Renovation Week 18: Zeno, Jr.

This week:

We moved into the house twenty years ago this week, on 6/1/1996. I had really hoped that we’d be done with this project by 6/1/2016, but that didn’t happen.

Some stuff did happen.

(Previously.)

More Cabinets. The wet wall (pantry, sink, dishwasher, refrigerator) cabinet boxes are all in place now. IMG_3052

Yes, the space for the dishwasher does seem way too small, but I’ve measured it at least 6 times. This week we’re hoping to see at least the base cabinets that will live on the right side of this picture, surrounding where the stove is going to go. I just got word that the planned Monday installation is going to slip to Tuesday at the earliest. Did I mention that the cabinets are the gating factor for this whole project now? The appliances and countertops are the major remaining pieces, and neither can really happen until we have places to put them.

I also think we’ve settled on the lightbulbs to use in the kitchen — they’re long tubes meant for fixtures to light art displays, etc., but they fit perfectly inside the industrial fixtures that we have:

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Fireplace. I drove down to a lumber/molding yard this week to dig through bins of wood to find something that we liked to go over the fireplace. I pretty quickly zeroed in on a beefy piece of poplar that has some funky grain patterns in it, and that ended up taking stain very nicely:

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In place temporarily. This week (?) a mason will come to clean & re-point the stonework.

Today, Kath & I hit a bunch of antique stores about an hour away and came back with a mirror with a similarly chunky frame that we’ll mount over the fireplace when everyone’s done here.

Painting. If it’s not done, it’s got to be infinitesimally close by now. They worked over the weekend a bit and other than needing the floor contractor to make some repairs where we needed to rip things up to address carpenter ant damage, the family room is ours again:

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Between having color on the walls and all of the dark wood trim that we’ve lived with for 20 years suddenly painted white, it really feels like we live in a completely different house, and I’m worried about what’s going to happen when the fancy people who belong here discover that we’ve been squatting in their house.

So, the small matter of the remaining infinite number of things that need to be completed before we’re done.  Definitely hoping to meet with the floor contractor and receive the bad news about what my dining room floor options are; the carpet was hiding some truly horrorshow conditions beneath it.