Y'know how when anyone that has gone through a remodel tells you that a 3 month remodel will end up being a 5 or 6 month remodel? I finally understand why... For us it isn't that our contractors are slow or perpetually late (on the contrary, as I have mentioned before they are ALWAYS early -- who has ever heard of contractors that are early or on time?) It has to do with the "well, since they are here already..." phrase used between couples.

If Gary and I stayed with our original plan of remodeling the kitchen and master bath and building a 3rd bay to the garage - I am sure we would have been done a while ago. However, we keep adding things and those things have to be scheduled and so forth. Now, I am not complaining, because anything we did not have Ideal Building do, we would probably be doing ourselves -- so I am very happy to have them do it. I am just stating the obvious as we near completition of our remodel (and get ready for the biggest 'well, since they are here already" addition - the fireplace).



As you see from the picture above, this week we had the slider installed in our TV room. We have flipped the doors on the slider, so this allows us to leave the chair where it is and have the door open on the other side to our deck.

'Well, since they are here already' ALERT - We are now considering flipping the other slider in the TV room that opens up to our side deck where the barbecue is located...

I got a call from Distinctive Glass on Friday and they had a cancellation and wanted to know if it would be okay to have the new shower door and mirror for the bathroom delivered on Saturday morning between 8 and 9am. I agreed, but boy was Gary grumpy thinking that this would cut into his beauty sleep (y'know he needs a lot of it). :-)

So, 7:30am on Saturday morning rolls around and I wipe the sleep from my eyes and walk into the working bathroom only to notice out the window that the shower door guys are sitting in their van in our driveway. So I wake Gary up (from his beauty sleep) and we both head downstairs with the dogs just as the guys ring our door bell at 7:38am!! I told Robert, from Ideal Building, that I think these guys are related to him...

The mirror went up pretty quickly and now Ideal Building will come in and frame the mirror in pine like the rest of our trim in the house. It will finish off the vanity nicely. The guys from Distinctive Glass spent most of their 2 hours here installing the new frameless shower door. It looks great and I cannot wait to start using it. We just have a few things to finish with the shower fixtures and drain to make it fully functional.

On Sunday, Gary and I went down to Costco Home Store to look for a TV Room coffee table. We did not know this place existed until our good friend Steve told us about it over dinner. So we walked through the home store in Kirkland and found a coffee table that is exactly what we were looking for. It complements the furniture nicely and provides additional seating if necessary.

Finally, we bought a 4X6 rug for the kitchen. Instead of doing small rugs under the sink and fridge, we thought that we would look for a nice rug that would accent the room and think that this one fits the bill.

This week, we are not expecting much work until Thursday or Friday, when Ideal Building will be back to work on the bathroom and hopefully have the garage door and other exterior stuff painted...

Another week has gone by and our new gutters from Leaf Guard were installed. Of course this wasn't done without some drama. Robert from Ideal Building received a call from the installer to let him know that there would be over a $1000 increase in cost due to the need to install additional backing for the gutter system. Robert went to bat for us and held Leaf Guard to their bid that they provided to us a couple of weeks ago. The issue was escalated and Robert still held his ground even after they came back with trying to meet half way in cost. So, we were very happy to hear that Leaf Guard finally retreated and honored our original bid price.

This week also saw the delivery of our new slider for our TV room. We had to leave it outside of the garage for two reasons: 1) We still have a lot of stuff in the existing garage and 2) The new garage was going to be painted -- so we left it outside knowing that it will be installed on Tuesday of next week.

Speaking of painting the new garage - we asked that that the garage be painted a simple white as Gary and I plan to paint our old garage later this year as well. Now that it is painted, we will start to move our old kitchen cabinets into this area as they will become the new workbench.

I completely forgot to mention last week that we got our 2nd replacement for our Vanity Light and Gary and I hung it up. It is looking great and we are excited to get the new mirror along with the shower door in a couple of weeks.

Finally, a big issue this week for us is the planning of our next remodel project. We hope to start the Living Remodel in a few weeks which will include a new fireplace, painting both the living room and dining room and replacing all the trim in this room. After going back and forth on stone options, we have decided to do something like this picture. Using River Rock, we are going to go all the way to the ceiling along with a hearth that will incorparate a slab on stone. The mantle will be made will be made from a log to really tie into our lodge theme for the house.

Now we have to decide on whether we want to prep the new fireplace with electrical and cable outlets, should we decide to one day put a flat panel television in that room... Fun!

So we are now twenty weeks into our BIG remodel project on the house and although things have slowed down, we are not done yet.

This past week we had some 'remodel' stuff done, but mostly this was a week where NEW things were being added to the interior of the house.

On Monday, I picked up our new barstools that we special ordered to coordinate with the overall color scheme of the kitchen and tv room. Gary and I were not sure what they would look like as we picked out the metal finish, seat fabric and wood accent at the store, but never saw what it was going to look like together until Monday when I picked them up. They look great!

I had a friend of mine in the chorus, Pete Goddard, build us a cabinet for our new television to sit upon. We worked on the design together and he built the cabinet out of cherry and matched the stain perfectly to our kitchen. I picked up the 1st piece of the cabinet on Monday after rehearsal and then Pete came over on Wednesday afternoon and delivered the rest and put it all together.

This week we also had our new leather sofa and chair delivered for the tv room. So we spent Saturday morning setting up the room. After having the TV sitting in the box for the last 6 weeks, we finally unpacked it and hooked it up with the TiVo and DVD/VCR player. Before Gary had to leave for a business dinner, we also set up the Provo signs above the tv and the room is finally home again. The dogs were also very happy to have our tv room back, so they have a place to sit downstairs.

While Gary was away on Saturday, I went down to the BOSE store and bought the new Lifestyle 48 media center. I haven't set it up yet as we are probably going to have our good friend, Pete Last, come back and help us set this whole thing up. He has done all of the phone and internet connection works for us these past few years and we are excited to have him help us on this as we have NO IDEA what we are doing.

This coming week we are expecting to have our new Leaf Guard gutters installed along with having our new read sliders delivered. Ideal Building will be here one or two days to coordinate the installation of the gutters and sliders. I expect that they will also continue with the clean up as each week passes we get a little closer to the end...

NOTE TO SELF: "Next time we decide to build a garage, remember to make sure to give the builder the dimensions of the vehicle to be parked in it."



As you can see Gary's H2 will not fit into the new garage without turning in the side mirrors, and even then there is only 1/4 inch to spare. We actually knew this soon after Ideal Building poured the foundation - and planned that the H2 would be parked in the existing garage while my car goes into the new garage.

With the new garage door being installed, we had them also install a new opener for the existing garage. Both openers are SOOOO quiet. The downside is that they are VERY slow in rising and lowering... That will be something we will need to get used to and watch so that small animals don't go wandering in as it closes.

The excitement level is at a high right now as we are near completion of the garage and the kitchen is pretty much done except for some cosmetic things. Speaking of the kitchen, here is a picture of the kitchen after we started moving back in. You can see my laptop on the bar in the picture, but it will probably not live there forever. Gary and I are thinking about putting a small desk in the formal living room so that I have a place to work. Having the laptop on the bar just doesn't seem like a good idea after seeing it there.

The painting of the outside trim has been completed and we are so happy that we thought to add trim to all the existing windows and front door on the East side of the house. It looks really great.

This upcoming week we hope to see the fixtures in our master shower installed and the replacement of the granite from our kitchen window. Oh yeah, while Paramatrix was here to chisel the granite on the new window in the kitchen, they accidently cracked it. So, they are going to cut a new piece of granite and come back this week to install it. To do this though, Rob from Ideal Building had to take the inside trim and pine trim out. Ho Hum!

And maybe, just maybe we will have the new rear sliders installed in our TV Room. We didn't move back into the TV room yet as we hoped. We just ran out of time, so Gary and I will move back in next weekend as we will have our new sofa and chair delivered on Thursday! Yes, we broke down and bought a leather/suede sofa and matching chair for the tv room, it was easier than cleaning the old green ones that look pretty dusty and ratty now compared to our nice new TV room . So our existing green sofa and chair will soon join the many items on Craigslist.com in hopes of finding a new home.

After the formal living room is cleared out, we hope to start the next project and that is replacing the fireplace and painting both that room and the dining room. Enough for now...