We are three weeks away from moving in. We had a major milestone this week - the porta potty and construction fence in front were taken away! We are packing at our rental house and getting ready to go. Our garages and storage shed here are nearly empty of house fixtures.
This past week we saw the installation of the double oven and vent in the kitchen along with the Hubbardton Kakomi light pendants over the island and copper backsplash tiling. We decided that rather than try to match granite tile for the vent area to the granite on the counters (nearly impossible), we would instead use more of the copper backsplash all the way up to the vent. It should make for a great look.
The bathroom tile work is just about done now with a little grout to finish up. Barney did a great job on the Jacuzzi area with granite and tile. It was nearly 4 days work. Jason and the paint crew are working their way around touching up throughout the house and painting the bathrooms. He will be done on Wednesday and then come back a few days before we move in to do final touch ups of dings. The faucets and light fixtures are all in. We were running around Home Depot stores to get toilet seats, door stoppers and closet shelving this weekend.
John our electrician from Structural FX is blazing through all the communications - alarm system, Internet and PBX extensions. We arranged for Comcast Internet and AT&T phone service to get put into the house this week to help in debugging/testing all the connections. We want our move to be seamless on this front to get our home offices up and running. At our last house, we spent around a month dallying trying to get all the communications to work properly.
Brian was able to mobilize a few extra folks to build the garden walls we had left to do in front and along the back of the house. I ordered extra McNear Versalok Mosaic block on Monday and was amazed to see it arrive that same afternoon, 14 pallets of it!
The slate started to be put up on the front steps - California Gold from India, which looks great with the colors of the house. The outside lights are all up. The front Hubbardton Forge lights look awesome. Brian put up a nice sign in front for some Structural FX advertising, with solar powered caps as the added touch.
The solar power is still not up but the delays seem to be from the PG&E side. They are backlogged on installing the meters. They are also being a pain on a bunch of rebates we filed for on furnace and insulation. They keep rejecting them but I'm sure with persistence sooner or later I'll get our check.
We're amazed the weather is holding up, sunshine for the past week, highs of 62 and another week of sun forecast for this week! If this keeps up, we should also make major bonus progress on our landscaping - installing irrigation, bender boards on the flower beds, fences and maybe even getting to sod by the time we move in. Wouldn't that be a thrill!
