The Roof - The main roofer was a complete ass about the entire job, demanded that we buy more expensive parts so he could be lazy about cutting, and suffers from neuropathy which meant that Mark ended up doing a lot of the moving of material. The roof is basically on but it's got tons of tall, shiny, expensive metal crap all over it that could have been done much cheaper and weird shingles overlapping the front trip which we will now have to try and figure out how to paint under. To say we weren't thrilled with how things went down would be an understatement, especially since he was still putting things on during the party which ended up back at our house and we all got to listen to the fights between him and our contractor. BUT, except for the chimney it's done. We've had a mild rain since then and so far no leaking. I hope for his sake that it is done correctly because no one is happy with how the project itself went down especially since the bid we got from another place ended up being cheaper (our contractor was confident they could do it cheaper but ended up not being the case) and we ended up helping to remove the roof, taking out the staples, and still have all the clean-up to do. The clean-up has ended up having it's own hassles as when Mark was putting a piece of trash into his dad's pick-up, it ended up touching the rear windshield and shattering it. Yeah, the roof has just been a barrel of laughs. Ugh!
The Gas - We have gas in the house again! It was a bit of a pain but it is now fixed. That leads to the next piece tho...
The Stove - We had gotten a wonderful 5 burner convection oven for free from a foreclosed house and had planned on putting it in here to replace our 20yr old beat-up range. That was going to mean rerouting 220 power from the outside hook-up to the kitchen to do. And then since it was stainless steel and black, well, maybe we should look into replacing the other appliances to keep things matching. After how much over budget the roof went, we decided that this was too expensive of a plan and I found a newer stove (well, newer than our current one) that matched our current appliances on Craigslist. It was only $240 but it has a nice top, digital display with delay and timed oven cooking and is even self-cleaning! Such an improvement over our previous one. Of course since nothing can go smoothly, it's gas hook-up is not compatible with our house gas line in the kitchen so we've been going through the run around trying to get the right parts to install it. It's been 3 days now but Mark was finally able to get the right parts and it is finally installed!
The Kitchen Remodel - I had to call the cabinet/counter place since I still hadn't heard anything a week and a half after giving the go ahead on the layout and quote. Turns out we had to go in and fill out paperwork, put a downpayment on the work, and make a bunch of decisions. Mark went and did that on Wednesday and while they were saying they could deliver this coming week, we decided to put it off until after Easter. We want to get the bedrooms done and carpeted before we deal with the kitchen. We ended up going with the granite that I loved the best because we couldn't get the backsplash for the oven in the one we had originally picked. Yes, we could have just gone and gotten some basic tile from HD or something to put behind it, but I liked the idea of matching it and since it was less than $100 difference to go with the other granite, we went for it. Hey, it makes me that much happier about this whole thing.
The Painting - And the hits just keep on coming. The paint we went with is too thick for our paint sprayer so Mark thinned it a little with water. He went to finally paint his office last night after using TSP to prep the walls as the guy at Home Depot recommended. Unfortunately, the guy at HD failed to tell him that he needed to rinse the walls after using the TSP on it. Between the two mistakes, there are several areas where the paint failed to stick and we will need to reprep and repaint. This is putting everything even more behind schedule. *sigh* Mark just talked to the paint guy and found out the right way to use the TSP (apparently we weren't using a strong enough concentration either) and also found out that our original paint gun is the right one to use and he managed to get the part to make that usable so hopefully now the painting can get underway in earnest.
The Packing - We have now run out of room in our storage locker until we can start getting some of the stuff out of there. Things like the futon we will put in the room for Chris and Matt, the boxspring and frame for the twin bed that will go into the room for Nicholas and Jon, and definitely the flooring for the living room and dining room. Thankfully, we are starting to finish up with the packing that will need to be done to finish the work on the bedrooms which will allow us to pull some of those things out. A few more boxes from our bedroom and I need to finish my desk. We'll need space for one more shelving unit until we move and for our bed while we paint and carpet the room and that will be tight for a bit but hopefully we'll be able to make it all work with just the one storage unit. Until we actually go to move that is. At which point, we likely will have to get a POD unit or something similar. That's going to be a whole 'nother level of fun.
So that's where we are this week. With any luck, we will get the boys moved into the office this weekend and start work on their room. We need to have that finished and us ready to move out of our room by Friday so we can prep and paint our room and hopefully give it at least a day to cure before the new carpet gets put it on the 18th. Cross your fingers and wish us luck that we can hit that date!
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