I'm typing this blog post from my new home office! Yes, we did a partial move in over the weekend and it's been great getting set up. It's been pretty much a seamless cutover with phones and Internet both working perfectly. The downstairs part of the house has a little work left to finish up but that will be done soon enough.
This week the carpet went in. This was carpet we had purchased from Owens Wholesale Carpet in Dalton, GA. Recall a few posts ago we had been strongly warned by our local carpet shops against buying our carpet this way - we won't know what we're getting, there will be no servuce, blah blah blah. I have to say, we could not be more pleased. All the carpet and pad was in perfect order. The installer, Paul Ondricek, really knows his stuff on seams. He is about 90% done now with just the stairs left for Monday. The job took about 4 days in all.
While carpet was going in, Barney of Structural FX finished up the cherry crown in the kitchen. I was pleased with their recommendation to make it a little wider than the standard Thomasville crown piece, adding some light rail that ran around the tops of the cabinets and some filler between the light rail and crown. It makes for a nice thick craftsman like band all around the kitchen. By the end of the week, the last of the cabinet doors were up and the kitchen was given a good cleaning and ceremonial unwrapping of the granite island.
The door handles also went in throughout the house. I was able to mobilize the shorter 2 3/8" backsets and full lip strike plates air shipped from Omnia. Home Annex were quite good at turning all this around. These all fit perfectly and I just shipped all the replaced parts back for credit.
The painters returned on Friday and continued through the weekend touching up. They say they will be done inside by Wednesday. There is still a lot to do outside but that can continue into the new year without disrupting us.
We put the new TV up in the media room and Brian framed it up nicely with help from Charley who did some rapid plaster work there and in other parts of the house. The Harman Kardon AVR arrived and I tried hooking it up this weekend but the instruction manual is a little complicated so it will have to wait before we get the full surround sound effect.
The staircase rail is still in process. Joe the wlder was here (a friend of Brian's from United) to build us a custom metal frame. It's ready to go for powdercoating Monday and then back to install the cable rails hopefully in time for the move in.
The outside yard has been a mud pit the past few days as the rain was quite heavy all week. Despite that, our outside crew was able to make some progress on bender board and irrigation system. We hope to bring in a load of sod on Thursday - a green Christmas.
In fact, if all goes to plan, we will be officially moved in on Friday! There's a lot of little details to finish inside but I am confident in the Structural FX crew. We loaded up the fridge again with snacks and drinks to keep everyone going.
