Doesn’t the range vent look pretty? NOT. We specifically bought a vent that could go through the back and up through the drywall. Instead they tore two ugly holes into our kitchen cabinet!! Even our contractor was shocked that the subs had done this (since we had discussed it with her). We’ll see how this gets fixed…

When we saw this thing in our back yard I was getting ready to call the zoo to ask if they had lost an elephant. Then we realized it was our A/C unit! I’ve never seen such a gigantic unit in my entire life. Or well, I’ve seen them, but they’ve usually cooled 50 unit apartment buildings. Something or another about a law that congress recently passed. I still find it hard to believe that this is the smallest they could do!

Other than that nothing to report. I suppose we could go paint at the house for a couple of hours, but I had an exhausting all day photo shoot today and am not exactly up for any work at the house. Tomorrow we’ll start bright and early…

The bathroom sconce that will go above the medicine cabinet has been one freakin’ pain in the ass. I think I mentioned it before, but we were originally interested in the Bonneville sconce by Rejuvenation. It was a little on the pricey side, and having bought their Raleigh chandelier we decided to go with the less pricey Leighton Triple Sconce from Restoration Hardware instead(which is of course now on sale after we bought it!). It was not available in store, so they had to special order it for us and sent it free of charge to our house. Only it was broken – one of the rods was broken off. After much hassle we returned it and received a new one in the mail – which was crooked! Patrick had already gotten very fed up after the hassle we had to go through the first time we returned it. This time we just arranged things over the phone and the sconce was picked up and a third one was delivered. Of course we said the whole “third one’s a charm” thing – until we noticed a chip on the white porcelain part! Arrrrgh. Three sconces and all of them messed up!! I was on the phone with the girl again and told her just to give us a discount, but 10% wasn’t much for a sconce that we actually did want to hang on the wall. So we gave it a fourth try…and the fourth try actually was a charm!

Patrick with our fourth (undamaged) sconce.

In the meanwhile more trouble arose. The template people came in the morning, and the floors guys were supposed to come back that afternoon to do a second coat of polyurethane. We got a call at 5:00 or 5:30 and were informed the guys had a flat and couldn’t make it until Thursday. The only problem with this was that Thursday evening was our window of opportunity to start priming the bathroom walls since we wouldn’t be able to do so Wednesday because of drying floors. Wednesday was supposed to be our “day off” from the house, so we made dinner plans with several friends. Well, when that call came we realized we’d have to go to the house right then and there to get at least a tiny bit of priming in before our dinner appointment…

Patrick priming the bathroom walls. We only got about half-way done before we had to head out.

…and if that delay hadn’t kind of messed things up enough, we again heard from our contractor Thursday afternoon that she never got a call from the floor guys. We headed over there just now and sure enough – no second coat! Grrrr. So we could have done some more painting (on the coldest night of the year yet!). I wonder what delays this will cause. The electrician is due back Saturday to finish off his work – eek.

In good news though, the counter top people told us that they would be able to meet our January 30th deadline afterall. They usually take 2-3 weeks between templating and installation, and the 30th would have been 13 days, so cutting it tight! At first they said they wouldn’t be able to finish in time, but today they said they should be able to squeeze it in after all. Yippy! But I’ll still hold my breath until I see it.

I’m starting to slack off on my daily update tracking. I think that’s a good sign? Things have just been getting really crazy. Like they would say in German: “Endspurt.” That basically translates to the final sprint towards the finish line. It means everyone seems to be stepping up a pace as the deadline is fast approaching. Patrick and I have been spending more time at Lowe’s and Home Depot than the grocery story. Anyway…

Gus has re-built the kitchen built-in. We’re re-doing the interior but keeping the old front to keep it authentic. Above it our test colors.

The top cabinets have been installed. I think is a requirement for the counter top templating.

The other side of the kitchen.

That evening we returned to start painting. The dark green will go in the Butler’s Pantry area.

We went to the house during the day to decide which paint we’ll want to go on the walls. Patrick thought it may be interesting to use one color in the Butler’s Pantry and another in the kitchen. We decided to have the dark for the Butler’s Pantry and the light one for the rest of the kitchen.

The workers were there installing the kitchen cabinets!

Where the sink will be.

Unfortunately one cabinet door has a crack. I called Home Depot and they got American Woodmark to send out a replacement.

We came back in the evening to strip paint off the kitchen built-in since the workers will be back tomorrow to finish the cabinets and part of the built-in so the granite counter top people can come to template on Wednesday.

They had gotten some of the wall cabinets up.

And in other good news: I called to schedule movers for the 30th. It’s all coming together!! It’s a little surreal. :)

Starting to prime the kitchen!

Patrick got the hard job…the ceilings!

My little artistic silhouette.

Look how nice it’s starting to look!

There appears to be one light missing. We can’t imagine we would have missed this prior to the drywall going up, so Patrick thinks that they just forgot to cut the whole for this particular one. Our contractor said she’ll get someone to go up in the attic to make sure a light is there like we think there should be.