Speechless

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About a week ago a new project manager was assigned to our renovation.  This guy gave us hope that things were really going to move along and that our target move-in date of June 29th (this is the date we told them we were moving in whether it was finished or not) was going to happen.

The back doors were supposed to be delivered this Friday.  They needed to install these doors in order to finish the last of the exterior work on the extension and complete the rest of the finishing work in the interior.  So far nothing has been done or delivered when it was supposed to be on this project so we had little hope of the doors arriving on time.  You can imagine our delight when my husband went over this weekend and saw the first floor doors were installed!  We were so happy….

garden floor doors

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for about 5 minutes, and then he noticed that they did not look quite right.  Something was off.  He opened them and stepped outside.  THEY WERE NOT THE DOORS WE ORDERED.

We ordered doors that were black metal clad on the outside and white on the inside with oil rubbed bronze hardware.  These doors were white on the outside, unfinished on inside with brushed metal hardware.  Expletive, expletive, expletive!!!  These doors took 8 weeks to deliver.  How were we going to wait another 8 weeks for new doors?  To add to the torture, there is nothing we can do about it before Monday morning when the window distributor opens, which was probably lucky for the contractor because I for one was fit to be tied.

The Renovation Kitchen Blues

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This weekend we went to the house as we do every weekend to check out the work that was completed in the previous week.

The plumber finally came this week after many false promises.  We were so excited to see that the plumbing for the small bathroom, the pot filler and the backyard hose faucet was complete.

We are just waiting for the back windows and doors from Marvin, which are due to arrive this Friday.  They have completed closing up most of the kitchen walls and it is really coming together.

kitchen interior

Then we went to the third floor.  A while back, if you recall, there was a new structural plan created because our party walls are only a couple of bricks thick.  The new plan called for a steel channel to stretch the width of the room.  To install this they had to cut into the ceiling (thank goodness we did not install the new floors up on the third floor as planned).

While we were up there we noticed the radiators in the middle of the floor and we were thinking that we needed to put them back only to realize that during demolition they removed all the pipes that serviced these radiators during demolition but did not restore them and, as far as we know, did not have a plan to restore them based on the fact that they closed up most of the kitchen walls.

View from the kitchen extension on the parlor floor up to the third floor.

View from the kitchen extension on the parlor floor up to the third floor. No pipes!

Lesson 157, make sure your contractor has a plumbing plan that you have reviewed and approved so you know where all the plumbing is going to be located or relocated.  We are pretty sure our contractor totally forgot about this but we will see what he says.  In the end, all that great progress in the kitchen will probably need to be cut into or removed.  We also figure we are going to end up with an exposed heating pipe somewhere that we had not anticipated in our design plan.  Just another day in paradise.

The engineer signs off

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This week we crossed a major milestone: the structural engineer’s signoff. After the structural steel was installed a few week back to hold the 3rd floor masonry wall our engineer was still concerned that the channels required additional reinforcement. He requested columns be installed directly below the masonry wall and welded to the installed framing.

left-kitchen-wall-precolumn.jpg

Left kitchen wall before the column reinforcement was installed.

It has taken a few weeks to order and install the steel but it’s finally done and the engineer has signed off.

Left kitchen wall with the column installed.

Left kitchen wall with the reinforcing column installed.

This is a huge relief and now we can move forward with the work this has held up such as framing and drywalling over these channels.

Left kitchen wall with light gage framing for drywall.

Left kitchen wall with light gage framing for drywall.

It also means we can begin to seal up the building with roofing materials and a number of other products our architect recommened. To be completely honest, when it comes to this exterior water proofing stuff we are completely in their hands.

Next up is door, flooring and molding research and selection.