Well another week has gone by and a lot of the finishing work has happened. Rob from Ideal Building is the one that is here on a regular basis now. He finished up the tiling in the bathroom and put up some yellow pine as a transition from the shower tile to the wall. We chose a charcoal grout to accent the black shower pan and then the black Anticado granite vanity counter and black granite vessel sinks. And now that we have done that, we are thinking of switching out our toilet to a black one to complete the look. We will do this ourselves.

How do you like our new Vanity lighting? It is a light bar made to look like branches tied together with strips of leather and then powered with 4 globes facing downward illuminating out vanity... Wha?!? There is no light bar in the picture???? Yep! that's right there is no light bar in the picture and that is because we had YET ANOTHER problem with what we bought at Seattle Lighting. This time around, one of the four light bases was bent and would not hang straight down. So after the eletrician was here to install it, Gary and I took it down and returned it to Seattle Lighting yesterday. The replacement will be expedited, but in Seattle Lighting terms, 'expedited' means 3 to 4 weeks! Ugh!

Outside, Rob finished triming all of the windows on the East side of the house so they match the trim from the new kitchen and garage windows. Rob had to cut out siding around the windows and then installed nice thick pieces of trim around them. These will be painted on Monday to match the existing trim around the house. We also put an order in for all new gutters at the house. We are going with the Leaf Guard system and found a color that we accent the house nicely. We are thinking 'PINK!'... kidding! We are going with an Ivory color for the gutters. These should be installed soon.

This past Thursday, Seattle City Light was out to (finally) switch over the power from our old circuit box to the new one. With that done, the electrician and his team of people were here to do a lot of the outstanding electrical around the house. I arrived home from work to find them still here. One guy was hooking up the new air-conditioning unit, while another worked on the new circuit for the hot-tub. Yet another guy was working on the lighting in our garage (which is very cool and VERY bright). Lastly, all the electrical in the kitchen was fixed. We had some switch issues, where some switches would only turn off lights, but not on and etc. So that was nice to finally have corrected.

All the wires from the old circuit box have been cut back and then tied to the new circuit box. Not many people (other than my sister's husband Dave) will find a picture of the circuit box exciting, so this is manly for him.



With the electrical completed in the kitchen, our trim kit for the microwave was installed. And now this wall is FINALLY complete! I am hoping that Ryan from Superior Cabinets will be out next week to work on the drawers as they are not moving out or in very smoothly at this time. Once that is done, we will start moving back into the kitchen.

Did you notice the backsplash in the above picture? Gary and I worked on the backsplah on Saturday and got the whole thing completed by 11:30 last night. We spent some time in the afternoon and then again after we got home from dinner. We took fifteen 12x12 slate tiles and cut them into 2" stips. We then stacked them 6" high in a brick pattern all the way around the kitchen. Cutting around outlets and making sure that we do not use the same tiles in large chunks was like putting together a puzzle. Near the end of the night, I was trying to thin out a piece of tile to fit under an outlet and had to cut 4 of them to get it right. I used the whole 'Measure Twice, Cut Once' philosophy but it still didn't work. Looking at it this morning, we are really happy with the overall look.

This coming week, the painters will be back to do some interior touch up painting and also finish up the painting of the garage exterior. They will return once more after the new garage door is installed (which is scheduled for Wednesday, January 31st). I am hoping for the fixtures to our shower will be installed, but not sure when we can expect a new shower door as we have yet to order anything. A new mirror for the vanity will need to be installed as well, but the whole place is slowly coming together.

Well, it has been over a week since our last post and it isn't because are bored with the blog. Gary took the camera with him to Olympia to get a special photo for our niece Shayelyn. But some stuff happened and here is a summary.

The snow started melting earlier this week and as I right this there are only traces of snow on the ground around Seattle. And with the snow going away Ideal Building was able to get back to work on the house. Rob was here this week to complete the tiling in our bathroom. And today, Gary and I went out to buy the grout for the shower tile. We chose a charcoal color for the grout as we thought it would be a nice accent against the tile.

I met with our friend Pete from the chorus about the new TV cabinet for our TV room. He brought a design along with his bid and I signed off on the design. So he will be building our cabinet over the next couple of weeks out of cherry and then staining it to match our Kitchen. The cabinet will be 8 feet long and 24 inches tall. It should accommodate a lot (but not all) of our DVD's and then our video components. Our new 50" plasma will sit on top of the cabinet.

Ryan from Superior Cabinets returned to the house to level all the kitchen cabinet and bathroom vanity doors. He also adjusted one shelf in our pantry to allow us to put our dog food container in there and as you can see Abbey is very interested in getting into it.

Starting tomorrow Ideal Building will finish the door and window trim outside of the house, and then Rob will grout the shower and the granite for our new window in the kitchen will be installed. And hopefully, by the end of the week the power will be switched over to its permanent location. Fingers Crossed!

*** While this is our blog for the remodel - the amount of snow that has fallen has prevented any work happening since Wednesday - so today's post is about the SNOW itself. ***

While many people like to sing "Let It Snow" around the holidays or this time of year... I am singing 'Enough is Enough'!! As I mentioned in my last post, we got over 5 inches of snow here in West Seattle. Thursday morning arrived to find that I wasn't able to leave the house as there was too much snow to me to get to work safely. So instead, I worked from home and tried to shovel our driveway.

I took a walk up the street to take a picture of 37th Avenue SW from the top of the hill looking down. This was before a bunch of people tried driving down it or sledding down and turning the entire street into a sheet of ICE (more later).

This is probably the most snow that I have seen here in Seattle in the 10 and a half years that I have lived here. But atleast our house still looks really cool in the snow!

The dogs are enjoying playing in the snow and we went downstairs into the backyard to take pictures. Lucy really enjoys running in the snow as her little butt wags like crazy when she is out there. Many times when I let her out to play she will come back covered in snow.

Abbey on the other hand really enjoys running in the snow, or more like HOPPING through the snow. But unlike Lucy, Abbey gets over being in the snow pretty quickly and I will find her waiting by the door to go back inside.

This morning was like any other Saturday. Gary headed to the gym while I tried to keep the house clean from all the construction. While I am vacuuming I heard to dogs barking and realized that someone was at the door. It was one of our neighbors and he was here to tell me that someone in a minivan slid down the street and into my car (which was parked on the street again).

I walked up the driveway to find the person still in her car and very apologetic. While she kept her foot on the brake and her parking brake on, I got into my car and moved it away and partially into the driveway. It was then I was able to examine the damage and found that she bounced off my car not once but twice before stopping against my front passenger side fender.

As I mentioned earlier, the street is just a sheet of ice and sure enough her minivan played pinball with my car. My passenger side mirror was ripped off and then there are three scrapes all against the side of my car. Ugh!!

Finally, although the snow makes for some beautiful scenary - I am really wishing for the sun to return and melt all this snow away.

It is 10pm and there is about 5 inches of snow on the ground. Just a little while ago, I opened the back door and Lucy ran outside to explore the snow. I grabbed my camera and snapped this picture of Lucy sitting in the snow.

So yesterday the sheetrock was started in the garage. I got home late and I was surprised to see that they were still working at 6:00pm. I had to leave at 7pm and they were still working. I heard they finished up around 8pm. They worked late as we were worried about the coming snow storm. Additionally, Rob worked inside and got the shower patched up and prepped for tiling.

Today I left for work and there was only a trace of snow on the ground but the commute wasn't affected in any way. I got to work and the ground was clear of any snow. It was cold, but nothing out of the ordinary.

What a difference 10 hours makes. I left the office at 5:30pm and it was dark and snowing. I had to get to 'Tails of the City - Doggie Day Care' before 6pm and started to worry that the snow would be an issue. As I got closer to the Georgetown area the snow was getting heavier and heavier. I got the dogs at 5:50pm and started the trek home. But coming up the hill to West Seattle I noticed about 7 cars on the side of the road and 4 cars sliding back and forth up the hill. Luckily I have all-wheel drive and was able to find a way back up to our street. NOTE: it took 45 minutes to go 4 and a half miles.

Travis from Ideal Building was still at the house and was sweeping up in the garage. They finsihed sheetrocking the garage today and it is looking great. Next up is getting the new garage and garage door opener ordered and installed. Travis gave up trying to get his car down our steep hill, and since he only lives a few blocks from here he left it parked and walked home.

This picture here is the shower with a few tiles ducked taped to the backer board. Rob and Travis were working on a 'random' pattern to match the floor. It's a start and they hope to lay the rest of tile tomorrow (weather permitting). I turned around and noticed that they also installed the rock knobs for our vanity, so I took a picture of the vanity along with the now working sinks!! Don't mind all the dust, it is from all the work they did patching the ceiling where the new fan goes. I was too lazy to clean it up for a picture - so here it is... as is.

Well some more finishing work was done at the house. The first thing that I noticed was that the trim around the doors to the laundry room and coat closet were now up. Additionally, a lot more of the trim in the dining room and around the kitchen and TV room were done as well. I am really loving the look of the room!

Then I noticed that, AT LAST, the plumbing was done in the kitchen, so we now have a working sink and dishwasher. I also tried out the stove and YES, the 5 gas burner now works too! So the kitchen is fully working now. We are just waiting for the electrician to return to finish up with the electrical behind the microwave. Once that is done, the trim kit will be installed around the microwave and the appliance wall will be done.

As for our master bathroom, the vessel sinks now have drains and the faucets were installed so they are working too.

The last thing that I wanted to mention is our dry bar. We haven't mentioned much about this part of the remodel as it is such a small piece of the remodel and is actually in the dining room so it is rarely featured in any pictures. It is looking real nice now that it is fully installed.

It almost seems like one step forward and two steps back this week. Gary leaves for the Legislative session in Olympia on Monday, and will live in our condo down there during the week between now and May. We were hoping to have the project more or less done by then, but it isn't going to happen.

First off, this past week we lost an entire day of work because of Seattle City Light. On Thursday they were scheduled to do the cut over to the new electrical feed, and we were told we would have no power all day. Gary scheduled a day to move clothes and things to Olympia and was set to go. Robert, from Ideal Building showed up, the electrical sub-contractor showed up, even the plumber -- who was not supposed to show up showed up. Robert sent the plumber home since there was not going to be any power so no lights for him to see with, and Travis dug out the electrical vault in the yard. And then Seattle City Light called to say they weren't coming out -- no explanation. Ideal had sent their workers to other projects, and there was nothing for the electrician to do, so Thursday was a total waste.

However, Rob and Travis made some progress on getting the kitchen finished up. They got all the trim on, and put the corbels up that will hold the granite eating bar in place. They also got all the cabinet hardware installed, so the kitchen is looking better all the time. It looks so good we couldn't resist hanging up the Coke sign again! We are REALLY REALLY REALLY looking forward to having the kitchen back and working soon.
However, when putting the kitchen back together, it was discovered that our instant hot water dispenser wouldn't work with a two-inch granite counter top. An extension part is available -- on 120 day back order! Since it needs to go in before the disposal and drains go in, we can't wait that long for the part. However, Best Plumbing did have one that would fit -- at more than twice what we paid for the one we bought at Lowes. We took the old one back to Lowes and bought the new one from Best Plumbing. The plumber now has all the correct parts to install the drains and faucets and hot-water, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that when Gary gets back next weekend, the kitchen sink will work.

But then Friday brings more bad news. Apparently the plumber didn't correctly install the shower valves in the new shower before Rob put up the backer board and sealed it so they could start installing the tile. So on Friday they hacked off the backer board and re-installed the valves -- and now the backer needs to be patched and re-sealed before they can start tiling.

Meanwhile we hear rumors that Seattle City Light MIGHT come out on Thursday to do the switch over and then the electrician can finish all the electrical. However, that is just a rumor at this point.

This coming week we should also see the garage sheetrocked and taped -- which means they can finish the electrical there and get the garage door installed.