Very sorry for the light posting.  We are entering the home stretch, a veritable wind sprint towards completion of construction.  Every day is filled with all sorts of sundry things that appear out of nowhere and chew up huge chunks of time.

Today was a good example.  I spent two hours this morning preparing the utility room wall for patching after some electrical work yesterday.  The electrical crew had to chip open some rather large mouseholes into the base of the wall in order to access wiring to switches that needed to be moved.  My spouse was none too pleased with the mouseholes -- they literally did look like the classic television cartoonish mouse holes, bitten all around into irregular shapes.  I know the finish contractor thinks I'm nuts; I caught him watching me as he worked on my kitchen cabinets.  But he doesn't have to live with my spouse...

The holes were trimmed square, new patches of drywall cut to fit, now ready for mudding and taping. 

I spent another couple hours on stone today.  We drove to a stoneyard to look at slabs of limestone for the hearth.  I also needed some smaller pieces of remnant limestone to finish the base around the fireplace.  We were too conservative when we calculated the cultured stone needed for the front of the house and the fireplace; I really don't want to order an entire eleven-square-foot box at nearly $100 dollars for only two-square-feet needed to finish the fireplace.  So rummage I did through some large gons of scrap limestone in the stone cutting plant, finding some freshly cut for custom order projects.  The closest match I found was a kind of yellow-olive limestone with brick-colored striations; the stone had been cut into large, machined caps for a stone wall in the greater Seattle area.  I've taken some of the waste cross-sections and will be working them over tomorrow with a cold chisel to chip them to a desired size.  That ought to be another couple of hours...

The tile contractor finished laying out the tub surround in the master bathroom last night.  It looks spectacular -- except for the one 2" by 10" piece of trim missing on the edge.  We were too conservative with that, too.  Chalk up another hour on the phone trying to order this and get it expedited.

Then the bloody carpeting.  This has been the worst item so far.  It has been horrible to get to a point where both the spouse and I agreed on a specification: 65 oz. face weight frieze, Tactesse nylon fiber with Stain Master, nothing less than 10-7-5 year warranties on wear-stain-crushing-whatever with "softbac" backing.  Typically we come across carpet that meets a few of the specs, but not all.  Don't even think about price; I'm sure my spouse will be unhappy with whatever price we pay, not worth fighting over since that's a given.

And then color.  We never, ever agree on color.  Go figure, after months of getting to the right specs that we both agree upon, we actually found a color we both liked.

Ah, but can the contractor get it?  It's a mystery until tomorrow.  We spent an hour today on this last selection, and I'll have to spend another hour tomorrow with the contractor on this item.

Tomorrow I have to spend time not only chipping limestone, but sweeping the basement after the completion of the plumbing.

By the way: YAY!!!!  We have water!!!

Little shards and shreds of PVC piping and copper tubing bits all over the basement, but we have water!!

And lots of sawdust upstairs inside of and in front of every cabinet after the finish contractor installed all the hardware.  Looks fabulous, too, like the right set of earrings with an outfit.

Figure an hour on the basement, an hour on the rest of the house sweeping sawdust.

Also need to run to the big box hardware in the morning to buy under-cabinet mount halogen lights.  Figure another hour round trip, assuming they have the lights I want in stock (fingers crossed).

Won't be much longer though; just ten more days of this kind of chasing and we should be 98% complete.

Landscaping will wait until the snow thaws.  Did I mention it snowed tonight?

I've got plenty of time.

11:31:56 PM    comment []