House Progress 5

Everything is in a state of "almost done."

Exterior
El has been using the planter boxes as his personal litter box. In the small planter, I planted seeds of basil and pansy. The basil, toward the back, was completely dug up within a couple of days. I planted a couple of flowers that were pre-potted into the small planter box hoping to take up the space. He half dug one of those up as well. The other day, I put him out of the front door and he jumped right into the front large planter box and used it. Brat.

We've been talking more about painting the exterior. We'll have to dig up the front planter box first to expose the front wall behind them. That project sounds like it will suck and leave a giant ugly cat box at the front of the house.

My city has a drawing going on to give you $2000 toward home improvement if you bought a house between certain months, of which we did. If we get that, it'll go toward replacing the windows with impact-resistant.

The back patio is going to wait a long time to get redone. The driveway needs repaving, maybe in 6 months or more.

Bathroom

Bathroom, minus shower doors

The last thing to do is to have the shower doors made. Unfortunately, because it used to be a tub and I'm a fancy-pants who wants a frame-less enclosure to show off how cool it looks, it has to be custom made. The doors I originally bought, I've been trying for weeks to return, but they have to be picked up in a lift-truck and FedEx is giving me a problem all week about it after Overstock ignored my contact for weeks before they finally okayed it to FedEx. So now we wait. Of course, that's money we're out in the mean time, which blows. Having a working toilet in the house seems like such an obvious thing, but it hasn't been true for nearly a month, so it's kind of a big deal. The last thing to do is order the glass doors. I got estimates and now just have to put in the deposit and get it started. The contractor broke one of the tiles in the shower step by dropping a tool on it, oops! He's going to fix it this week, though, no big deal.

Kitchen

Kitchen, cabinets & counters in

The last thing to do is have the cabinet people come back out as they failed to put a piece of wood under the counter top over the dishwasher so the dishwasher can be attached. Otherwise, the sink works and all that good stuff.

Living Room

Living room, awful orange, hall, office

From kitchen to dining room

That horrible wooden entryway thing is gone and the floor is patched there. The ceiling is no longer popcorn, but smooth. The wall you see as you walk in, we're making an accent wall (in the next several months) and no longer looks like a barn. It's painted. We just have to hang the ceiling fan. We ran into a snag here as the color is all wrong! The chip was a dark brown-orange, but on the wall it's like a crayon, bright and hideous. We're deciding on a color for repainting, which sucks to redo it, but it's just awful. I'll do some test-paint this time.

Dining Room
The walls needed some repair and the one wall was rebuilt that used to be exterior. The pass-through is shorter. The door was rebuilt. It's painted. The electric was redone from being dangerous and homemade to something real. The cabinets were removed and the tile beneath repaired. We just need to hang the ceiling fan and buy the wardrobe to serve as our pantry.

Bedroom

Bedroom, former closet organizer at right

The ceiling was replaced and the closet emptied and painted. The one wall the used to be exterior was built from new. The room is painted and Dave doesn't hate it. He was afraid our brown picture frames wouldn't go with the green room, but I assured him that trees match (brown and green). I have to figure out if the closet organizer stuff is in good enough shape to put back in or toss.

Office
It's painted. We still cannot figure out what to do with the furniture in there. Dave insists we don't need much storage and that keeping things in plastic bins is sufficient and I say that's no way to do things. I talked to a company that does modular custom-built furniture and the price was well above what we had in mind, so I think we're looking for other solutions. We've just finally come to an agreement on where the desks will go, which took longer than you might think and 4 different diagrams. There was a lot of sighing and head shaking. Dave likes the color, which surprised me. He thinks it's blue, so just go with it.

The AC needs to be replaced, probably soon. That work is much less invasive than everything else and I can handle that once we're in.

So everything's almost done. That means I have to really get started packing. Ugh. I need a few more hours each day and the desire to get that done.