Spring has sprung....

Spring has sprung....

March 21st -- As far as the calendar is concerned, spring is here even though a couple of inches of snow is predicted for tomorrow. Progress on the house is moving forward, both inside and outside.

Inside...an access to the attic was cut in the ceiling of the sitting room, which is just outside the hallway to the master suite.

This "hole" will be framed and a "hatch" will be installed so that there is a way to get into the remaining attic if needed for electrical work, insulation, future installation of a whole house fan, and so on.  In this photo you can see the original rafters of the house and an electrical line.

I have moved out of the old master bathroom which will become the second upper-level bathroom.  Here is the drywall work that was needed when the old doorway from the old master bedroom was the only access into this bathroom.

Once all the drywall work is done, this room will be painted, a new toilet will be installed, the vanity, medicine cabinet, and new sink and counter top will be installed.  The bath/shower will remain.  A new tile floor will be laid, and the schedule for that is next Tuesday, along with sanding of the drywall, with paint to follow.

Outside....Significant work was done on the greenhouse today while the weather was nice.  Before I left the house, the crew had installed the "glass panel" walls on the east and south sides.

They installed a glass panel on the west side of the greenhouse, but they had not yet installed the full-lite glass door.

As shown here, the crew started demolition of the decking on the front porch, which will be replaced with a PVC decking material that requires NO paint or maintenance.

At the end of the day when I returned home, the new decking on the front porch was done, although some trim work and exterior painting remain.

Most of the greenhouse was also completed, with trim work, wiring and other details to come.

Here is the view of the greenhouse as it ties into the deck.

Here is the view from the south.

 

And, here is the view from the west side.  Argh...part of the delay with the greenhouse was that this is the second door sent by the manufacturer.  The first door was wrong, and this door is supposed swing from right to left, instead of left to right.  I need to figure out this weekend if I can make this configuration work; otherwise it will be another 10 days to manufacture another door, and who knows how long before it can be hung.

The ventilation fan was also installed on the east side of the greenhouse, with the louvered side outside the greenhouse and the fan mechanism on the inside.

This photo shows the skylights that form the roof of the greenhouse, that will also open to provide ventilation.  The framing between the two skylights is where there will be some light fixtures and maybe grow lights in the near future.  Besides wiring, the greenhouse will need exterior trim, the flashing kits around the skylights to prevent them from leaking in the rain and snow, and some shingles and roofing materials on the roof.  There will be some additional trim work inside the greenhouse, but it will remain mostly "rough" as there will be a pea gravel floor and exposed framing onto which I'll install some shelving and potting benches.

The head painter just sent a text to let me know he would like to put in about two hours of work on taping and applying mud to the drywall in the second upper-level bathroom....tonight.  He is hoping to take the weekend off and would feel better doing so by putting in a few hours...you gotta love his work ethic!

Finally, the resolution of the refrigerator fiasco is in progress -- I was able to identify four refrigerator models that would fit the existing cabinet and the architect will assemble the case and begin those discussions next week.

Forward.....

The saga of the refrigerator continues...

The Saga of the Refrigerator continues...

March 19th -- At this point it was looking as if the problem with the refrigerator not fitting into the cabinet as it should was hanging entirely on the shoulders of the kitchen designer, but hold on to that idea for a minute....as has been the case, nothing is simple or straight forward.

I'm also very much trying to hang on to my sanity as this roller coaster is close to throwing me over the edge.  I remembered a line from an SNL monologue a few years ago that made me laugh...Jon Hamm was the guest host and since he is known for portraying the tormented, but brilliant ad man, Donald Draper on Mad Men, during his opening monologue he pitched a slogan for refrigerators..."a box of winter for your food to live in."  

Yeah, I just want a "box of winter for my food to live in"  that fits the kitchen cabinets.

The architect came over this morning, looked at the timeline of appointments I had with the kitchen designer, that included the designer coming over to measure the kitchen before and after the framing.  It was clear that I provided the designer with the specs of my appliances BEFORE the plan was finalized.  The architect was puzzled about how the designer's plan could be off.  So, the architect also looked over the blueprints, borrowed my tape measure, and kept trying to figure out the reason for why the refrigerator did not fit.

In the meantime, I need to explain a bit about my refrigerator selection.  The appliance market is flooded with way too many insane options for a box of winter for your food to live in.  I selected a simple top freezer model, with ice maker, that was large capacity and stainless.  I didn't want a side-by-side, or French door model,  and I didn't want a water dispenser or ice-maker in the door.  The kitchen designer admitted on the phone that he was concerned that I did not select a 36" wide refrigerator -- mine was 33" wide -- so he designed a 36" wide cabinet box that would need a bit of trim.  Apparently 36" wide is for side-by-side and French door refrigerators...meaning that simple top freezer models will no doubt be a thing of the past in the near future.  The kitchen designer told me he was doing me a favor to design a 36" wide cabinet so that when I eventually bought a 36" wide refrigerator in the future, I would thank him.  The kitchen designer admitted that he never checked the refrigerator depth.  The depth of my refrigerator is 30" but the cabinet depth was built to 26".  

The galley style kitchen was built in both the original part of the house as well as the new construction addition.  The ceiling had to be lowered in the kitchen that was in the original part of the house to match the ceiling height in the addition.  As the architect was checking the plans and measuring, he discovered that not only was the kitchen designer at fault, but the framers had also made a mistake in the placement of the north wall of the galley kitchen, which is the wall that includes the cabinet for the refrigerator.  While the specifications were correct and clear on the blueprints, the framers should have contacted either the contractor or the architect for any clarification, but instead that did not follow the blueprint.

Now that the architect determined that the source of this problem rests jointly on the kitchen designer and the framers, the next step was to figure out a solution to this problem. One solution is to open the wall, insert a header, trim the studs and add about 2 inches to the cabinet depth.  The refrigerator would still extend past the cabinet, so this is not a good solution.  Another solution would be to move the wall, but that would create significant problems in the laundry room, not only to further delay the completion of this project, create more dust and mess.  The least intrusive and most cost-effective solution is to replace the current refrigerator with a new one.

Ugh...not only does this mean that I now have to research refrigerators again, but in order to find one that will fit the current cabinet dimensions, it will not be the simple top freezer model that I wanted.  

Who shops for a refrigerator by dimension, rather than function?  Me, I guess, and believe it or not, there is actually a website that lets one insert dimensions and it spits out models.  So, maybe this problem has happened before?

That was the bad news...the good news:  the architect is trying to save me from any further brain damage over this.  He left telling me that he will speak with both the kitchen design company and the contractor, explain the problem, the cause of the problem and propose the resolution, which is that together they should share the cost to buy me a new refrigerator.  Incidentally, the owner of the kitchen design company, which is considered "high end" here, also very conveniently owns a "high end" appliance company, that I had visited earlier in this process and determined that it was out of my price range.

At least I don't have to hassle with this part to resolve this issue, for which I am grateful to my architect.

So, I will now begin the search for a new refrigerator.  However, it struck me that I might actually have THREE refrigerators on my hands...the old one that was moved to the basement, my new one that is too deep for the kitchen cabinet, and a model to be named later purchased on the basis of its dimensions.  The best case scenario is that the old refrigerator is removed from the basement and sent to the recycling center, the too deep refrigerator becomes the box of winter in the basement for my future home mircobrew to live in and a new, appropriate dimension box of winter for my food to live in fits in the kitchen.

So, I have faith that my architect will work with the contractor's framers and the kitchen designer while I search for another appliance.  Stay tuned....

Size really does matter....

Size really does matter....

March 15 - 18 -- To those of you who sent an e-mail asking what happened with the refrigerator...thanks for reading.  The last few days have been such a wicked roller coaster ride that I literally was too exhausted by the end of the day to blog.  But here is what has been going on.

Saturday, March 15th -- It is all about size and good news, bad news.  The appliance guys showed up and could not have been nicer.  They first decided to move the washer and dryer from the basement to the new laundry room.  That was super easy, as these photos show.

Here they are disconnecting the washer, and here it comes through the kitchen

And around the corner leading to the laundry room

Where it eventually looks like this....lovely!

Next, they move the refrigerator that has been sitting in a box since it was delivered on December 23rd.  While they carried it, my job was to guide the open doors through the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, and it fit PERFECTLY through the doorway!!!

Then they had to take off the doors of the old refrigerator to take it to the basement where it will hold the future batches of home microbrew.

Even though the appliance guys left some tools, their order book, and the basement door off the hinges when they left, they did return to rehang the door and gather their stuff.

So far so good, until.......

March 16th  -- This is a momentous day -- the first day in 10 months that I am actually doing laundry in my own house with my own washer and dryer instead of camping out at my dear friends' house to clean my clothes.  Yes, when the first load went in, I was doing the happy dance!!  The laundry room is really spectacular.

However, this is where size does matter after all....I kept looking at the refrigerator and it seemed off.  In fact, the architect's plans included moving the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen to the south so that there would be a clear line of sight through the galley kitchen, yet the refrigerator, as shown below, extends out of the cabinet box by about 5" -- clearly, something is wrong here....bad news.

There was no problem with the installation.  In the meantime, the contractor texted that he had emergency surgery and would be out of commission for a few days.  So, I texted these photos to the architect and asked for his help.  In the mean time, the contractor was back on his feet, stopped by and told me to contact the kitchen designer.  I talked to the kitchen designer and that was not a pretty conversation.  In the mean time, the architect made an appointment to stop by to help me get this resolved, but asked me to construct a timeline of my meetings with the kitchen designer.  Sure enough, the timeline shows that I provided the kitchen designer with the specs for all of my appliances BEFORE the kitchen plans were finalized.  Although I did sign off on the plans, it was AFTER the appliances dimensions were provided to the kitchen designer and BEFORE the appliances were purchased.  From the perspective of my architect, the kitchen designer should have made sure that the cabinet was the appropriate size for the selected appliance. In other words, if the kitchen designer had told me that the refrigerator I selected was not going to fit the cabinet, I would have selected a different refrigerator.  Similarly, the kitchen designer should have adjusted the size of the cabinet to fit the refrigerator I selected....more on this issue later, but this is bad news.

March 17th   -- In the meantime, the carpenter custom-built new medicine cabinets for the master bathroom over the weekend and showed up on Monday to install them.    The mirrored fronts will be installed later, and the custom mirrors are sitting on the vanity wrapped in brown paper.  The medicine cabinets are even better than the ones that I had previously purchased.

 So, the problem with the medicine cabinets from last week is resolved -- good news -- but there is still the refrigerator issue.

When the painter was cleaning out the drywall to make a patch on the wall opposite the second upstairs bathroom, he had to expose the furnace flue that travels from the furnace to the attic.  When the flue was installed, the furnace buys did not have the luxury of access to this wall and so we discovered that they were not able to 100% seal the joints.  So, it was good that this wall was opened because the furnace guys came back and sealed the joints so there would be 0% heat loss.  Good news to get this resolved.

In the mean time, the painter worked on drywall over the weekend, sealing and taping the once "not-so-secret" passage way, which is now truly a wall in foyer and a wall in the closet in the guest suite, with a shelf and clothes bar.

There was more progress with the chest of drawers finished with painted fronts, knobs, and the the inside of the drawers with a finish coat.

The range hood is very cool, especially with the halogen lights on, and we are waiting to remove the protective cover over the stainless finish until the end.  The six-burner range top is looking very cool, but we will install all the burner covers and grates until the end.

The speaker wires were connected to the center channel, below the flat panel TV mount, so eventually I will have a 5.1 surround sound system (4 speakers in the ceiling, the center channel, and I will add a subwoofer) that will be powered by an AV-digital receiver that will connect with the smart TV.

The library ladder has been stained to match the finish of the hardwood floors

The bookshelves and library ladder system could not have turned out better.

The finish carpenters continued to work on a lot of the finishing touches, such as installing the door hardware in the mudroom coat closet.

The dishwasher has been installed in the kitchen....however, the refrigerator is still sticking out of its cabinet box....that bad news.

March 18th -- A miracle...the plumber returned while I was out and installed the pot filler faucet...well, except that they sent two "set-screws" for the pot filler that were different sizes and the contractor had to go find two identical size set screws until the pot filler installation was complete, but here it is about 99% installed.

Tomorrow the architect will meet me to help determine what to do about the refrigerator.