up.  Well, with Lola sleeping in until after 9 (hallelujah!), we went another route and the girls made heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast while I cleaned up the backyard.

Finally set off afternoon with both kids in tow, headed up the B-W Parkway... but not until a stop at Burger Delite in Hyattsville for some Carolina Barbecue.  Nomnomnom.  (You see where I'm going with this, right?  So much for getting a lot done...)  Made it up to MSInternational, this huge warehouse in the middle of nowhere (Jessup, Maryland) full of enormous slabs of stone.  Very impressive, if I must say so myself.  They were recommended by a store Abby went to, and apparently they're the suppliers for Home Depot, so I guess their prices are pretty competitive too.  Anyhow, I've never seen so many countertops; they were stacked sideways all the way across the warehouse, sorted by color and grain and source and type and whatever-- impressive.  When we walked into the warehouse part, Isaac actually gasped, which I thought was neat, since he more and more often acts unimpressed by anything, being the premature teenager he is.  What was also very cool were framed pictures on the walls of giant mountains being ripped apart in extremely geometric ways.  Now I'm definitely not a fan of hilltopping, which is what coal companies do in West Virginia, leaving ridiculous environmental damage in their wake.  But does the fact that these mountains have marble and granite and whatever else in them instead of coal mean that the operations are cleaner?  My guess is no, but I'm choosing to deal with this political issue in another way some other time-- maybe as I'm making a sandwich on my new kitchen's new granite countertop...

Anyhow, Abby had two things in mind at this place: a countertop and a floor tile.  She had been here before, on a day she spent gallivanting around home-improvement places between DC and Baltimore, and had wanted me to see them.  It was great: we walked in, we looked at the slab, I said "yep," and we moved on.  Wish all decisions could be made that way.  (And for the record, our kitchen countertop will be "Virginia Mist," a charcoal-colored granite with a low number of variances, mined in Canada.)  Okay, so on to the tile.  Should be easy.  Nope.

Virginia Mist Granite:
Our Canadian Countertop, eh?

Abby picked out this tile that made me think of an Iranian whorehouse.  Okay, maybe not an Iranian whorehouse, but how about the place where Iranian call girls go to get their nails done?  It was dark gray, which is what we were going for, but with these weird cloudy streaks of metal going through it.  There were two different shades of the same style tile, and the other one, which had more brown, was definitely more bling-y, but I just couldn't get over the metallic shine of it all.  Tried going the nice route, by pointing out other tile in the store I really liked-- Abby said everything I liked was too "rustic," but I don't see it-- until I finally just told her it wasn't for me.  So, not exactly back to the drawing board, but let's call it going 1-for-2.

This is what an Iranian bathroom looks like, at least in my head.

By now it was already 4:00, and Abby was strongly hinting maybe we should just go home and call it a day, but I wanted to GET STUFF DONE so I pretty much steered the car the way I wanted it, across Central Maryland and over to the other tile store Abby had liked.  On the way, Abby conveniently started getting another headache, which is something that's been happening a lot lately-- she gets migraines, if you didn't know already.  But doggone it, we are shopping for tile here!  We make it over to Rockville and pile into the store.  The guy's a bit skeevy, with a terrible dye job, but the store has tons of choices, and we quickly go to work.  Lola's immediately fascinated by the Hello Kitty tile.  Thankfully, the kids are distracted by the putting green up front (good idea!) and we can mostly work sans kids.

I kid you not: they sell this in Maryland.

Abby and I are both drawn to stripes, for some reason; all the prettiest tiles have 'em, apparently.  But we can't do stripes on the floor, because the vanity has a really bold wood grain.  Having more lines on the ground would just give the whole thing a bit too much vertigo, I guess.  After an hour or so, we decide we really like this one gray tile, very simple but still three-dimensional (meaning it's not just flat gray), and are happy.  And it's Italian: ooooooh, fancy...  Then we realize this is the same exact tile we've had a sample of in our trunk for about two months.  Oh well-- when you like something, you like something, right?  And not a moment too soon, because the kids start going crazy.  We whisk them outta there, it's after six, we make it home by 6:30, have homemade burritos, and put them to bed. Can't think of a better way to celebrate a holiday that's still around pretty much solely due to the Italian-American lobby than by deciding on a purchase or two of granite.  Michelangelo would be proud.

Dark Gray Bathroom Tile:
Will be less blurry in person

Argh

This is ridiculous.  

I hate that the last few posts have been about how we've been sitting around and waiting.  I've been putting off writing because nothing has happened, but then I started thinking today that I was going to write this blog to show what was really happening (or not happening, as the case may be), so I might as well fill you all in on the non-events.  (What a lead-in, folks!)

No, seriously, since I posted last time, I wrote at least four emails to our contractors, asking them little stuff like "hey, just wanted to make sure you remembered about moving the upstairs toilet over," or "hey, just wanted to make sure you remember our fridge has an ice maker," since I saw no plumbing holes cut near the fridge when I went over the weekend.  Nothing.  Not until Monday afternoon, when I wrote an email specifically saying that I was pretty freaking nervous, and that we were supposed to be moving in in a month, did I get a response.  Not a satisfying response, but at least one that made sense to me.  But WTF? Why can't you just write to me like you said you would and let me know what's going on, even if NOTHING is going on?  (Which brings me back to why I hadn't been writing... hmm...)

So what has been going on is this: the inspector came out to take a look at the electric and plumbing, and immediately informed them that the gas lines had to be finished before he could do his inspection.  They weren't, so that apparently started a mad scramble to finish them up.  And I'm guessing they're done, or almost done, because the gas inspector is coming next week-- or so I've been led to believe.  Once that's done, the original inspector can come back, and once he's okay with everything-- and seriously, he had better be-- then the drywall can go up and all the dominoes can fall.  Until then?  Nada.

Well, not nada exactly.  Abby went by the house this week and saw that they've started working on the Great Room ceiling, which is good, since that needs to be done before we move in, since it's probably not in our best interest to have our stuff and our kids living somewhere where old paint is being stripped.  I haven't seen how they're doing it yet-- I'm guessing with some sort of scaffolding-- but it heartens me to know something's actually happening.  Hopefully, I'll go by the house in a few days for a different inspection and inspect it myself.

That different inspection is one for our loan.  You know, the loan that needs to be closed out by November 18.  All of the work doesn't need to be done by then, but all of the work to make the house livable does, because it's all been planned out by HUD.  Got an email today from Patty, the administrator of the loan, forwarding concerns from HUD itself wondering why we haven't had an inspection lately.  Answer: nothing's been done that's worth inspecting!  Or rather, that's my answer.  Who knows the real answer?

Well, here's what actually has been done.  My bedroom closet has been built.  It intrudes slightly into the Great Room to the left of the window on the right as you walk in, so it's pretty much mirroring the bump-out from the bathroom.  Only problem is that they built the door to the closet opening into the Great Room.  Mind you, this is my bedroom closet.  With a door that opens into the Great Room.  See the issue?  They did that, supposedly, because we said we had wanted a pocket door as an entry door to our bedroom, but we had only said that because they asked "do you want a pocked door there?"  We assumed that, since they asked, they understood that we understood that their asking was based on the understanding that the BEDROOM CLOSET WOULD OPEN INTO THE BEDROOM.  Argh.

Honestly, I feel bad.  I feel bad because these are nice guys, and this is a huge project, and the nice part of me feels I shouldn't be so peeved.  But then I feel bad because this is my freaking house!  If I want a bedroom closet that opens into my bedroom, I shouldn't be made to feel bad about asking for it!  Similarly, the fact that I've been pestering them about moving the damn toilet pipe six inches to the left for MONTHS now makes me feel like a nag.  BUT IT'S MY HOUSE.  So I go in and notice they've laid the base to the shower.  Great.  Now the shower is small, because they based the dimensions on where the toilet pipe is.  THE TOILET PIPE THAT HASN'T BEEN MOVED.  Now I feel bad enough that I didn't bitch enough about the toilet pipe that I'm just going to drop the whole issue, because I don't want it to set us back any further in time.  No, we're not going to drop the fact that the downstairs toilet is also poorly placed, but this one I'm willing to take for the team.  But again, this was MY bathroom.  And I have always wanted a big shower with no tub.  And now that shower is going to be six inches smaller than I wanted it to be.  And I feel bad, because it's only six inches so I should just shut up about it.  And I feel annoyed because IT'S MY FREAKIN' SHOWER.  Argh.

The bathroom itself now has a lip coming out above the entry door, which I think I wrote about last time.  Don't think that's a big deal, although it looks weird now when there's no reason for the lip to be there.  But once it's finished, it'll be fine, and they're supposedly going to run the trim all the way around it to make it blend in.  But what if that doesn't happen?  What if I walk in and the bathroom bump-out is all painted nicely and the trim ends on either side?  Will I complain?  Will I feel bad about complaining?  Will I feel bad about not complaining?  Seriously, how many "arghs" can I put in one post?  Argh.

Oh, and some pipes are done in the kitchen, and there are working water pipes in the showers.

So Abby calls me one afternoon this week-- Wednesday?  Thursday?  They all run together...  Anyhow, she calls me after having met with the contractors and sounds defeated.  She tells me what's going on-- more things we're either losing or "will have to see" about.  No more instant water heaters, for instance.  Sure, they were more expensive, but they're really ecological, and when you're on vacation you don't use a lick of electricity because no water's going through.  So it looks like we're going to have a standard old water heater.  Not a complete loss, but one less thing that we wanted.  I guess a bunch of people took a look at the house and said there's no way we can use them.  I trust that-- I do.  I'm just annoyed because it's not the only issue.  Another: the damn toilet downstairs.  Some crap (ha!) about the angle of the pipe that feeds out of the toilet, and how if it would be moved, that angle might not be sharp enough.  Without the toilet where we want, not only will the toilet pretty much be facing straight out the back door, but we won't be able to use the bathroom how we wanted at all, because it won't be splittable into a bathroom and a getting-ready room.  "Good news" on the fireplace and the fridge, in that both are definitely still in the works.  But annoyed that the "good news" we have to report is that something we wanted to have done, and planned all along to have done, is still going to be done.  Argh.

All in all, it still looks like a good two weeks before drywall goes up.  Remember, we bought appliances on our vacation in London so that we could buy cabinets on our vacation in London so it could all be done in time to have everything done in time.  Now, the appliances are sitting in boxes in the Great Room, the cabinet installers are writing me weekly emails to check up on when they can come out and measure, and we've already paid the $13,000 bill for it all.  

Worst of all, I feel horrible because I'm screwing my friend Jamie, who's set to move into our house the moment we leave.  That was supposed to be October 1.  Now?  If we can't move by the end of the month, which is a definite, what does he do?  We're actually thinking of moving all of our stuff either into boxes or just straight into the basement and setting up shop there for a few weeks, letting Jamie move in upstairs so at least he can live normally for a while.  But we can't do that until at least October 26, for reasons I will NOT be going into in this edition, because that's a whole 'nother story...

Argh.

My bedroom closet.  Notice how the door, at left, opens NOT into the bedroom...

The overhang at the entry into the upstairs bathroom.
The beautiful wood behind it will be concealed by the air conditioning. :(

My shower.  Not nearly as big as I wanted it to be.
And the infamous poorly-sited toilet pipe at left.

Playing Catch-Up

It's been a long time, I know.  I apologize, but you must understand a lot has happened in the last month: I've spent two weeks in the Russian Far East; we've settled into a family schedule involving two kids both attending school full time; I've organized a trip for several dozen Washingtonians to travel to Cleveland to see our beloved Buffalo Bills.  Excuses, excuses.  But here we are: Crunch Time.

We're at T-Minus 55 days and counting until everything has to be done. All money must be allocated from our loan by November 18, which means all work deserving of being paid for must be done with enough time to have an inspection, go through the paperwork cycle, and be issued in a check form by the bank in a day less than 8 weeks.  Not to mention the renter for our house, who would very much like to get in in the month of October.  So where do we sit right now?

Unfortunately, I haven't been to the house but once in the past month, and that was before the Russia trip.  But I've been told there isn't a lot of visible difference to the house during that timeframe.  Hopefully, our neighbors won't have taken this lack of change added to a lack of writing to mean nothing's been going on.  Well, actually the neighbors will have been the ones seeing the contractors' vehicles continue to go back and forth outside, so they might know better than me.  Since last I wrote, we had a heart-to-heart with our contractors, because I had been less than thrilled with what I saw done while we were at the Olympics.  They explained several things to me that made me feel a bit better, although I'm still pretty nervous, based especially on my previous experience with contractors.  But  Rory wrote to me just yesterday, noting "we should be able to get drywall started late next week if everything goes according to plan, so you guys can see some major progress again, then its all down hill from there."  I hate to keep saying "fingers crossed," but, well, you know...

So here's what's been done: the HVAC ductwork is all in, and the HVAC unit itself has been ordered.  I don't know whether the unit has been delivered and installed, but we'll know that this week.  The porch is still unfinished, but that's okay: it seems that since the HVAC unit weighs 5 tons-- you read that right, it's 10,000 pounds-- the contractor would rather have that situated before the porch flooring, given that a brand-new tongue-in-groove porch wouldn't fare very well with 10,000 pounds of metal sitting on it.  (Or 10,000 pounds of feathers, but we're not an ostrich farm here.)  We have to have a 5-ton unit because of the size of the house and the relative inefficiency of our windows.  We've been told it's going to be louder than we might expect, although we're ponying up for the unit with more sound insulation.  But people also say our current A/C is loud, and we don't even hear it, so I'm not incredibly concerned.

The kitchen exhaust fan is in, as are those in the bathrooms and laundry room; they're currently bright white on the roof, and Rory has on his own said he would much rather they be the green color on the rest of the house, so I expect they'll turn green in short order.  As for the rest of the kitchen?  Work backwards with me: Our appliances have been delivered, and are sitting in boxes in the living room, waiting for our kitchen cabinets to be installed.  Our kitchen cabinets have been paid for, but will not be officially ordered until they can be measured.  The measurement can't happen until the drywall is up.  The drywall can't go up until the inspector comes and approves all the systems that go inside the wall: electric; plumbing; gas; HVAC; whatever else I can't think of right now.  The contractors are hoping to have the inspector come late this week or, at the latest, early next week.  It's an all-in-one inspection, where one guy comes, looks at everything, and (hopefully) gives us a big ol' stamp of approval.  Once we get that stamp, everything goes in motion: Drywall; Cabinetry; Appliance Installation; Completed Kitchen.  

Same goes for every other room in the house.  Abby has picked out all the tile for our bathrooms; that can all go in once the inspector approves.  Once the tile is in, sinks and toilets and bathing stuff can all go in, and fast.  We still have a couple of supposedly-tiny fixes that we asked for within the past few months that need to be done, such as the movement of our upstairs toilet 6 inches to the left, and of our downstairs toilet about 12 inches to the right, but those should all be quick fixes.  Oh, and I'm told my bedroom closet is now up, as well as the pocket door to our bedroom, and that interior ceilings are next.

We'll be heading over to the house several times in the next week, and I hope to get more updates and pictures on the blog.  We're not going anywhere until this house is done, and we're treating this very much as the final push on any big project, even at our current place, where Abby spent a day this week doing what we call a "cull" on Lola's toys-- three garbage bags worth!  Up next: Isaac's room.  The less we have to schlep six miles north, the better.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with the most recent additions to our list of final decisions.

12" x 6" Green Glass tile
for the walls around the downstairs bathtub

1" x 1" Green Glass tile
for the upstairs shower

 

Bamboo hardwood flooring for everywhere downstairs
except the bathroom and mudroom, which'll be tiled

Post-London Frustrations

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.

A.J. Who?

Eleven days now since we left home, and we have little knowledge of what's been going on in Forest Glen.  We do know that our recessed lights have gone in, although only because after having worn Abby down and convincing her that we should get LED lighting, I emailed Mark and Rory to tell them... and they replied that they had just installed the regular stuff.  Oh well.  (FYI, it wasn't really me who wore Abby down; it was the fact that we have LED lighting in our hotel room here in London, and she was finally convinced that all LED lighting doesn't make you look dead.)  We know that they're working on "electrical and mechanical" at the house, but that's really it.  Hoping we'll get some pics or something from Mark and Rory to update us soon.

However, while no news is flowing from Maryland, there has been progress in Mayfair.  (That's where we're staying.)  We have ordered our kitchen appliances!  Okay, so that doesn't sound so monumental, but really it is.  We had been planning our kitchen cabinetry, as you know, and were told that Home Depot is pretty insistent (understandably) that appliances be purchased prior to finalizing cabinetry decisions.  That kinda caught us dumbfounded, so we fumbled around looking for appliances in our last days in the States, each of us in different states, and me without a car.  Nothing, and really, just confusion added to the pile.  Then we got here, and you'd think the last thing you'd want to do on a work-vacation to London when your kids are still across the Pond is look for appliances, right?  Well... we do walk an awful lot during the days (when I'm not working), and sometimes all we want to do is grab some food at the grocery store, and eat it on our bed while watching TV.  So why not channel that desire to have your feet up into online shopping?

That's just what we did, and we actually were finding that most of the best deals were at Sears, of all places. Home Depot had 10% off all appliances over $400, and so did Lowe's, but Sears had all sorts of stuff, and when we saw a sale pop up that was 20% off all Kenmore appliances, plus an additional 15% off if you open a Sears charge account, we were hooked.  We picked out a bunch of stuff-- although not everything -- and tried to buy.  But we couldn't.  There was a dishwasher with all the bells and whistles, originally over a thousand bucks but on clearance for more than 50% off, that just wouldn't go through.  So I called Sears, trying to understand what was going on.  Seems as if there may have been one dishwasher like that in all of the country, or something, and it just wasn't shippable.  It was late, so we went to sleep without buying.

Next day, we were wishy washy about what to do, so I said Listen, we've gotta do this, and took the initiative to march us back home to buy appliances.  Sears still had the sale, Home Depot and Lowe's couldn't match it, and searches on Google and Amazon were fruitless.  We had everything we needed, but still couldn't find a built-in microwave, which Abby really really wanted.  I don't want to pay $1000 for a microwave, and we couldn't find anything under $600-- and that was an IKEA microwave that I still think may have had to have been assembled at home.  Okay, Abby, just one more search for a microwave... and then...

Ever hear of AJ Madison?  I know I had at some point, but I am pretty sure I thought it was AJ Wright, which is a store that sells Thomas the Tank Engine toys and scrapbooking crap.  Well, what do you know: AJ Madison has a Frigidare microwave that fits the bill without breaking the bank.  Hmm... what about its other appliances?  Within 15 minutes, we were sold, as were just under $3000 worth of appliances from AJ Wright-- no-- AJ Madison.  And best of all, all of our appliances are the same brand, which is something I had really wanted, but was afraid we weren't going to be able to find (because of the microwave issue).  Now their handles will match, and they won't have differently colored stainless steel.  Plus, while I'm perfectly fine with having a Whirlpool fridge and a GE stove at our current house, I think that's because of our galley kitchen, where you never really see more than two appliances at a time.  The kitchen in the bungalow is much more traditional, so matchy-matchy is much more important.  So, here's what we got:

The Fridge:  Our requirements: At least 20 cubic feet of space, stainless steel front, automatic ice-maker, top freezer (because I don't like to stoop over and search for my ice cream), energy star, and right-side hinge.  The winner: "Frigidaire Professional Series 20.6 cu. ft. Top-Freezer Refrigerator with 4 Half-Width SpillSafe Shelves, 2 Humidity Controlled Crispers, Quiet Design and Energy Star Rated: Right Hinge."

The Microwave: Our requirements: Built-in to save counter space and allow for a hood over the range, not compact but not enormous, stainless steel front, decent wattage, no hidden controls (so we don't have to open the thing if we want to add time).  The winner: "Frigidaire Professional Series 2.0 cu. ft. Built-In Microwave Oven with 1200 Cooking Watts, 3 Auto Cook Options, Sensor Cook, 7 User Preference Options and One-Touch Options."

The Range: Our requirements: Electric with a ceramic cooktop (we're not foodies, so please no hate mail from the gas crowd!), self-cleaning, stainless steel.  Abby really wanted one with flat controls, but that wasn't worth the extra cost to her.  The winner: Frigidaire 30" Freestanding Electric Range with 4 Radiant Elements, 5.4 cu. ft. Quick Bake Convection Oven, Self-Clean, Auto Oven Shutoff and Storage Drawer in Stainless Steel"

The Range Hood: Our requirements: Okay, let's say "Abby's requirements," because I didn't really care if we had one or not; I'd rather have had an over-the-range microwave, which is cheaper than the microwave we got and takes the place of a range hood.  But alas, my wife is the decorator and assures me the kitchen will look much better with a hood, so there you go.  Abby's requirements: stainless steel, 30" wide to match the range, no supermod glass stuff.  The winner: "Frigidaire 30" Wall Mount Chimney Range Hood with 400 CFM Internal Blower, 3-Speed Centrifugal Fan, Halogen Lighting and Convertible to Recirculating"  Plus, we bought the convertible part so we can filter the air back into the kitchen, rather than installing an exhaust vent through the roof.

The Dishwasher: Our requirements: White.  Wha?  Yeah, Abby wants white because it is down with the white base cabinets and she wants a nice, straight white line down there.  Other requirements: quiet (or relatively quiet) with a stainless steel tub, lots of room inside, and controls on top so you can't see buttons when the door's closed.  The winner: "Frigidaire Gallery Series Fully Integrated Dishwasher with 5 Wash Cycles, 5 Wash Levels, 14 Place Settings, SilentDesign Sound Package, Effortless Dry System and DishSense Technology: White"

So there you have it-- our kitchen suite.  We've forwarded the info to John, our cabinet designer at Home Depot, and hopefully we'll be able to finalize our cabinets over the next couple days.  But for now, when we're giving our feet a rest at night, at least we can watch the Olympics instead of poring over home-improvement websites.

Nerves and Mascara: Lots of Both

So now I'm nervous.  You all know yesterday I went to Home Depot and designed the cabinets.  Well, this morning I talked with Abby, who's in North Carolina, and she had some tweaks she wanted to make.  I called Home Depot again, and John had an opening for this evening, so I found myself going up again just to make the changes ahead of my trip, which starts Tuesday.  It mostly worked out, although a couple of the cabinet changes we wanted weren't 100% possible because doors and drawers might not open fully due to interference from the range handles.  Or rather, the handles that might be on the range-- because we haven't yet picked out appliances.  John said Home Depot is really not happy about putting in cabinetry without knowing exactly which appliances are going in with them, which is completely understandable, because with appliances everything can go in exactly.  We just hadn't thought of that.  Now I've got about 38 hours left in the country, and I'm kind of freaking out about the appliance issue.

The updated cabinet plan, although it too will be tweaked before all's said and done.
Dare you to find the differences... and know what they mean! :)

With the current house, we shopped around and bought a few different brands from a few different stores; the fridge was a scratch and dent from Lowe's, the microwave was a clearance item from Home Depot.  No one notices that our fridge doesn't match our stove, because they're on opposite ends of a galley kitchen.  But the bungalow kitchen isn't the same; it's more square, and all the appliances will be in the traditional kitchen triangle design, more or less.  So mismatched appliances will be a lot more evident.  For instance, Abby wants a built-in microwave, and unless we want to spend over a thousand bucks on a microwave-- we don't-- we'll probably buy it from IKEA.  (It's got a funny Swedish name on it, but it's built by Whirlpool.) But I don't want to buy all of my appliances there, because for instance their ranges are at least $200 more than anywhere else.  And to top it all off, I keep thinking of my mother-in-law, who bought all of her appliances (and good ones, too) on Black Friday for under $2000 in this crazy sale at Best Buy.  Argh.  I just want more time, but the thing is we have to buy the cabinets between July 19-29 if we want to get the sale price from Home Depot, and that price is nothing to shake a stick at: we'd be saving just about $4000 off their regular prices, which are still lower than the other estimates we got.  

What we will NOT be doing on Tuesday afternoon.

So my guess is our three-hour layover in Charlotte will be spent poring over the laptop at different appliances from different stores, rather than gazing longingly into each others' eyes on the rocking chairs they have there.  (Okay, that wouldn't happen anyhow, but you catch my drift.)  I'm hoping we won't have to do too much Internet-shopping from London, but if we must we must.  Maybe I'll ask Mark and Rory if they have any ins anywhere where we can get contractor pricing or something.  Worth a shot.

Speaking of nerves and Mark and Rory, when I went by the house last night I noticed wetness downstairs-- right next to the brand-new retaining wall that has just past its moisture inspection.  It was dark, and I wouldn't have noticed it had it not been for Frank and Lisa's kids stepping in the wetness and tracking it around on the plywood.  Took some pics and sent them to Mark and Rory to ask what was up, and they both wrote back within about 20 minutes to say it was a combination of the porch plywood not being waterproof since it's not the real porch floor, and actual water being poured there on purpose the day before.  A) Glad it's nothing; and B) Really impressed with the communications skills of my contractors, who definitely did not need to get back to me in 20 minutes on a Saturday evening.  They're great-- I had even asked Mark earlier in the week if he would be able to bring a ladder by so I could cut down a limb on my tree at the current house that had broken in the storm a few weeks back and was now hanging precariously over the backyard.  He came over, looked at it, and said not to worry; he'd send someone over while I was gone to take care of it, and he'd fix the back gate too.

Wetness in the downstairs storage area.

Also a cool idea is Mark's to place some of the stones that were in the original underground retaining wall (that match the rest of the house) around the front side to cover the new cinder-block retaining wall, rather than just painting it.  I think it could look great, because then the same rocks would ring the whole place.  I also love that they're local rocks-- when you go out into the Glen you can find a bunch that are similar looking.  For now, the completed wall still looks nice (as in "done") from the front, although as I mentioned above, the porch hasn't been connected for good yet.

... and from inside (the guest room).

The finished retaining wall from outside...

And finally, nerves because more of our paint job is going on, and I'm not in love.  Actually, I kinda hate it.  Abby has a five-color design she assures me should work, and showed me similar designs online, but I'm not convinced yet.  I told her she has the say on color, and I just want tweaking and veto power (remember the main green debate?), but with the front door all finished, I'm reminded a bit of women who wear way too much eye makeup.  However, the columns still need to be painted, and my guess is once they're done, their dark green color will offset what is currently a way-too-bold front door.  I hope...  (Not to mention, I really liked the outline all white...)

Primed...

... and painted.

Hopefully, our house will not look like Christina Aguilera.

Cabinets Redux

In October 2005, Abby and I drove our red Dodge Stratus to the Home Depot on Rhode Island Avenue, stopping on the way to fill the tank with gas.  I remember the gas part because the gas prices were soaring at the time, and it was the first time I had ever put more than $40 in my tank.  So we walk into Home Depot for our appointment to design our cabinets for the kitchen in the house we had moved into one month prior-- we had been living pretty much on hot pockets alone for the previous month-- and the young woman with whom we had an appointment was still helping her previous customers.  Not having anything else to do that day, we walked around Home Depot for an hour waiting for her to finish.  We filled up a cart with all the stuff we needed for the house, including a brand-new microwave that was on crazy sale because it had been returned, and headed back to kitchen design.  Hours two, three, and four were spent designing the kitchen with Candace, someone we would come to know too, too well.  (At one point she and Abby became so friendly that she pulled out a picture of herself giving birth.  Yes, you could see everything.  Yes, I had the fortune not to be around for that one.)  However, when it came time for us to finish up, something went horribly awry: the plans were not saved, and we'd have to start all over again.  Hours five and six were spent painstakingly recreating our design until we were both happy.  We took our new plans to the front, left Candace's coochie pic back at her desk, and paid for our cartload of stuff.  We then walked out into the big parking lot, and couldn't find our car.

It had been very busy that Saturday; the weather was great, and a city full of house refurbishers and flippers was taking advantage.  We had to park right in the middle of the lot, which had the Home Depot on one side and a Giant supermarket on the other.  We knew our car was there, somewhere, anywhere... but no.  No car.  After six hours in the store, our car had been stolen from what apparently was the #1 spot in the entire District of Columbia from which to have a car stolen-- or so said the police officer in the substation at Giant. (Yes, so much crime happened at that shopping center that there was a police substation there.)  An hour later, we had made our police report, returned everything in our cart save the microwave, since it was a really great deal, after all, and trudged home on the metro carrying a huge boxed kitchen appliance.  Oh, and we lost an entire $40 tank of gas to boot.

Sadly, our Dodge Stratus, Commie (because it was big and red)
never got to visit Monument Valley with this stock-photo cousin.

So when I arrived at Home Depot this afternoon, alone and carless, since Abby and the kids are in North Carolina with our Prius, you can imagine the humor of the situation when Abby told me a black cat had been sitting outside her dad's window the whole day.  No matter-- this is a different location, at Aspen Hill way the heck outside the Beltway.  (Washingtonians: did you even know there was a 14000 Georgia Avenue?  Fourteen-thousand!)

John is our kitchen designer at Home Depot.  John looks to be an early retiree, seems nice enough, and reminds me of my dad how he thinks out loud and takes just a little more time to search for things on a computer desktop than I want him to.  (Love ya, Dad...)  I walk back for our appointment, and as soon as we're ready to start (on time?!), two customers corner him for a "quick question."  I oblige, and their question turns into a ten-minute info session on setting up a cabinet appointment.  He assures them, as he did us a couple of weeks back, that they need to sit down with him for 90 minutes to fill out paperwork before the contractors will come out and do a space measurement.  (Our session actually took about 10 minutes, done by cell phone while I was driving home from Buffalo last weekend.)  Only ten minutes late, we start in.  Two cabinets placed in the system later, the computer kicks him out of the program and we have to start all over again.  Not a good sign.  Thanks, Sanford cat!

The rest of the way, though, everything runs smoothly.  He saves the file after every single cabinet placement.  We're not kicked out of the program again.  Our appointment was supposed to go from 5-7, and my friends Frank and Lisa are picking me up at 7 so I can show them the house while they're in town with their kids doing tourist stuff; we run exactly seven minutes late.  Frank and Lisa's car was not stolen from the parking lot.  But best of all, while the previous estimate we had on cabinets totaled $18,500, these rang in at $15,500, and with all the bells and whistles (such as plywood construction and easy-glide drawers) too.  Not to mention, John told me they're having a huge sale next week, so if we finalize between July 19 and July 29, we'll pay just under $11,000.  This would most definitely be the first time anything on this house came in under budget.

The cabinets are white maple Thomasville cabinets in a simple Shaker design.  This is a picture of what they will like-- although remember: this is the stock photo and not the layout of our kitchen!  (Also, our drawer pulls will be different, and we aren't getting any cabinets that have glass fronts, because we all know we have enough windows in our house already...)

As for the layout, here it is.  Hope it's big enough for those of you who are interested to read.  Just know that the opening at the bottom is the doorway into the Great Room, there are only base cabinets on the left and top because we're not hanging cabinets over the windows, and there are both base and wall cabinets along the bottom and right.  Of course, since Abby wasn't there, it's not going to be 100% right; I'm sure I forgot something, or got something slightly (or more...) wrong, but I feel this is an accurate representation of what we will actually be getting.  More or less. And we didn't even have to lose a car over it.

A bit of a key: B = Base Cabinet; SC = Super Cabinet (the kind with pull-out drawers and shelves on the door); SB = Sink Base; W = Wall Cabinet; FH = Full-Height Cabinet (the kind without a drawer); U = Utility Cabinet (Pantry).  Enjoy!