Insulation is done. No more prickly wrists.
A very exciting week is coming up: cabinets are on the truck! Appliances are being shipped to the retailer. Finished the plumbing and the insulation this past weekend. Bob was a superstar on the plumbing - we cut the holes for the pipe just a tad low in the stud (my error I believe - didn't think about the drop we needed) and he hand filed and chiselled it to the correct height so that we had a nice drop on the pipe. Temptation was to not do the whole job but I kept saying to him "think of your blocked up sink and think how 30 minutes more now will save all that smelly bother". And on (and on) he filed. Bless him.
I finished the insulation. So this morning I am waiting for the building inspector and hoping he'll give us the sign-off to sheetrock. Called the sheetrock guy (via his friend as his English is not good enough to understand on the phone) and he is coming over again for a last look as we will need to use 3/4 " sheetrock on some walls to match up to the old plasterwork and then 1/2" on the walls that are totally new.
I think I'll be taking a few days off this week to lay the hardwood floor so as to keep things moving along. Still a ways to go but quite exciting as everything is really coming together and we can see the end in sight: the list of to do's for this room is getting much shorter! The pile of tools that we have amassed doing it is getting taller!
Also called another guy to give a quote on installing the cabinets. I'd like to give it a try but we have a slightly tricky boxing in / fake door situation to cover up the vents in the corner and I think by the time we get to that stage of things we might be more than happy to pay someone to do it and get it done efficiently. Current quote is $3600 - how can installing cabinets cost so much? They'll help install appliances so we won't have to incur that (which BTW is also another big gouge - $125 to install a D/W?) but I'd like to get it down a little if possible.
We've had some good price karma recently: the Samsung French Door fridge arrived from Lowes. We had bought it when they had a $150 gift card rebate so that saved us some $$. Then when it arrived there were some tiny scuffs on the door. We tried to buff them out but they were not budging. They are sort of those imperceptable yet you know they are there things. So we called Lowes and they said "well either send it back or we'll give you 15% off". 15% = $270. For that we could live with it so we got the fridge at $420 (23%) off retail.
Then we happened to be shopping for shelving for the FR and ran across some rugs on sale in Pottery Barn. I usually can't afford them but the colors on this rug worked and it was on sale reduced from $479 to $299 for an all-wool 5' x 8' rug. Bought a swatch ($20) to check it worked colorwise, got home and called the store to check they had it in stick. Went over and told the assistant that we'd take a 3' x 5" (advertised price $179, $129 on sale) and a 5' x 8' ($479, $299 on sale). So she kind of fussed around a bit and kept telling us we'd ordered the 8' x 10'. And then rang it up saying "OK, the 3' x 5' is $69 and the 5' x 8' is $129." I thought maybe there was another discount that we hadn't seen as there were 50% off signs all over the store. Then she kind of paused and chatted with a colleague and the colleague said "no, if you told them that then you have to charge them that" so I guess she did get confused and we got the $179 rug for $69 and the $479 rug for $129. 2 rugs, value $660 for $198 (a 70% saving). Pretty soon we'll have saved enough on dings and screw-ups to make ordering the induction stove top a "push"!!
There was one other nice deal we got but I can't remember what it was.
Still to do:
- Desqueak the sub floor (us)
- Lay hardwood floor (us)
- Finish hardwood floor (us)
- Sheetrock/mud/prime (Adelson)
- Paint the bits that show - ceiling and backsplash (us)
- Have Ray (HVAC guy) come and install duct for toe-kick register
- Pick cabinet installer (Briganti or MPR)
- Get cabs and appliances delivered
- Get cabs/appliances installed
- Decide if we really do like that cabinet hardware we ordererd. (I do, Bob is not so sure.)
- Take moment to stand back and admire sexy cabinets and applaud/breathe out!
- Call countertop guy to come and measure
- Call electrician (needs to install outlet in end of 'L', put in boxes for appliances and finish up)
- Measure and buy sink
- Countertop guy installs counter/sink/stove top
- Take moment to stand back and admire sexy kitchen and applaud/breathe out!
- (Hope that this is it) Oh wait ... un pack all kitchen crap back into new kitchen including Bob's birthday All-Clad pan set - nice!
Somewhere in there I'm sure there's one or two more sign-offs from the inspector.
No comments:
Post a Comment