Tons of Stuff

The drawers and doors and handles are on the cabinets. Sweet! It all looks so good together and I'm completely excited and happy with how it all looks with the counters and the paint.
I'm a little worried about a couple drawers being not exactly flush with the others, but Alan thinks it's not noticeable. Am I starting to get totally obsessed with perfection? I think they can be adjusted, so I'll ask. Here they are:

The pulls look TOTALLY cool, and even though they weren't my very first pick (see this post) I like these a lot! (They're a little dusty in this picture - I forgot to clean them first.)

The pot rack is up on the wall beside our bookshelf in the kitchen corner. Alan and I had a bit of a heart attack this morning when we were holding it up to the wall (to see how high we wanted it mounted). We lost communication with each other and forgot how it all held together, and one of the very heavy iron braces when crashing down onto our NEW COUNTERTOP!! OMG I thought it was all over. BUT we couldn't find any cracks (which is what I full expected after hearing the crash) or even marks or scratches (what I was willing to settle for in that split second). Tonight when I looked again and ran my hand over the surface, I felt a tiny little pitted spot, but it could easily be from the manufacturing end of things. What a relief... It will be really nice to get at our often-used cookware.

The trim around the kitchen window is up. Get this - the window is not level, and the right side is a full 1/2" lower than the left side. Because the countertops are level, thank goodness, it meant that the trim around the window had to be whittled down a bit so that it would fit on the backsplash. Not sure if anyone but me will notice - maybe it will turn out to be one of those nice little oddities, like an eccentric relative you think of fondly.

Tough to get a good picture of it in the sun.

And lastly, the heater guys came and put stuff in the wall (ducts and holes and even a plenum, whatever that is). We have to hire a roofer to put a hole in the roof which is apparently difficult to do with our Mediterranean red tiles - I think it sounds like a big job mostly because no one really wants to do it.

Rolling Along

The upstairs landing painting is finished and it is exquisite!! I'll post photos next week when we get back from Marina's GRADUATION from Prescott College (while celebrating Ethan's 21ST BIRTHDAY).

Today's news was multitudinous and exciting: Countertops will be installed Friday, then early next week will be the ductwork and prep for installing the furnace. The heater closet will get finished, as well as the gas and electric.

Then (trying not to count our chickens), if all goes well we might have the drywall and patching done by the end of the week, as well as finishing the electric in the kitchen, which would have everything ready for the last round of painting around the 12th. Flooring could start before the end of that week.

If and if and if ... it all could be done before Strawberry on the 22nd.

Heater Closet Day 3

Not much new on the closet, but the platform went in, and stuff progresses. I'm a little worried about what the door on the family room side will look like. Cam asked if we wanted it to match the doors, and we asked, which one? We counted about 6 different door styles in that area! We asked to have it be simple and unobtrusive.

Heater Closet Goes Up - 2nd Day

Just a couple 2 by 4s and we have an actual closet. Of course it's 80 degrees out, and suddenly the idea of forced air heat doesn't feel like the driving force it was last January when this whole thing started.

As a person of very limited hands-on skills, I am quite amazed at every little piece of building that happens around here. I remember talking to a neighbor who had bought an old camper that had a crushed in back corner. He was complete re-creating the back end of the camper with sheet metal and I don't know whatall. When I expressed my amazement he said, "It's just made stuff. So I can make it too," and had no inkling that this was a bit of magic from my perspective.

I've always wanted to learn how to frame something. But I hate using tools.

View from inside Ethan's room:

View from the family room:

Heat Wave

We cheerfully said goodbye to our awful gas wall heater in the family room, and now the closet in Ethan's room has been divided into two. One will be a smaller closet and the other a small heater closet. Here are the closet demo photos.

The walls came down:

Looking up into the attic:

This used to be an outside wall (before Marina's room was built on) and we discovered the window frame that was there once:

Here's the hole that was left by removing the heater:

Rich, our carpenter, called it "air conditioning for white trash..."