I'm at the apartment relaxing for the first time this weekend and just uploaded a bunch of new photos from the week. Audrey and I have been waking up at 6 or 7am the entire weekend, going to the house (or going to work in Audrey's case) and watching the workers do their thing. The entire week is a bit of a blur, but here's what I remember...
There were some tears and yelling this weekend. From what everyone tells me, it's a normal thing when your renovating or building a house. Neither one of us stays angry for long. Audrey has been at the house every day, managing all of the workers. I got a hint of what she does every day during the week and I have no idea how she does it and then goes to the store to close. I think the biggest deal this week was the demolition debris. We had to have someone take it away for us. I remembered seeing those 1-800-GOT-JUNK trucks around town and read an article about them in a magazine or something, so we decided to give them a try. It was a nightmare. They showed up late, didn't take everything away and we still had to pay them. And it wasn't that they didn't have room to take the stuff, they just didn't want to finish the job. Oh, and that same day Comcast was supposed to come sometime between 9am and 1pm. They were running late, so we rescheduled for this weekend. Audrey waited around the house that day forever and was so pissed about it. What the fuck are normal working people supposed to do with a 9am-1pm installation window?? Who has the time (besides me on the weekend?). It ended up be a blessing of sorts. More on that later.
Audrey won her 36" range, mainly because she didn't call the Barrett's appliances in time to change the order. I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal, but I still think a 30" range was plenty. All of the appliances are on their way, but we won't have the delivered until the floors are done. That won't be for almost 2 weeks.
All weekend I did what Audrey does every day of the week. I went to home depot a few times, watched the workers dry wall the kitchen and living room and removed molding. The removal of molding isn't easy, but I knew it needed to get done for the tapers tomorrow, so I pitched in. The workers had more important things to worry about like getting the built-in where all the AV components will live completed. One of the guys came up with a great idea for the built-in. One of the problems was that I was going to have a hard time getting to the back of the components to connect everything. As it stands now (which you can see in the photos) is that the built-in is a closet that we opened up. We were going to just patch over the door because it's going to get in the way of a hanger bar in the walk-in closet. Instead, we're just going to make a panel that sits flush with the wall that you can remove if need be. Since I won't need to get back there often at all, it will work out well.
We ran into a couple of problems this weekend. The first one was that the electrician didn't finish the kitchen. We had to call his boss, who was nice enough to come out on a Sunday to clean up his employee's work. It was holing up the closing of the kitchen, so it's a good thing we got it done. The tapers were supposed to show up this afternoon as well, but they didn't and the general contractor that Audrey is working with wasn't around to make any calls. The good thing is that Audrey and I measured the kitchen a few times, made final decisions about the cabinetry and Audrey drove to Ikea in Burbank to work out the details and order the cabinetry. Very exciting. Too bad we won't be able to enjoy that when we move in at the end of the month.
