Saturday's renov progress

The only thing that was accomplished yesterday was:

- me, (in my couple of good hours of not having a fever) updating all our bookwork and establishing that yes indeed, we're going to end up at LEAST 10% over the original budget. Out-of pocket of course, since the refi funds are now officially all gone.

- Danny, going online and ordering the bathroom shower/bath trim. Turns out the valve sets we bought locally were at least THREE times higher than they would have been if we had bought them online. And since Danny wanted a spa shower in the master bath, that was significant. Live and learn. We'll still enjoy it.

Nearly everything else that needs to be done after the electrical and plumbing is complete won't be under the purview of the general contractor, so it'll take a LONG time to get the rest of the finish work done after the cabinetry and countertops are installed. The contractor didn't have anything to do with the cabinetry or the flooring, so we escaped having to pay him a markup on those projects, which are actually more than 1/2 of the entire budget. We've tried to cut costs (but not corners) everywhere we can.

We still have to order a couple of doors (pre-hung?) and some bifolds for the new closet. We haven't done anything about picking out carpeting for the three rooms upstairs that will get them after we move everything out of those rooms.

The flooring looks pretty marvelous, although the fumes are still a bit pervasive. I discovered one glitch in the new stairwell that neither of us had anticipated:


We had opted not to have the supporting sides of the stairwell replaced. Granted, we knew we'd have a LOT of patchwork and painting to do on those, but I didn't expect to have to deal with the divots left from the old bullnose stair treads. There are 26 of them. They're just under the new bullnose treads; they put the new oak stairing on top of the old ones after they cut the old bullnose edge off! ugh.

Let's see--we'll call to have the portolet removed by next Friday. There will be a lack of people using it by then.

If we opt not to go to Louisiana over the extended university winter break, we'll be able to crank out most of the final projects.

A few projects that we haven't planned for yet:
- shelving, cabinetry and clothes rods for the new ginormous walk-in closet.
- replacing all the old dark luaun hollow core doors with something more updated. Most of the doors are all scratched up from the variety of dogs living in the house from 1960 on.
- replacing all the old leaky, rusty gutters. They're beyond my skills to repair.
- scraping and painting all the massive soffits outside

Saturday's renov progress

The only thing that was accomplished yesterday was:

- me, (in my couple of good hours of not having a fever) updating all our bookwork and establishing that yes indeed, we're going to end up at LEAST 10% over the original budget. Out-of pocket of course, since the refi funds are now officially all gone.

- Danny, going online and ordering the bathroom shower/bath trim. Turns out the valve sets we bought locally were at least THREE times higher than they would have been if we had bought them online. And since Danny wanted a spa shower in the master bath, that was significant. Live and learn. We'll still enjoy it.

Nearly everything else that needs to be done after the electrical and plumbing is complete won't be under the purview of the general contractor, so it'll take a LONG time to get the rest of the finish work done after the cabinetry and countertops are installed. The contractor didn't have anything to do with the cabinetry or the flooring, so we escaped having to pay him a markup on those projects, which are actually more than 1/2 of the entire budget. We've tried to cut costs (but not corners) everywhere we can.

We still have to order a couple of doors (pre-hung?) and some bifolds for the new closet. We haven't done anything about picking out carpeting for the three rooms upstairs that will get them after we move everything out of those rooms.

The flooring looks pretty marvelous, although the fumes are still a bit pervasive. I discovered one glitch in the new stairwell that neither of us had anticipated:


We had opted not to have the supporting sides of the stairwell replaced. Granted, we knew we'd have a LOT of patchwork and painting to do on those, but I didn't expect to have to deal with the divots left from the old bullnose stair treads. There are 26 of them. They're just under the new bullnose treads; they put the new oak stairing on top of the old ones after they cut the old bullnose edge off! ugh.

Let's see--we'll call to have the portolet removed by next Friday. There will be a lack of people using it by then.

If we opt not to go to Louisiana over the extended university winter break, we'll be able to crank out most of the final projects.

A few projects that we haven't planned for yet:
- shelving, cabinetry and clothes rods for the new ginormous walk-in closet.
- replacing all the old dark luaun hollow core doors with something more updated. Most of the doors are all scratched up from the variety of dogs living in the house from 1960 on.
- replacing all the old leaky, rusty gutters. They're beyond my skills to repair.
- scraping and painting all the massive soffits outside

First 'storm' of the season!

Maybe, just maybe, we'll get a bit of the white stuff here tomorrow night into Tuesday. Then it'll look like bjarvis's area. Even considering we're in the desert, we're definitely in drought mode. That .21 inches of rain we received 11/27 (while Danster and I were winging it to the soggyish NW) didn't do much to moisturize the soil.

First 'storm' of the season!

Maybe, just maybe, we'll get a bit of the white stuff here tomorrow night into Tuesday. Then it'll look like bjarvis's area. Even considering we're in the desert, we're definitely in drought mode. That .21 inches of rain we received 11/27 (while Danster and I were winging it to the soggyish NW) didn't do much to moisturize the soil.