Only Two More Weeks To Go

We had the privilege of having our son, Matt, join us for this Easter weekend.  He has Good Friday off from his job and drove up to Phoenix to go with us to Payson.  It was a fun drive catching up on his life and then we got involved in a discussion about recent books we had read.  This made the time go by very fast.

We had quite a shock when we arrived at the house as we saw our handyman Bob's truck in the driveway.  We planned for him to do some work for us installing doors, but he said he could not do it until after Easter.  He told us another job did not start as planned and decided to start our job that afternoon.  In a matter of a few hours, he had replaced our front door and installed both the hall bath and den doors.  We helped him clean up after we unpacked and he will come back next week to move our bedroom french doors and install another door for our hall closet (this was a last minute request).

After almost a year or more, our new front door is finally installed

Looks nice with the little half moon window

The double doors to the den - still need knobs

The new hall bath door.  This door is heavy since it has a solid core.

After Bob left, we moved all the kitchen and dining room items back to their original location.  It was great having Matt to help with the heavy cabinets to alleviate our concern about scratching the new floor. I also had bought some new sliders, a small moving dolly and some new lifting straps.  I had seen two guys from an appliance store use these type of straps to move a refrigerator into a house in our neighborhood.  They were not as easy to use on the fridge, but worked well with the base cabinets.  To finish off the kitchen, I put down a metal transition strip to cover the edge of the vinyl facing the great room.  This will keep us from tripping on or tearing the vinyl.  This is probably how the kitchen will look for quite awhile (except for wall paint) as not much more will be done until we decide on the cabinets (and save up the money for make or buy them).

Quick! take the picture this is heavy

The cabinet was much easier to move this way

Our final kitchen design for awhile

With the dining room part.  You can also see the transition strip at the bottom.

The next morning I started putting all the outlet and switch cover plates on, which is another requirement to get the permit sign-off.  After getting most of the plates on, I found that we did not have enough and were missing some specialty plates.  We took an inventory and added them to a Home Depot shopping list and after a run to the store later, we had all the covers installed.  Next Installed the fan vent covers in the hall bath and laundry room and mounted the thermostat and doorbell.

Just some of the many outlet/switch covers we had to insall

Two vent fans needed their covers

No more dangling wires.  Both units mounted to the wall.

Next was installing the light in the laundry room and bathroom.  The laundry one was easy peazy, but when I started on the hall bath, I found the new light fixture Laurie got from her dad did not have a mounting bracket and, based on the holes, I was not sure if I would be able to find one.  I looked all over Home Depot for something that would work, but found nothing.  So we decided to just buy something similar.  We found one almost exactly like the one from her dad but I noticed the mounting holes went through the front of the mounting plate instead of along the edge like our's did.  This was an easy fix, all I had to do was drill two holes through the front of our light base and buy some mounting screws.  Then we hit another snag, all the mounting kits for lights were brass and our light was brushed nickel.  Then Laurie remembered that we still had the silver spray paint we had used for some knobs and the other light fixture brackets I changed from brass to silver.  I was able to mount the light with the mounting kit we found after drilling two holes through the front.  I painted the new screw knobs and when they dry, I will replace the brass ones I used just to get it mounted.

It took some work, but this hand-me-down light made it up

Now that our front door was up, we could replace the trim to match all the windows.  But this time we decided to change the paint color.  All the trim is currently white, but we really like the green paint we used on the shed and plan to use it to redo the whole house. We do not think the white trim will go as well as a brown trim so we went to Neumann's Paint to have them make a paint to match our deck.  We bought and cut the trim boards and Laurie primed and painted them.  Bob had used some of the spray type foam insulation around the door frame, but I decided to add some additional regular insulation in some gaps before putting up the trim.  It does not look very good with the current house color, but it will look great with the darker green.

Laurie's trim painting station.  It was a nice day to be outside.

Our new door with trim.  The white lines are primer on the exposed wood siding

We have looked at the french doors in our bedroom and even talked to Bob about how they will line up when he goes to move them, still not knowing how it will turn out.  I took some time to get a closer look at the doors and found that there is a one-inch piece of wood between the frame and the trim used as a spacer.  The upper rail for the screen door does use this trim piece, but it is about the same width as the new trim we want to put up so that all the door and window trim will match. So I took a chance and removed all the current trim board and the extra one-inch piece of trim, hoping that if my idea was not right, I could reuse the wood after the door was moved.  I was successful in getting the trim off in one piece, but the one-inch spacer boards had long staples that would not release easily and they were made of spliced together wood.  Most of it came off in short pieces, so I am really hoping my assumption is correct and I will not need it.  This task will save Bob a lot of time when he goes to move the door.  I also removed the current door and frame from the hall closet to save Bob some more time and we bought a new pre-hung door with the six panels to match all the other interior doors.

The french doors with all the trim and spacer wood removed

All the trim and spacer wood, you can see the multiple broken pieces

The door removed from the hall closet

We met with the tile guy, Joe, on Sunday and he looked over the bathroom and laundry area that we want tiled.  He also reviewed all the tile and stuff we bought for him to use.  If he needed anything else, we still had time to get it before we left, but he said everything was good.  He showed us a cool pattern that he was going to use that would allow him to do thinner grout lines.  He told us that lower grade tile (which of course is what we bought) is not very square and, if laid in a standard pattern, it would need to have wider spaces and more grout. The staggered pattern he showed us breaks up most of the straight lines so the imperfections in the tile are not as noticeable and he can place them closer and use less grout.  We bought 12" tiles as I thought the rooms we wanted to tile were too small for the bigger tile Laurie wanted to use (18" or 20").  Joe said the larger tiles would have been better (Laurie was right on that one, though too late now) and would have required less grout.  Apparently more tile and less grout is always a better thing to have. He said he could have the job done and it would have plenty of time to setup before we have to come up to put the bathroom in.

The new tile.  One of the few things we bought at Lowes instead of Home Depot

Tiling supplies

The special layout Joe wants to use

We only have two more weeks before our original remodel permit with the Town of Payson expires.  We plan to make an appointment for the final inspection for a week from Thursday and come up Wednesday night to finish the bathroom in time for the inspection the next morning.  If we get the sign-off we are hoping for, then we will not have anything hanging over our heads and can proceed with the rest of the work at our own pace.  If we fail the inspection, then we may need to pay a permit renewal fee and complete the failed items by the next expiration date.

We took Matt to the casino buffet for Easter brunch and, though we showed up just after noon, we got a table right away.  We were not sure if it would be as crowded as it was at Thanksgiving.  We did wait a little while in line to get our food, but at least we had a table.  The food was just as good as at Thanksgiving and we ate our fill, except for Laurie who seemed to be coming down with a cold.  We got back to the house and packed up for the Valley as Matt still had a two hour ride back to Green Valley and did not want to get home too late. 

Stats: 2 Home Depot trips; 0 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 4/2/12-4/8/12: $886
Remodeling expense to date: $40,233