In the Home Stretch

We have now lived in our "new house" for 9 months, and we are so close to getting everything put together.

"Everything" is relative, of course. We have no dining chairs, and no club chairs in the living room. My husband's office is sans desk, right now, and also desk chair, lamps, bookshelves and filing cabinets. Some of these deficiencies will be rectified when my husband gets his bonus in April - "when you get your bonus" has taken on an almost mystical quality, at this point - but others will wait a while longer.

My husband and I decided to go ahead and have the floors refinished before "bonus day", because having the fake fireplace removed left a gaping hole in the floor. And the idea of moving furniture in, and then having to move it back out to have the floors redone later, did not appeal to either of us.

We got in touch with a local flooring contractor, and decided he was our guy (partly because nobody else would call us back, following Hurricane Harvey and the construction boom it caused, and partly because we chatted about what an amazing biographer Ron Chernow is while he measured the house). Initially, we were supposed to have our floors refinished two weeks before Christmas.

But...

Given all the work from Harvey, the flooring contractor had to bump our date back, and he was going to start 4 days before Christmas.

Four days.

Four days when we would have to have the dogs boarded somewhere, and we would have to stay in a hotel, all while dealing with the holidays. And there were no vacancies at our preferred boarding places. And no hotels that would accept two humans and two dogs during that time. Four days before Christmas was obviously a "no-go", especially since we were celebrating in Houston with family from out of town.

Our flooring contractor was elated when I asked if we could postpone things until after New Year's Day.

The only problem was that we found out our start date was being pushed back after we'd dragged my brother-in-law over to the house to move all the furniture outside.

We did the best we could with the mattress from our guest room on the living room floor, serving as a sofa, for almost a month. I'm sure our neighbors think we're strange, or were convinced we'd rented the place out to college students, given the sudden downgrade in seating.

Did I mention our 44" wide dining table had been placed in our kitchen, where the space between the countertops is 54" wide? And that the dining table is almost as long as the kitchen? No?

I should have mentioned that.

We are now some of DoorDash's favorite customers, and now that things are relatively back to normal (and our dining table is out of the kitchen) I daily expect our delivery guy to drop by to make sure we haven't died.

Prior to the refinish, our floors were a lovely shade of 1980s golden-oak (a.k.a. orange), with some areas that had experienced spills which removed all the finish from the surface, exposing the bare wood beneath.

I was not too fond of them.

We had our floors refinished to a beautiful strawberry-blonde color, since the floors are red oak, interspersed with white oak.

The "media center" is temporary, a holdover from my first apartment 15 years ago. The front drawers are goldenrod fiberglass flecked with gold threads, which unfortunately don't show up well in this picture!

I love love love the color (half Dura-Seal "neutral" and half Dura-Seal "Cottage White", if you're wondering). My husband loves the color (and loves that I'm happy with the color).

There's just one problem.

There is a streak in the floor, about 8 feet long and 1/8" wide, as if someone's shoelace dragged through the finish before it had completely cured. It's visible from the dining room, though almost invisible when you're standing in the living room. It isn't in a location where we intend to put a rug, because it's right down the middle of the path of travel between the staircase and the dining room.

We initially thought we could live with it, mostly because we're just tired of "camping out" in our house.

But we ultimately decided to have it fixed. Which means the dogs will have to be boarded (again), right after returning from Dallas, where they stayed with my endlessly patient mother. They'll get to have an afternoon at the house today (Thursday, January 18) before they go to our boarding-place of choice, tomorrow (Friday, January 19).

I feel like the worst "dog mom" ever.

But our dogs will come home (Monday) to beautiful floors, and an unobstructed view out the front windows, at least until 8 weeks after "Bonus Day."

They are also coming home to a house without water, because our exterior water main burst, at some point in the past 72 hours, and our pest control guy alerted me to it around noon. I have purchased bottled water for "plumbing" purposes, and my mother will have to stay at my sister's house for tonight, at least (though I'm sure she won't mind seeing her non-dog grandchildren).

Also, after the days of freezing weather we've had, I returned home from buying the bottled water to find that we'd won the emergency trash pickup lottery, but hadn't put our trash out. I sprinted down the driveway with an overflowing trash can, and decided afterwards that a medicinal glass of muscato was in order.

I mean, there's no water to the house, right? Got to stay hydrated somehow.

Home Is Where the Construction Is

This past Monday, our contractor's demolition team showed up bright and early to begin ripping out walls. We're in the process of turning three small closets into one small-ish laundry room, but one that will pack an efficient punch. Prior to Monday, the ground floor of our home looked like this:

Lots of small, inefficient closets grouped around the downstairs bathroom, and no laundry facilities. Desperate for clean underwear, but it's raining outside? Too bad! You have to run outside in the rain to get to the washer and dryer located in a small lean-to next to the garage apartment.

Also, the fake fireplace in our living room is gone, which is very exciting! Although I'll have to find a new piece of furniture to hold the TV, once everything is put back together.

Once the construction is completed, the floor plan will look like this:

The top blue rectangle is where our stacking washer and dryer will reside, and the blue rectangle on the left is the cabinetry that will house our dog food container, laundry supplies, and (possibly) household cleansers. 

My hairdresser thinks I'm nuts for ripping out 3 closets, but she doesn't have to go outside in the rain to wash underwear.

When I last wrote, I mentioned that our initial bid for the project seemed high, and that we had a second contractor coming to give us a quote. His bid was even higher, but we ended up going with the highest bidder, for multiple reasons. Namely, his estimate was itemized, whereas the first bidder just dashed off some approximations, which meant he could potentially tack on tons of "change orders" and claim we didn't tell him about them previously. Also, the higher bid included a building permit, but the first bidder didn't mention that. We need a permit for the project, because we're dealing with plumbing - both for water and gas lines - and lots of electricity.

As for my lighting quandary, I ended up with one of each of the fixtures I noted in my last entry: the bell-shaped fixture from CB2 will go in the laundry room itself, while the gilded acanthus leaf fixture from PBTeen will be in the hallway. 

And I still might order the Hogwarts fixture, for the day down the road when our attic becomes my migraine sanctuary, which would be appropriate, given the number of times Harry Potter has helped me through bouts of poor health.

You Light Up My Life

This past Sunday, a contractor came to our house to give us an estimate for turning our three closets into a laundry room.

It was a bit more than I expected, but that's why we have another contractor coming to give us an estimate this coming Thursday, as well.

For now, I'm emailing my sister and mother, desperate for help in selecting light fixtures for the laundry room, as well as the hall immediately outside the laundry room. The current hall fixture is old, and makes an unsettling buzzing noise when turned on. It probably needs to be rewired, but I'd rather have a more modern fixture than the frosted glass mid-century traditional light the house came with.

The cabinets we're putting into the laundry room are IKEA, because custom cabinets in a tiny laundry room don't make financial sense.



So I'm trying to decide if I want to coordinate with the dining room fixture...

Like so:

Or if I want to use more casual lighting.



And then, of course, there's the Harry Potter collection at Pottery Barn Teen, with their bronze-finish Hogwarts pendant lamp, which I think could be amazing.

Anywhere.

No, I'm not kidding.

Please don't hate me.