The laundry room

In our old house we had to walk through the laundry room to get to the family room. Here is the new laundry room:


The walls still need to be painted, but we are almost done.

Catch-up

My contractor has told us we will be able to move in by the end of the month. Even if the house isn't done we'll be moving in anyway because I've given notice to my landlord. I haven't taken any pictures of the house in the last few weeks, but here is some progress on the outside (note: the pictures can't be seen fully unless you have this on full-screen):



And here, covered with dust and dropcloths, are the kitchen cabinets (the gray paint around the doors is primer):





Breakfast nook:


Butler's pantry (if you look carefully you can see the edge of the granite):


The bookshelves in the living room, along with a peek at the ceiling. The ceiling was my architect's idea and I'm not really wild about it. It will be stained darker, so I hope that reduces the 'rustic cabin' look. When he described it to me I thought it was going to be much more subtle.


I hope to get over there this week and take a few more pictures.

The Cabinets From Hell

I missed September, but that's what keeps this interesting.

The house is turning into a house. All the walls are in and primed. The outisde is stuccoed and ready to be plastered. The cabinets are . . . well the cabinets aren't off to a very good start.

Actually, the first time I saw the cabinets (in the dealer's warehouse) I was happy with them. I opened a couple boxes and took pictures. This is the microwave cabinet for the kitchen:



The entire kitchen, the mudroom, the pool bath and dressing room, and the linen closet are all this same style and finish.

These are the laundry room cabinets:



They are really very pretty and well made. Then they were delivered to my house and the trouble began. Here is what we had:





You might notice a few problems. If not, let me point them out. First of all, the upper cabinets are supposed to go all the way to the ceiling. The ones on the left have a good chance of doing so because there are 18-inch tall cabinets going on top, as well as 6-inch moldings. The ones above the cooktop and the sink, however, look like they may have some problems getting all the way up there. Most of them are 42 inches tall--6 inches shorter than they were supposed to be. One of them (I'll bet you can pick it out) is only 30 inches tall. The installers put them up there maybe thinking we could work it out.

There is supposed to be a 42-inch hood centered above the cooktop. Even if there were 42 inches up there the hood would be skewed off to the right.

The cabinets to the left of the window end about 3 inches before the window. The cabinets to the right of the window end as close to the window as possible. They end about 3 inches before the end of the wall on the other side, which is necessary because of the molding. The base cabinet below them ends about 3/4 of an inch before the end of the wall. The sink is not centered on the window because there is a blind-corner base cabinet taking more than its share of space. Despite all the room it is hogging, the door cannot be opened fully without smacking into the drawers next to it. Inside that blind-corner cabinet is a really cool thing called a "magic corner". Unfortunately it needs the door to open all the way in order to work its magic.

These are supposed to look sort of like china cabinets. They would do a better job of this if the upper cabinets were 48 inches tall instead of 42.



The butler's pantry is supposed to have these same beautiful cabinets, but they should be only 18 inches deep. They are 24 inches deep which means we can't really get into the butler's pantry to get to the dining room. I guess we could always go around.

Fortunately I was not so stupid as to pay the cabinet man all the money he is owed, even though he tried to talk me into it. I paid him half upon ordering, 25% upon their arrival in his warehouse and am supposed to pay him the rest after they are all installed. Or I could use that money to order new cabinets that actually fit. He sees the logic in this and is ordering me new cabinets.

I hope to be fully satisfied. But, then, I also hoped to be in my house by the beginning of September and my contractor just told me to tell my landlord that we are staying through November. We may have to rent another house to store all the items I have sitting around waiting to go into my new house. I have plumbing fixtures in my bedroom and in the garage, and my living room is currently housing 42 boxes of lights. You wouldn't think a house would need that many lights, but you would be very wrong, because there are still 15 more that have yet to arrive.

I also have several boxes of towel racks, toilet paper holders, etc. in my living room. Everything is packed in a box that is about 8 times as big as it needs to be. I just received a sink for my laundry room that is about 18 inches square and 10 inches deep. The box it came in is 48"x28"x15".

Every day I am asked about 40 different questions that I have never considered the answers to, like "What size grout do you want in the pool bathroom?" and "Where do you want the seams in your granite?" and "How tall do you want your hearth?" and "Where are the slide bolts for your garage doors?" and "What style of shroud do you want on your chimney?" There's going to be a shroud on my chimney? I trick people into answering these questions for me by saying things like, "What do you think would look better?" or "What do most people do?" or even, "Was I supposed to order slide bolts?" I think some of them may jeer at me behind my back but, as long as I don't have to make any more decisions, I don't care. Now I am going to start saying, "I will pay you extra if you don't make me answer that question."

This is a very disjointed post. Someday, when I stop waking up at night sweating over the realization that the design decision I made that day will completely ruin my house, I will again be coherent. Someday.

The Tower

My neighbor said to me the other day (thanks for reminding me, Amanda), "I can't wait to see what you're going to do with that tower."

What is that supposed to mean?

Funny things my architect has said

This is kind of like those Christmas letters that couples with young children send. (Note to those couples: only the childrens' grandmothers like those. Sometimes those grandmothers even post them on the frig and require others to read them--or listen while they are read aloud. Even though the people who are being forced to listen already received one of their own.)

My architect is very good at what he does. He is also good at saying everything that crosses his mind. I mentioned in the previous post that his response to the pictures of the light fixtures I was considering was disgust. He said things like, "Eww" and "What is THAT?" before finding one about which he could say, "Well, that's not horrible." What redeems him is that he was right. Like I said before, I was thinking I would show some individuality and put in something 'different'. I don't know why I got that idea because I am really a bland, conforming sort of person.

Here are some of the more extreme rejects:




This one got the "not horrible":


See? He saved me from attempting to be artistic. That's harder than it looks

At one of our early meetings Carlisle asked about diagonal wood. Robert told him we couldn't do that and when Carlisle asked why, Robert said, "Because it isn't the seventies and we don't have a time machine." I agree with the sentiment, but sheesh. A few minutes later Robert asked Carlisle a question and Carlisle said, "I'm still stinging from that last comment."

I was standing in the master bathroom with Robert, my builder and the electrician discussing having heated floors in there. Robert asked me why I wanted these (we live in southern California so his question had some merit), and I said it was because I am always cold. He looked me up and down and said, "That's because you have no body fat. You don't need heated floors, you need a pork chop."

A woman came into his office and introduced him to his daughter. Robert said, "If you were my daughter you'd be wearing more clothes." Even HE was embarrassed about that one. Said it just came out of his mouth. What a card.

Chandeliers

I've been looking for a chandelier for my dining room. I thought maybe I should try to put a little zest into my house so I was choosing some that were a little unusual. My architect (and designer) looked at every one of them and I think I caught him shuddering. He finally found one that he said was 'not horrible.' You have to have high self-esteem to work with him and I'm not sure I do.

What I'm finding is that most chandeliers are weird. I really just want something simple. So how about these?






Okay, that last one was a joke.

But if we ever add a dungeon, this one is going in it.



And I really want to put this in my front porch.


We have a sort of tower-type thing that could look really gothic with the right accessories.

My monthly post.

Okay. I skipped July.

The house is completely framed. The rough electric is done. The windows are in. There are piles of tiles sitting in little rows on my roof. (That last sentence was sort of poetic, don't you think?)

We have paid about $1000 to have our sprinklers moved around while we build so that the lawn could stay green (because the city says so). Now we have mountains of junk piled up all over the lawn so that the grass is dead. I am assuming the piles are getting watered regularly.




In the back yard where there are no piles they moved the trampoline into the middle of the yard so that they could kill the most grass with the least effort. On the dirt area where the trampoline used to be they have parked a miniscule tractor-type thing. I can certainly see why it was necessary to move the trampoline for that nice parking place. I wonder what they were supposed to be doing while they played with the trampoline and the little tractor.


This is the latest picture of the front of the house. You will notice that right now the lumber company (Roadside) is getting top billing. That is probably best because there is certainly a lot of lumber.



Here are some living room shots.




Next month maybe the big pile of plumbing fixtures that have made themselves at home in my bedroom will have been installed. Probably not.