tile everywhere

Leonard and his 2 brothers-in-law (brother-in-laws???) started on the bathroom tile first thing Friday morning. While they were doing that; Walton, Dave, and our friend Jay Howell from Auburn put down the backer board in the kitchen and utility room. Jay and Bethany were here for a visit this weekend. Here is Jay taking charge of the nail gun...


while Dave measures and cuts the next piece.


Walton and Jay also installed the microwave Friday afternoon. You can see the completed tile backsplash courtesy of Leonard Castillo.



Neither the floors nor the shower have grout yet - they will do all the grout after the installation is finished.

Here is the master shower -



The slate tile in the boys' bathroom -


And the guest bathroom -



The slate has been very time-consuming. Due to the nature of the tile, each piece is not of uniform thickness. Because our tile guys know what they're doing, they take the time to build up the mortar and level the tiles. They have been very particular with each piece.






Here are Walton and Jay clowning around after installing the porch columns today. I wasn't around to take pictures while they were actually doing the work, so they staged this one. (Walton is measuring Jay's bicep while he lifts the column into place.) Walton enjoyed having Jay around to talk to and laugh with while they worked Friday and Saturday.


Finally, for my folks, here is a shot of Woody Morton - the friendly tree. (Mom & Dad snuck out and put him in our backyard while they were here last month & the boys just found him last Sunday afternoon.) He will be a permanent fixture. You will have to see if you can spot him out the breakfast room window when you visit. He kind of reminds me of the scary talking Christmas tree at Bergner's Department Store in Pekin, IL when I was a kid. We used to walk around the opposite side of the store to avoid him because he freaked one of us out - I'm not sure if it was Allen or me! ;0)

today's happenings.....

We met w/ Walton's favorite tile subcontractor, Leonard, this afternoon. After talking with him for a while, we decided to get him to do all of the tile instead of just the bathrooms. His price is very reasonable, he's quick, and most importantly he does good work. (He has done quite a few jobs for Walton...) They are able to start tomorrow (!) and expect to get it done by the first of next week. They are going to install everything tomorrow and grout and polish Saturday. I am a big fan of Leonard today! That will free up Walton to do a lot of other detail work around the house and move us waaaay closer to being finished.

I tried to do a good thing this afternoon by tracking down a stone mason to fix the mess that our original mason made. (He has been avoiding Walton's phone calls and hasn't showed up to do what he said he was going to do to fix it.) A friend at work is building a house too, and has been very pleased w/ her stone work. She gave me the phone # for her mason, and I called and explained our situation to him and asked him if he'd come out and take a look & give us a price to do the fireplace. I was so proud of myself. I called Walton to give him the new guy's contact info. When I gave him the guy's name, he pointed out to me that I HAD JUST TALKED TO THE ORIGINAL GUY WHO MADE THE MESS!!!!! I was embarrassed for about 15 seconds, and then it occurred to me that he is the one who should be embarrassed at doing such terrible work! We had a good laugh about it, and we're still trying to find a good stone mason.

pedestal sinks, master bath

It's spring in Georgia - the cherry trees and dogwoods are blooming. (and yellow pollen is everywhere...) The weather has been absolutely beautiful, and the trees behind our house are leafing out.



Here is part of the guest bathroom. It does not have tile on the floor yet, but we had to temporarily set the vanity in place on Wednesday in order to center the light fixture correctly. The vanity cabinet looks black in this picture, but it's not. It's just stained wood.


Here are some shots of the master bathroom. Walton installed the pedestal sinks, mirrors, and light fixtures today. The pedestal sinks are "picky" - they took a while to get just right. But, we have running water in the master bath now. More importantly, NO LEAKS.



I don't know why the mirrors look like they have 2 beveled ovals around them. They just have one on the outside edge. It must be something to do w/ the camera flash.


We went to Floor and Decor and bought all of our tile for the kitchen/utility room, the boys' bathroom, and our shower Friday night. It was a very heavy trailer load to pull home. I picked out carpet on Saturday. I need to talk w/ Richard the carpet guy tomorrow to get installation scheduled.

One other note - the stacked stone crew came out Saturday to fix their previous errors and finish the stone around the porch. Their work is still far from ideal. Walton will meet with their boss tomorrow to get things worked out. The stone has probably been our biggest headache so far.

The boys had a blast riding 4 wheelers and playing in the woods with a bunch of friends this afternoon while we worked. :-)

pellet stove and mantel installed

Walton finished installing the pellet stove insert on Monday night and put up the mantel tonight. (He's also done a bunch of other little detail stuff in the meantime.)
Here is the stove by itself. (It is surrounded with cement backerboard & ready for the stacked stone.)



And with the mantel Dad built for us while he was here last month...



We met with the stacked stone guy this afternoon. He is sending out a new crew next week to fix the problems w/ the stone that is already in place & do the fireplace.

a week's worth of updates

It's been a busy week, so I haven't taken time to update the blog. At the beginning of the week Paul and Jeff from McCurry's came out to finish the cabinets. They made a bunch of final adjustments to the drawers and hinges and installed our appliance garage. This is where the coffee maker and toaster will live. Paul and Jeff both commented that the pictures on the blog don't do the countertops justice. They both thought the counter looked like it had teal green in it on the blog. They are really a nice neutral color, so if you're wondering why we have ugly green countertops - we don't! It's just the pictures.




Walton continued wiring the outlets and light switches in the evenings this week. All that's left is the boys' bedroom and a few switches in the basement.

This morning, we were at the house by 9 a.m. and Archer from Quality Resurfacing delivered our clawfoot tub. He called Walton last night for directions and to be sure he'd be there to help him carry it in. He told Walton to eat his Wheaties for breakfast and now Walton knows why. It was HEAVY. They carried it from the driveway to the front door and put it down for a rest.

Archer told us that he recently went to refinish a whole old tile bathroom for a customer and when he arrived, there was a film crew there. He didn't know ahead of time, but the home remodel was being filmed for an episode of "Flip That House" on The Learning Channel. He wasn't sure of the exact date it will be broadcast, but if you ever see a guy named Archer redoing a bathroom on that show you'll know that's our tub guy.



We checked the date on the bottom. Our tub was made on 11-10-18.



When I wasn't being Walton's gofer girl, I spent a lot of time today scraping paint off of the glass in the doors. (and stickers off of the windows...) There is still a lot left to scrape. The boys played at our house w/ their friend Alex for a few hours, and then went to Alex's house for the evening. They were glad to have a break from hanging around while we work.

Walton also built up the hearth for the pellet stove insert today. Dave came down to help for a while. They got the hearth all ready to go and would have finished putting up the backer board to prepare for the stone masons, but the last piece of vent pipe they needed to make the connection was not the right length. Walton will have to go to Country Hearth and Home on Monday to get a different piece of pipe.






We also installed the kitchen faucet.



The last thing we did tonight was hang the porch lights. They were one of the more frustrating lighting fixtures we've had, but we finally got the job done. We could hear owls hooting in the woods the whole time we were working on them.




Tomorrow after church we have the DISH network installers coming. Walton will try to get the rest of the wiring finished. Once the wiring is done, we can get the county inspector to o.k. us to turn on the power so we will have lights everywhere. That will be a huge improvement over working w/ one worklight attached to an extension cord.

light fixtures

Here is the pellet stove sitting in the family room. Walton picked it up at Country Hearth and Home Saturday morning. Once he puts it into place it will look much more attractive.



We spent the second half of the day yesterday and all afternoon today putting up ceiling fans and light fixtures. I was the extra pair of hands so Walton wouldn't have to keep running up and down the ladder.

Here's the ceiling fan in the kitchen.

Sconces in the stairway going upstairs.


Walton leveling the light over the L in the kitchen counter.


The dining room.


Fan in the family room.


Looking from the family room into the kitchen/breakfast room.


The fan in the screened porch w/ the sky blue ceiling.


I now have a better understanding of why things take a while to get done. I am also glad we don't have to pay someone to install all of this stuff. I'm going to massage Walton's aching back and shoulders since he spent a good bit of the weekend working over his head on a ladder.

Paul from McCurry's is coming back tomorrow to do some final adjustments and install the appliance garage now that the countertops are in.

exterior paint

The paint crew made fast work of the exterior this week. They started on Monday morning and were completely done yesterday afternoon. The main color on the house is called "fig". It reminds me of the very first house we bought in Macon just after we got married. (The front door there was black, too.) We will add shutters in the same color as the doors, and the columns on the front and side porches will match the trim. The columns are sitting in boxes on the porch right now ready to be put in place.

Here is the paint in progress on Wednesday afternoon....




And here is the finished product...or at least as finished as it can be right now. The painters will come back and do all of the touch-up & clean up work around the glass when we're ready.



The stacked stone crew will be back next week to finish up the stone around the porch (ad fix their earlier mistakes...). Walton is planning to get the hearth for the pellet stove in place tomorrow so the interior stone crew can cover up the front of the mantel. He'll probably also work on light fixtures some more. We both wish that we could clone Walton (until the house is done....) so he could work on more than one thing at a time. There is a lot to do and only one of him to get it done.

countertops

Happy Birthday to me! The kitchen and utility room countertops were installed today. Subcontractor Mike #4 had some kind of cool pressure leveling system hooked up to an air compressor that he was using to get the seam just right on the big part of the countertop. His helper (who is interestingly named "Brownie") was under the cabinet installing the kitchen sink. Mike joked that he didn't want me to take pictures of the counter until it was completely done and looking its best. (He'll have to come back to clean the adhesive off of the seam area and I guess to do some kind of final buffing or something like that...) The cooktop and sinks are in place now. It's looking more and more like a real kitchen!








Mike was still working when we left to go to dinner at Truman's. We went by after dinner to lock up. We set the kitchen faucet in place just to see how it would look.




Anthony and his painters worked on caulking the exterior of the house today. I'm not sure if they're ready to start the paint colors tomorrow or not. Also, Walton picked up the materials for the hardwood floors today. We are disappointed because the stair nose does not match the prefinished flooring for the stairs to the boys' room - not even close. The guy is working on some "solutions" for us. We'll see what he comes up with tomorrow.