Renovation: Day 2 Progress

I don't have the camera handy, but the pictures aren't all that interesting so I don't want to hear a bunch of clamoring and whining.

Every project has unexpected glitches and gotchas, and day 2 was our day full. For progress, drywall was put up to cover the places where the ceiling and wall used to be, the pantry entrance was opened up, and the dining room carpet was removed. Also, work sorta started in the bathroom in that the medicine cabinet was carefully removed. I'll be recycling that to the other bathroom, because it's in better shape than the one upstairs.

As for the problems, most of them are minor, and all are already dealt with. The electrician goofed up his schedule and couldn't come out on Thursday and Friday as planned. He'll be here Monday to get started by replacing the main panel for the house.

The plan for those two drain pipes in the pantry entrance wall is even better than the one I expected. They're going to lower the joint to almost floor level and reroute both pipes back flush to the main wall. They'll still protrude, but not very much, and the cabinets can be modified to hide them.

The biggest problem was with the guy we were working with to do the floors. He screwed up big time. He lost all of our paperwork, so not only doesn't he know what we picked out, but none of it got ordered. The estimates and orders all happened a few months ago, and what with the packing up the main floor, we can't find our copies either. On top of that, he suddenly can't meet our schedule. Very unprofessional.

Last night Liz and I went to his place of business to straighten things out. He wasn't there and couldn't be located (out on a call - "somewhere"), and his clerk was the singularly most unhelpful person I've ever dealt with. We walked out and went looking for an alternative.

We did find one. We found equivalents to what we wanted from the other place. The guy will be coming out Sunday morning to do the measurements and give us the estimates. He *might* be able to do our schedule (ideally, kitchen floor installation happens next Friday), but because this is so last minute we'll understand if it can't happen right then. Carpets will get done in a few weeks.

Cabinets get installed starting Tuesday, and appliances show up then too (except for the fridge, which will show up two weeks later - backordered). Countertop templates happen on Thursday, floor on Friday (fingers crossed) and that's all written in sand.

We're making progress, and this is the normal kind of scheduling problems that I expected, so we're not stressing too much about it. In fact, every time we run across one of these little speedbumps, we just look at each other, grin from ear to ear and say, "we're getting a new kitchen!"

Posted by Ted at September 23, 2006 04:46 AM | TrackBack
Category: Square Pegs