The Granite is In

Earlier this week the installers from EMG Home Supply showed up to install our granite. They had a crew of 4 and it was all they could do to lift the 4' x 9' island into place after cutting the sink holes and faucets on site. They completed all the work (kitchen, 4 baths and laundry room - 7 slabs plus island and backsplashes in all) in a long day, finishing up at 8pm.

The quality of their work was good. I had done some reference checks on them and each reference recommended I ask for "Ming" to do the installation. He was the lead installer on our crew.

I thought the cutting on site would be messier but with a water saw the dust was kept to a minimum and it was done in our driveway out front. The edges around the sinks were very nicely finished as were a couple of edges they needed to bullnose on site.

My only complaint was their cleanup was not very thorough. I know they were rushed at the end to finish up as it was getting late and they had a 1.5 hour drive back to Concord, but that was no excuse. There was water and granite dust in the under cabinets that should have been vacuumed up and had to be done the next day by our builder.

It was a short week, with Thanksgiving and all. The Structural FX crew continued to
work on tiling up the bathrooms and spent a day thoroughly cleaning up the site. Painting continued on the outside trim detail. Electrical finishings - ceiling fans, sconces, light covers, electrical outlets are moving right along. Our neighbor to the left also decided to clean his side of the creek.

We were very pleased to drive onto our driveway on Thanksgiving day! 4 more weeks to go. We are 6 months into the build now.

The Instant Exterior Color

Among other things in the works the past week was the finish stucco coat on the exterior of the house. This was a very nice product called DryVit which is stucco mixed with acrylic paint in the color of your choice. They mix the paint into the final coat of stucco, which makes for a very rapid exterior paint job that is resistant to scratches since it is literally the thickness of the stucco coat.

I was amazed to see half the house done in just under a couple of hours on Friday. They started the second coat the same day and finish the next day. Clean up happened on Sunday and the scaffolding is gone for the most part.

We chose Sherwin Williams 6388 Golden Fleece, which has a nice deep golden color and really shines compared to the many washed out colors around us (the typical grey, taupe, light yellow and beige). The second coat darkened it quite a lot and we were very pleased with the look of the stucco with the fine sand grit.

Other progress items include:

- the charcoal/grey Mcnear Old Country Cobble pavers are all in now, front and back. They look fantastic and solid, a much better product than the Calstone which was half as thick.

- the main garden walls are done in back. Next step - bring in some labor to prepare it for plantings. We also need to build a couple of walls in the back hugging the house and one side of the driveway

- the cabinets are all in and ready for the granite installer who started today. We went with EMG out of Concord who are supplying our Tan Brown kitchen granite but using the countertops we bought at Uni-Tile for the bathrooms and laundry room.

- the tiling work in the bathrooms continued, about 75% done now. We ran diagonal tile on all the floors with 1/8" grout line and that looks really nice. The tiles up the walls are square on up. I had to run around on the weekend chasing some additional quantities of tile which were fortunately in stock, as we made a few changes along the way. Brian had a great suggestion to run a decorative trim of the santa cecelia granite cut from some of the tiles we bought to cover the Jacuzzi. He and Barney trimmed them in 4" squares and laid them in a diagonal pattern mid way up the shower so that it will match the Jacuzzi.

- the final paint coat is pretty much done throughout the house in all rooms including doors and moulding. We are very pleased with how the rooms turned out. Thanks to the help from Nancy Linebarier our designer (believe it or not, it took us less than an hour to choose all the colors in the house) and the great work by Jason Kanbic and his painter crew!

- the hardwood floor is all in. We had just enough to cover all areas. Fortunately we ordered 15% more than budget, which was originally a provision for scrap. It turns out almost none was wasted but we needed more than we estimated. The WFI American Red Oak engineered hardwood is a very nice product. Brian our builder says it's the best of all brands he has installed so far and they do a nice job at the factory cutting the wood to display its grain.

- Our slate supplier Vermont Natural Stone got the shipment back to the east coast. This was the shipment of our fireplace and half bath counter that got wrecked by the nimrods at SAIA freight. They say all but 2 pieces are ruined. They might be able to salvage the large mantel piece but only if they shave it 1/4" off the end. I can't believe it took 2 weeks to get it back to the other coast. They had no ETA on new shipment but were going to expedite it. This is becoming an increasing annoyance as we are trying to finish out rooms and stop making dust inside.

- The Martin Flushline garage doors were installed by a Home Depot subcontractor (Bay Area Overhead Door Co.) who did a nice job. They both were installed in a day with 1 person doing the work. The Martin Quietdrive openers are ultra quiet. Our painter Jason offered to spray them to exactly match the rest of the house and our design advised us to paint them the same color as the body to not draw any attention to them with some white trim around the canterbury windows that are inlaid in them. So Golden Fleece it is.

This week:

- electrical finishing work including light covers, switches, electrical, cat5, chandeliers, pendants, sconces and outdoor lights

- remaining tile work in the bathrooms and granite installation

- spray and install the baseboards

- assembly of closet organizers for various rooms - garage cabinets (Home Depot Do-Able line will work just fine), closets - Closetmaid from Lowes.

- some outside cleanup, moving dirt around. We'll take measurements to order more pavers for a couple of other sections and some remaining garden walls that we preferred to have Brian handle when he has a chance.

- order some maple butcher block tops for the garage cabinets (to make a workshop area). I found a good source at Grainger, which we used back in 2000 in a dot-com startup to make workstation desks. Nice and relatively cheap.

- Finish sanding out the scratches in the front door, our most disappointing purchase which came from wholesaledoorsource.com. Hopefully Jason can fix it up.

All that in a short week with the Thanksgiving holidays!

The Kitchen Will be in by Friday!

I could not believe it when I heard it, but needless to say the kitchen was in by Friday! On Tuesday Brian and several helpers from the Structural FX crew came to take a massive load of stuff out of our garage and storage shed - kitchen cabinets, appliances and tile. We were pretty excited to see it go while at the same time a big load of new furniture arrived to take its place.

It's been another very busy week with a lot of people deployed. The hardwood floor was installed in the family room, kitchen, dining room and living room. The floor was "floated" which means it is installed over a "silent floor" plastic membrane and glued together. This was the engineered hardwood (American Red Oak) floor that we bought a few months back from WFI and it looks great.

Brian and Barney tackled the kitchen cabinets - installing all the lower base units, island and placing the appliances. The Sub Zero freezer, fridge and wine cooler all fired up ok. The double oven should be installed this week. The sinks are in place. We had purchased a lot of extra "skins" for the outside of the cabinets - basically 4' x 8' sheets of cherry - which are being used on the ends of the islands, appliances etc. This makes the kitchen cabinets really look like a custom job - superb. The upper cabinets will be installed as soon as the painting is done.

Angel and the crew from Design Interlock Pavers worked away on leveling the back yard and placing the crushed stone base for the pavers. We will definitely need another wall along the house to try to keep the yard level. It's all hard to plan this in advance until you actually do it, but we're pleased we can finally see how the back yard will be shaped. They started laying the pavers Friday and made good progress in the back yard. Hopefully the weather will hold up. Last week was incredibly nice summer like weather but we had rain on the weekend. Nothing like Oregon though.

We finalized our exterior color - Golden Fleece 6388 by Sherwin Williams. It's a yellow with some gold and brown in it, a nice deep color. It should go well with the black roof, white swiss coffee exterior trim and the grey/charcoal pavers. This color was matched by the stucco company and will be mixed in with the stucco (a product called "Dryvit"). We chose their smooth sand "Sandblast" finish. The nice thing about this product is that while it is a little more expensive than regular stucco, it does not need 21 days to dry before painting since the paint is mixed in with the stucco and if you scratch it the paint will still be there as it soaks all the way through the stucco. We'll also save $ by not having to paint the exterior so net net a savings. All good planning while the rainy season is hitting us.

The interior painting continues with Jason pushing for people to get out of the way. He was spraying the interior doors and crown moulding with a semi-gloss Kelly Moore Swiss Coffee and priming all the walls and ceilings as well as marking imperfections in the drywall for Alliance Drywall to fix up. We're very pleased with the quality of the finish. I noticed Jason was using a SprayTech 0.40 gpm airless sprayer which seems to work very well.

As if this were not enough people bumping into themselves, John and Nado were working away on tiling up the bathrooms. We changed our mind on the half bath and decided to go with a Black Vermont Slate floor instead of the oak hardwood to match up with the slate sink counter top. We picked up some slate at a store in San Francisco called Echeguren, which has an unbelievable selection. John is just about done with tiling the floors and the cabinets will go in Monday. We should be ready for the granite work to start on 11/20 for all counter tops. The granite company, EMG out of Concord, called me up to firm up the installation date.

I have to say I was dissapointed with the mahogany front door we got from Wholesale Door Source in Texas. We were supposed to get a custom made door with 8 small windows in the top for light. After waiting about 3 months, they finally got the shipment out. My face dropped when I opened the crate, it was a 6 window door. I called and they said they no longer make an 8 window door and shipped me this one instead because it was taking so long to get the order filled...thanks for telling me before shipping! I managed to get them to knock some $ off the price as compensation and we can live with 6 windows. After staining the door we ran into yet another problem - the interior face has some pretty serious scratches on the mahogany, as if 50 grit paper were used to sand it. I called them again and they said "this is an unfinished door". Unfinished to me means you need to stain it, not sand the whole thing down for a day! I would not recommend using them again, they really screwed up this order. Hopefully our painter Jason will be able to make it look decent.

This week will see the completion of the tile work on the floors, completion of the hardwood floors, installation of the bathroom and laundry cabinets, installation of the garage doors on Monday through a Home Depot subcontractors, more interior painting, the exterior stucco/paint (delayed because of rain), completion of the paver work and maybe the solar panels.

The Slate Disaster

Well, we finally got our slate from NY today. This is the slate trim for our fireplace mantel and half bath counter from Vermont Natural Stone.

I've never seen such an incompetent shipping company as SAIA. Late last week, the shipment arrived and since it weighs so much we re-routed it to go straight to the new house scheduled for this past Monday. However, the dispatcher failed to notify the trucker and it was loaded on a truck Friday. The trucker called in a huff Friday afternoon to ask what was going on and I said we had rescheduled it for Monday. I should have known better. In fact, right after I hung up I got a real bad feeling and tried calling the trucker back to just have him drop it off but was unsuccessful.

The next thing I know, Monday rolls around and SAIA tell me they have lost our freight. I don't know, it's kind of hard to lose 1,000 pounds of slate but these nimrods did it. It took 4 more days before finally "locating it", after who knows where it had been, probably rolling around all over the Bay Area rattling in the back of a truck. My hunch was that it would be a disasater delivery.

Sure enough, it showed up today and my builder Brian calls me up to say you better get out here quickly, the slate arrived. Oh crap. I race over there and its sprawled out in the back of the truck with one of the straps holding it to the pallet broken and pieces all broken and damaged. I called Vermont Stone and they said to refuse the whole thing and they would take charge from then, which I did. That did very little to comfort me knowing it took two and a half months to custom make it and get it out here in the first place. It was scheduled to be installed right now and I'm sure this will delay us, especially the half bath that needs the counter.

Vermont Stone said they are working on another batch and they assure me it will be done in a couple of weeks on rush order. They certainly could have done a better job packing it up, instead of placing it on a pallet with cardboard between the pieces. I guess I'm angry on two fronts, but I have to say...NEVER use SAIA, they are incompetent. In my 20 years of shipping stuff now, only Fedex ground (my dishwasher that got trashed earlier this year) comes close on poor handling. Absolutely pathetic.

Other than this unfortunate incident, things have been progressing well inside the house. The drywall is all plastered and sanded. The crown and trim is up throughout the house - looks fabomundo. Our painter Jason is spraying the walls with a primer coat, actually a mud like coat first to smooth it all out to a level 4 finish, almost like an auto finish. The interior doors are all in. Brian spent several days putting these in...at one point saying he forgot how many doors there were in the plan, quite sick of it! Good job!

The garden wall work continues and massive load of paver bricks arrived but the rainy weather the last couple of days made a mud pit of the back yard. Despite the mud, they are still working away. The Structural FX crew also tackled concrete along the side of the house to finish putting the level back to original grade.

We also spent a very productive hour with our interior designer Nancy Linebarier picking colors for all the rooms. We brought everything we could carry in a laundry basket - tile and granite samples, fabrics, cabinet doors etc since we have nothing at the house, to try to match things up as best as possible. It worked out quite well. We had picked up a color fan from Benjamin Moore beforehand and this allowed us to quickly narrow the choices. They cost about $10 at your local paint store.

Saturday we are picking up our granite counters from Jerong and Uni-tile with Brian's help. Next week - more painting, hopefully the solar panels go up, paver bricks for the driveway, completing of the scratch coat on the outside, leveling the back yard after the retaining walls are done, maybe some tile work will start in the bathrooms.

Any day now I expect there to be a massive outflux of finishing materials from our rental house garages. Brian is shooting for November 20th for the granite counters to be installed which means the hardwood floors and cabinets all need to be up. I'll be amazed if it all gets done by then, it seems like a lot of work still to finish on the inside. We need it to move, our furniture is arriving and stacking up in the living room!