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.
