THE CABINETS ARE UP!!! and, THE ROOF IS ON!!!

Not a lot to say, so we'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Rob and Travis finished the cabinets on Wed., and the roofers finished on Tuesday. No new work until Tuesday of next week, when they'll finish tweaking the cabinets, working on the baseboards and getting ready for some major outdoor stuff next week. We lose our driveway almost all of next week as they dig up the old asphalt and replace the water line and relocate the electrical, telephone, and cable lines. Seattle City Light is extoring $1500 to "reconnect" the relocated meter -- and they don't do any of the work! Must be nice. The long-lost shower pan is supposed to be delivered next week along with all the new appliances. It's finally starting to get put back together, though we've got a long way to go still.

We think the cabinets look fantastic! Hope you do to.







And here's the new garage and roof -- we'll have to replace the rest of the shingles on the main house in a year or so to look like these.

The Kitchen Cabinets are HERE!! The cabinets were delivered yesterday and the guys from Ideal Building started to install them today. As you can see from the picture above, the kitchen is starting to take shape with the new pantry, the space for the new fridge and the oven and microwave wall.

The space under the new east facing window will provide us a lot more storage than we have had in the past and the lower corner cabinet has a lazy susan feature which will be very nice to have in the kitchen. As you can see the upper cabinet has not been installed but you can see one of the changes we made to the cabinet door on this cabinet. We decided to have this door be glass to add some character to the room. I think it is going to look fantastic!

In addition to the kitchen cabinet work, Rob and Travis from Ideal Building have also spent time staining our new baseboards. Two coats later and they are just about ready to be installed. Three of the four rooms downstairs will be refinished with new baseboards, while the formal living room will have to wait until phase two next year. -- Yes, there is going to be a phase two!!! I know, I know - what the heck are we thinking?!? By the end of the whole remodel, we will practically have a new house. That works out great, because we really do love this house and the location. Lastly, our two dogs have grown up in this house - and we really can't imagine living in a downtown condo...yet! (EVER says Gary)

Outside, the cedar shingles have been installed on the garage. We don't have a picture yet- because it was dark and rainy before we could get out there and snap a picture of it.

Tomorrow, work on the kitchen continues before Ideal Building takes a much deserved holiday. We expect the kitchen cabinets to be done on Monday or Tuesday of next week, and then the new appliances will be delivered and installed.

Standing back from the TV room you can really see how the room is coming together. We still miss having the creature comforts of home and really wish the construction was all over - but we know it will be worth the wait.

We got back from six days in the Olympia condo this afternoon. It was sure nice to get away to a clean, quiet, non-construction zone place for a few days -- we are lucky to have it as an escape pod. However, we missed Seattle, the dogs, and wondered what was going on and kept pestering Robert via e-mail. So it was good to get back and see the progress.

And boy did they make progress. As you can see, the garage is all framed and roofed in -- it passed the framing inspection by the city, so the next step is to put the siding and shingles up.

The garage is going to be nice and roomy -- and the windows and high vaulted ceiling will make for a very nice, light, and bright work space. We'll install the old kitchen cabinets and make them into a work bench, and have tons of room to boot.
The contractors have stored much of their tools in there, and we'll be able to put the new kitchen cabinets that get delivered on Monday in there as well.

They also were able to install the new A/C unit and a big new powerful, and very quiet furnace.

It's a good thing we have the new furnace, because the house is toxic with the fumes from the hardwood finish. The floors are gorgeous, but we've had to open all the windows and doors to air the place out (as it is we are both getting slightly high), and the furnance has been running to keep the place warm. It's so quiet that we didn't even know it was running!
Of course with a new furnace comes a new thermostat -- and this one, with the A/C, is a complicated bugger with lots of settings for coming and going and temperatures and the like -- so we'll have to learn how the thing works.

The hardwoods are gorgeous -- we didn't stain them at all, it's just got three coats of polyurathane finish. They look brand new and we are reluctant to walk on them. The pictures on here just don't do them justice.

It's going to be a busy but short week with the holiday. The cabinets are expected to arrive on Monday, so they'll start installing them on Tuesday. They'll also start the siding on the garage -- and they'll have to swap windows. The workers on Friday when the windows came thought the new fancy one with the awning opening was for the garage, rather than the standard, non-opening one that Robert gave us from a remodel job they didn't need it for. They mistakingly installed it in the garage and left the other one out. Fortunately the siding isn't up so it should be no problem to swap them out. They'll take Thursday and Friday off, and then finish the cabinets the next week and install the appliances.

Still no sign of the bathroom fixtures and shower pan -- so the kitchen might beat the bathroom to finish!

This is how the house looked this morning, November 13th, as we left for a week in the Olympia condo. We put Lucy and Abbey in the boarding kennel and we packed some clothes and moved south for a few days. Travis and Rob are tarping the garage roof as they get ready to tear it off and connect it to the new garage, while another contractor is inside installing a new furnace and air-conditioner. Tomorrow the hardwood refinishers come in and get to work on the kitchen, tv room and dining room. So in short, the house is not habitable for a few days and we are lucky we have our little Olympia place to get away to.

When we get back we should see some remarkable progress and we'll upload pictures then.

It has been a few days since we last posted but that is due to a two day break in work at the house. Abbey and Lucy stayed home from Doggie Day Care and I am sure enjoyed the break from having to be social with 30 other dogs.

Wednesday and Thursday were off days and then on Friday, Ideal Building returned to put up the trusses on the garage. Considering how big and bulky these things are Gary says they went up pretty fast. By early afternoon they were up and in place.

As you can see from both pictures, the garage is really taking shape and the two windows in the new garage have been cut out. Next week - they will continue on the garage with tearing out the affected shingles before connecting the trusses to the existing garage.

On Friday night, instead of our usual dinner and a movie we did dinner and SHOPPING. We went looking for lights to hang over our new eating bar and after looking at various styles of lights we settled on three hanging pendant lights. The glass lamp is acorn shaped and has a burnt orange hue which we think will work well with the new look of the kitchen. Gary snapped this shot as I was trying to get a better idea of what the light will look like over the bar.

I am sitting here at the computer waiting for some interested buyers for our stove top and oven to arrive. I hope they are interested as we would like to get these sold and out of the garage. And who knows, maybe they will take the microwave as a bonus! (the handle broke off during the demolition so it isn't really sellable unless someone wants to try and fix it.

Gary is spending the day at a conference for one of his clients and I will be taking our area rugs out to be dry cleaned. Tonight I have a concert with the BEARatones and then tomorrow Gary and I will move out everything in the faux kitchen in preperation for next week's work on the hardwoods and baseboards etc.

I 'escaped' this morning with the dogs at 7:15am to get them out of the house and to Doggie Day Care. The painters were planning to arrive at 7:30am to finish up the job in the kitchen, tv room and master bathroom. They did a lot of the painting yesterday but it was too dark to take any pictures as the canned lights were still taped over since they painted the ceiling. The smell of paint lingered all evening so we opened some windows so that we could sleep and not get overwhelmed by the fumes.

So this afternoon after I got home from work with the dogs in tow - I found our kitchen & TV Room finished. Although it may not be very noticable, we actually changed the paint color of the kitchen and TV Room. The new color is 'Paprika' and it has a little more orange to it. Gary likes to call it 'Reddish Tan'. We held up the swatches for the new cabinets and granite counters and we think it is going to look great. The 'accent' wall where the Coca Cola sign hangs has been changed from a forrest green to a khaki green.

We kept the color the same in our master bathroom. We really liked our Canyon Grey River Rock paint and thought it works well with the tile that we will be using in the shower.

Outside, Travis and Rob with Ideal Building worked on the framing of the garage and by the of the day had finished putting plywood on the exterior of the garage. By the end of this week, the trusses should be up on the garage (or at least started).

There is no work scheduled for tomorrow (and possibly Thursday) so Lucy and Abbey get to stay home with Gary. Olivia at Tails of the City said that Abbey should be VERY tired tonight as she found a new playmate and played ALL day long.

Time for dinner and then off to some post election gatherings...

Well the rain has sure returned to Seattle with a vengence. It has been raining pretty much non-stop since Friday. Due to poor drainage off the street and the ditch we dug was blocked by someone who was parked on the street who then dug themselves in as they drove out and covered it up, thus diverting the water down the driveway - we had some major water pouring our yard and washing down whats left of the driveway and into the regraded area around the new garage. This is how the Grand Canyon started, and despite the silt-barriers that Bill and Travis put up Friday after Thursday nights flood, a ton of dirt still washed out and down into the Kim and Marks yard. Saturday's rain was like Florida rain, it came down in buckets.

Gary spent some time digging out the ditch on the street to channel the water away from the drive. I wish I thought to take a picture to show how much water and dirt (mud) washed down our yard and gathered near Kim and Mark's yard.

Anyway, after we got home from dinner last night at Endolyne Joe's with our friends Jay and Steve and Wes - we started moving stuff around in the formal living room as we need to make room for most everything in our TV room.

Then this morning, I packed up all 400 CD's, moved them upstairs and then Gary and I slowly started to pack and move stuff out. We tackled moving the 32" television, TiVo and DVD player upstairs into our 2nd bedroom. This room will be our temporary tv room while the painters get to working on the kitchen/TV room area. Moving that TV upstairs was painful. It must be the WORLDS HEAVIEST TV!!! It was SOOO heavy that we had to take several breaks just to get it up there. We may end up leaving that TV upstairs as I can't imagine carrying that thing back down. Luckily a nice 50" flat screen will be moving into our TV room in the near future.

Some of the things in the TV room will be sold on craigslist.com, so we cleaned that stuff up, took photos and then moved them into the garage. The rest of the stuff moved into our formal living room which takes up all the space in there now. Next weekend, we will have to move the dining room table into this room and then put the fridge out in the garage so they can refinish the hardwoods. The only part of the house that we are living in essentially is upstairs now! So Gary and I will be moving to our Olympia condo in a week since we cannot be here for the 4 days while that the hardwood finishers are working. Abbey and Lucy will be at the boarding kennel, and we'll be enjoying a break from our dirty and cramped house. And when we get back, we expect a clean, shiny, newly painted, new finshed floor downstairs. Actually all this has been good since we are cleaning places that haven't been cleaned in years (least the contractors think we are pigs and slobs) as well as selling off lots of stuff on craigslist (or at least trying too -- so far only the treadmill and the barstools have sold).

The TV Room is completely empty now and when we do move back into this room, we are considering flopping the floor plan and put the new TV on the wall where I am standing in this picture. We are going to either buy a low level cabinet or look into having Superior Cabinets (who are building our kitchen cabinets) make something for us here too.

I can hear the rain coming down outside and it looks like it will be pretty bad tomorrow too - and we have a Seahawks Game in this awful weather... On Monday Robert says they'll be framing the garage (even though it's going to be awful weather - he said "you have to remember, if we work only when it is nice out, then we wouldn't be working to often and jobs would last foreverer". Painters are also scheduled to be painting all week downstairs.

It is late on Friday night and Gary and I just got home from our usual 'date night' where we went to Jalisco's and then went to see 'Man of the Year' with Robin Williams. Not too bad. It got awful reviews but we enjoyed it. It is definitely a dramedy - if you are thinking that it is a laugh out loud riot for 2 hours, you will be disappointed. It is three parts; comedy, drama and thriller.

Anyway, the last couple of days have seen some interesting changes in the remodel. Robert, Bill and Travis were here on Thursday to start work on framing up the garage (in the rain), while some guys finished up the walls in the kitchen in preperation of texturing on Friday. And boy did it rain yesterday. I cannot believe that Ideal Building stuck it out as long as they did. But by the end of the day, two of the three walls were up on the new garage.

However, as I drove down the driveway I noticed that the new East facing window seemed to be a little higher that I thought it would be. I stepped into the new garage are and looked at the window from the inside and sure enough, the bottom of the window was at my chin. So I went in and talked to Gary about it.

Gary felt the same way and had already emailed Robert to find out why it was raised. Robert said that he and Bill talked and they felt it would look better esthetically from the outside if it was placed higher. And although that may be right, we really wanted it low enough that we could look out when working at the work bench. Therefore Gary asked if they could move it before they went much farther with framing.

So this morning, Bll was here by the time Gary got home from the gym and was working on the rest of the framing. They talked about the location and Bill moved the window to a place that Gary and I both feel is right. It's great to have a relationship with Robert and Bill that we can talk about things and if we have a concern that it will be addressed. But the day didn't end there. Due to the amount of rain over the last couple of days, the amount of soft dirt around the yard and that we no longer have a lot of ivy in the yard - a large amount of dirt spilled down from our yard and into Kim and Mark's. Kim talked to Gary about it and Bill had Travis work on cleaning this up and put up some new barriers to protect any more mud slides into their yard.

After all that, the rest of the framing was completed outside and all the texture has been applied to the kitchen, laundry room (where the patch was replaced) and in some of the master bathroom. It is looking good and next week we should see some of the roof start to take shape. Our project for this weekend is to move the TV room into the Formal Living Room and Garage in preperation for painting which starts on Monday.

November has arrived and we are about 1/3 of our way into this remodel project. Over the next three weeks the framing for the garage will go up, painting the kitchen and TV Room and the hardwoods will be redone. Then just before Thanksgiving, our cabinets for the kitchen will be installed. And in the first week of December the counter will be measured and then cut for the granite we picked out.

But today, more taping was done in the kitchen along with mud and sanding to get it ready for texture later this week. And I guess this blog has a little more power than I originally thought (bwah ha ha ha!!!). Robert from Ideal Building must have read the blog posting from yesterday and saw my mention about the patch falling off in the laundry room. And sure enough, this morning Rob (not to be confused with Rob...ert) was here and fixed it all up (even though they were not responsible -- the electricians were). To the right, I tried to recreate the photo from yesterday.

Additional work continued outside and when I came home tonight, I noticed that Travis had worked today to rip off the roof overhang on the eastside of the existing garage to prepare for the framing and attaching of the new garage. It was a little dark when I got home, but I was able to snap off this shot.

We also heard today that when Travis was removing the portion of the roof on the garage, he discovered carpenter ants! Ugh! We don't know how bad it is or how we are going to deal with it. Yet another project it seems.

Anyway, I think the framing on the garage will start tomorrow - so I am excited to see that go up.