Our Money Pit

The Money Pit Graduates to Money Cavern

After a long series of mishaps, ranging from minor to seriously annoying, Renée's mom made the observation that we don't "live in a money pit. You live in a money cavern!" Sadly, we're beginning to agree. Sit down while we catch you up.

The POD finally departed on May 14th, after 91 days in our driveway. Here's what it looked like the day before it left:
All that was left in it was Chris' old barstools which were sold on Craig's List the very next week. It's different being able to park two cars in our driveway. Sometimes Chris parks out on the street just for old time's sake! The remaining items in the POD would up in our living room, where we are slowly sorting through them. We're still in the "stuff consolidation" phase of living together.

But the real news around the house was water. In lots of water in unexpected and unwanted places. Like under the sink, in the basement, under the sunroom roof, in the sunroom, and most recently in the office closet. Let's run through them:

• Leaky disposal required a visit by the plumber. That one was a relatively easy fix. And we found a smart, honest plumber at that.
• Five inches of rain in a 24 hour period caused water to seep up through the floor of our basement. It was small puddles from the corners of the linoleum floor in several places. As soon as the rain stopped, so did the leaks. While we did have to replace the carpet pad down there, all-in-all it was certainly not as bad as it could have been!
• After consulting with our favorite roofer, John from KCSI Exterior Construction, we decided our best course of action for the sunroom roof was the replace it entirely. After John and his crew did such an excellent job on the main roof of our house back in November, it was an easy decision to invite him back. It's a good thing we did. As soon as they removed the main roof, they discovered (along with birds nests and two bats) that the sub-roof was supporting three inches of standing water! It has been a wet spring here in DC, but come on! The old roof had warped in several places, allow both water and flying creatures in. John and his crew quickly squeegeed the water off and built a new roof.
• Sadly, this was not the end of the sunroom water saga. Within two days of John wrapping up work on the roof, we noticed water stains on the paneling that makes up the ceiling of the sunroom. Almost as we watched, the stains grew bigger and bigger, some of them even merging. After some sleuthing and another couple of visits by John, we had pulled away the ceiling panels, cut into the drywall, removed the insulation and discovered several places where it looks like the water that was on top of the sub-roof had managed to squeeze in. Gravity did it's job, and soon we had water dripping from the ceiling! To make a long story short, we dried everything out, replaced what needed replacing and even found the ceiling tiles (Armstrong's Country Classic Planks). That feels like a happy ending.

But the water story is not over yet. Remember a few weeks ago we told you about the leaking hall bathroom that we discovered the hard way? Well, today we were finally making good progress on the pile of  non-consolidated stuff in our living room. And since we are starting to put this away, we were placing more stuff than normal in the big closet in the office. That's when Renée (bless her shell-shocked heart) discovered what looks very much like damage from the leaking bathroom that we missed. The upper corner of the closet, the one that is right next to the ceiling where the big leak appeared, is damp and moldy. Booo!

These pictures are from tonight. As you can see, there's some serious issues going on above the ceiling in this closet! We'll be calling Steve from RARCO tomorrow to see when he can get some of his guys back out to fix this.

Needless to say, it certainly is starting to feel like the Money Cavern is a much better name for our home!

Update Long Overdue

After a long pause, here's the update:

RARCO came back and fixed the ceiling, as soon as they could schedule the drywall guys. As you can see from this picture, the holes are patched and now we just need to prime and paint the spot to clean it up. Done and easy, too. We were saddened to find out that RARCO has had to downsize to weather the shrinking housing market in our area. Our project manager, Scott Phelps, was caught up in the cuts. and no longer works for RARCO. Scott was so consistent with his communication and managing our sometimes frantic calls, we are sure he won't have trouble finding another position somewhere. While Steve, the owner of RARCO, was able to arrange everything with the repairs, we will miss Scott. Scott, if you are reading this, drop us a line. We still want to have you and your wife over so you can see the final result!

We also had an electrician come over to hook up the telephones. For some reason Scott was never able to get us to understand, RARCO did not hook up the phones to the exterior line. We also wanted to move the cable drop in the sun room so we could rearrange the layout of the room. We also wanted one more electrical outlet in the basement. And finally, we decided to add recessed lights and a ceiling fan to the office, the one room that has so far remained untouched by the excitement. So we had Kevin McDermott of McDermott Electric, who has done work with RARCO in the past, come out to take a look. He was very prompt and professional and quickly understood all of the things we needed done. His crew came out over two days and got everything straightened out. We can highly recommend McDermott Electric. (The picture is of the office, with the fan in operation and Chris playing with flashless photography!)

The other project we will be tackling soon is replacing four doors: two of the office closets, the office bathroom, and the door to the basement. The basement door is our most radical change – we're replacing the conventional door with a split door so we can leave one side open without taking up too much space in the dining room. Nicholas' litterbox is in the basement, so it will be to our benefit to keep the door open! We're sure this will merit an entire blog post when it happens!

Meanwhile, work continues in emptying the POD in our driveway. Last Saturday, Chris rearranged what was left in the POD into something more organized and that let us bring the bed frame in and finish setting up our bedroom. And Renée has been busy trying to integrate all of our kitchen stuff and figure out where to put it. As many boxes as we have unpacked at this point, there always seems to be two more! We're working through it, though.  And we're starting to feel like we are settling in – as you can tell by these pictures, our dining room is in place. Chris hung the chandelier and we've ordered a round table and new chairs that will better fit into the space. We'll post more pictures when it arrives in the early summer. But at least we can start to sit down for home-cooked meals again!

First Setback

In what we sincerely hope is our first and only construction setback, we came home from work on Monday evening to find this in the hallway outside of the office door:

Doing our own sleuthing, we traced what is obviously a leak to the hall bathroom (the hall bath being the room directly above this hallway). We called RARCO Tuesday morning and Scott sent Mike the plumber over that morning. Sure enough, Mike discovered that the seal around the toilet was leaking. He quickly fixed the seal and cleaned up as much of the mess as he could. Now, our ceiling looks like this:

We are pleased that RARCO was so very responsive and that this was not a bad leak in the big scheme of things! We'll have an open ceiling for the next couple of days and then RARCO will come back with some of their drywall guys to repair the ceiling.

In an unrelated note, we thought we'd show you something that makes us laugh. Renée's faithful cat Nicholas put up with a lot over the last four months. Not only was his mom stressed out because of the mess, but every day that the contractors were working at the house he was locked up in the sunroom. He whined a lot but otherwise was a real trooper about the whole ordeal. What makes us laugh is what he did to a box we used to block the doors to the sunroom. As you can see from this picture, he took his frustration out on the box. And boy did he have some frustration! Day after day, he picked it apart with claws and teeth until this was what was left:

 

Based on this, we think we can say that Nicholas is as excited about the construction being complete in our new house as we are!

We're serious about our closets

Fresh off the airplane, still a little crispy from the Mexican sun, we jumped right in to the myriad little details still left until we feel settled in our freshly remodeled home. Especially since all of the contractors are now essentially finished with us, we are free to move ahead at our own pace. We are eager to get things unpacked and sorted out, although since we're now doing this at nights and during the weekends it's sure to be a long process! As Renée likes to say: "Work gets in the way!"

On this weekend's agenda: building closets. Renée is a closet master – she loves the challenge of trying to squeeze every usable inch out of closet space. She uses exclusively The Container Store's Elfa shelf systems. We had already used it on the coat closet by the front door.

Without further ado, we'd like to present the Master Bathroom Linen Closet, the Hall Linen Closet and the Closet in the Spare Bedroom (left to right):

 

But our pride and joy has to be the walk-in closet in the master bedroom:

Especially when we added the Towers of Drawers:

Not bad for nine hours worth of work, if we do say so ourselves!

Final Touches!

It's hard to believe that it's over, but it's almost over! We passed our final inspection today and RARCO has completed the punch list we had for them. Things like hanging towel bars and fixing the exterior light over the kitchen door. As a sure sign that we're at the end, the Porta-potty is gone from in front of our house. We're sure the neighbors are breathing a sigh of relief!

The hardwood in the living room and upstairs has been stained and refinished. Nick is finally starting to feel at home. Check!

The carpet was installed on Wednesday in the sunroom and master bedroom. Check!

The blinds guys have installed the blinds in the sunroom. Check!

The glass guy was here today to install the glass on our kitchen cabinets and the shower door and mirrors in the master bath (that last picture is taken in one of those lovely mirrors!). Check!

There are a couple of little things left – RARCO owes us a cabinet face for the kitchen because they made a mistake installing one of the handles, for instance. We are also waiting for the plantation shutters for the master bedroom. And there was some damage to the valences in the sunroom, so ValueBlinds is replacing them. And oh does the house need a thorough cleaning!

We also had to call Brothers and Justice back because there's a funky spot on the kitchen hardwoods where it feels like there's nothing under the wood. Your foot just sinks down. Tom Brothers himself came out today to make the repair. At this point there is still a little give in the floor, but we think another visit from Tom (and whatever magic foam he sprayed under the floorboards) will do the trick.

But at this point, however, the focus is shifting back to us. Now we face the daunting task of unpacking the POD and merging all of our stuff. But first, we take a time out to travel south for a little R&R in Mexico. We have a couple of things to celebrate, after all!

Thank you, dear readers, for your love and support through this exciting time. We really couldn't have done it without you! More, we're sure, when we get back.

Flooring

Well, we continue to make big steps slowly in our progress towards the finish line. Or maybe it just seems that way to us! RARCO is done with all of the major work at this point – Mike finished all of his electrical and plumbing work on Wednesday. We have working faucets, drains that work, toilets that flush, bars from which to hang towels, lights that illuminate, fans that spin and even handles on cabinets and drawers! The walls are painted and the trim is trimmed. The kitchen backsplash is installed and grouted. The appliances are even roughly in the right place in the kitchen. Today was all about the floors.

The crews from Brothers and Justice Floors were here today, sanding the hardwood in the spare bedroom, the upstairs hallway, the stairs and the living room; they also started installing our engineered hardwood in the kitchen. Engineered hardwood is simply wood that has a stain and a sealant applied in the factory ahead of time. Easy to install because there's no sanding or staining involved, but you're limited to a handful of colors. No problem for us – we found a color we liked just fine and Brothers and Justice were able to match the color with a stain for the rest of the hardwood in the house.

At the end of today, the stain has been painted on the floors upstairs and more than half of the kitchen floor has been installed. But enough words. We know you really want the pictures!

Here's some detail of the kitchen backsplash. You can see our handle choices, too. The second image is a close up with the under-cabinet light on.

Now for the kitchen floor (all taken with a flash, so the color changes a bit):

Some details of the half-finished floor and the steps leading to the living room (first by the office; then at the top of the basement stairs, finally the bare wood stairs):

Bits and Pieces of Progress

Over the weekend, we took time off from our remodeling to get hitched. The ceremony took place in Luray Caverns and we had a wonderful weekend at the Hopkins Ordinary B&B in Sperryville, Virginia. Kevin and Sherri the Innkeepers hosted us in high style and fed us delicious food. We'll be sure to post some pictures as soon as they are ready. Coming home was a reminder of reality in many ways, especially with all of the living room furniture pushed to the middle of the room and covered in plastic!

The painters are making progress – the master bedroom is finished,

including the closet and bathroom:

They have completed the hallway and spare bedroom and started the living room, including priming the fireplace, too. (Note the furniture under the plastic in the first picture on left!)

 

Meanwhile, in the kitchen Manuel from RARCO has completed all of the molding on top of the cabinets and the tile guys have started on the backsplash. We'll have some good shots of that this week. The floor guys start on Thursday with both refinishing the hardwood in the living room, upstairs hallway and spare bedroom and installing the pre-engineered hardwood in the kitchen. Mike the plumber/electrician was also back, installing the ceiling fan in the bedroom and light fixtures in the bathrooms. He's having to fix a couple of little things, too, like an outlet in the master bath that is way too close to the corner of the wall to install a faceplate.

Dramatic pictures we're sure to follow this week, so stay tuned!

Granite!

Our counter tops were installed today! As a reminder, we picked Golden Beach for the kitchen countertop and Kashmir Gold for the master bathroom. It looks as good as we hoped it would in the kitchen:

We'd like to include pictures of the bathroom granite, but it's covered by drop clothes and plastic. The painters started today as well, beginning their prep work throughout the house. This on top of RARCO working on various little bits that still remain. To make things more hectic, the flooring installation in the kitchen/dining room happens tomorrow (Tuesday). It's a little crowded in front of our house, what with all of the different contractor vans and trucks!

In a further move that is sure to convince us that the process is almost over, the dumpster in our driveway is slated to be carted off tomorrow and not replaced. It's been a fixture in front of our place for 91 days, so we've pretty well forgotten what the driveway looks like without it. But never fear, dear reader – the POD and the portajohn will remain! We wouldn't want our neighbors to think that we're done quite yet.

More pictures of the kitchen floor and the bathroom granite tomorrow!

Did we say lights?

We think one of the highlights of our week is the return of our electric lights. (Get it, high*lights*? HA! OK, we're starting to crack up a bit, so it's good that we're nearing the end of this!)

Here's the kitchen with the under-cabinet lights installed and on:

And here are the lights on in the living room. Note the "wall washer" over the fireplace that will illuminate something special:

We also like that the spare bedroom closet has a working light (and four doors!)(left picture) while the master bedroom has a light in the alcove we're going to use for shelves:   

The hall bathroom is tiled now, though the grout still needs to go in (note the light!).

The master bath shower is also 95% tiled (and still awaiting grout). Chris had to swing by Design Tile on the way home from work tonight to pick up additional bull-nose tile pieces to finish off the edges of the tile work. These three pictures are looking left to right. Pay no mind to the tools on the bench in the last picture – that's our insurance that the tile guys are coming back soon!

Well we hope so anyway. The Washington metro area is under a Winter Storm Warning tonight with a real wintery mess due here tomorrow. We hope that everyone makes it here safely, but does indeed make it here to do some of the work! We have countertops, painters, flooring, window treatments and glass doors coming throughout the week next week, so we need to finish some of the things that are in progress now!

Bathroom Tile, Lights, Action!

Here's what the vanities look like in the Master Bath. Renée's make-up table in the center gives some nice variation to the height of the counter tops. In the second picture, you can also see the double closet doors for the linen closet as you enter the bathroom:

The RARCO tile guys finally made an appearance today, as well. And as you can see, they made good progress on the shower/bath areas in both upstairs bathrooms. First the Master Bath shower, looking left and center (you can see the bench we've added in the picture in the middle). Then the Hall Bath with our "subway" tile.

Also, Mike was busy today installing light switches. We actually have working lights upstairs for the first time since early December! Renée had to make an emergency run to Home Depot for these very switches when we realized that RARCO didn't have them on hand. But it was a successful run and now just about every light has its own dimmer. Maybe we can save money on utility bills by keeping all of our interior lights dim!

More lights installed tomorrow and Friday. Painters begin prepping and counters are installed on Monday. Flooring starts in the middle of the next week. When we say "action," we mean it!