Productive Day

We spent the day checking more tasks off the to-do list - grouting the master bath shower walls, trimming out the remainder of the doors and windows on the second floor, finishing floor trim in the second floor bedrooms, and for me, puttying all the nail holes, and for Brian, plumbing the guest bath on the second floor and doing some electrical work in the master bathroom.  The guest bath now has two working sinks so it is very nearly complete.  We ran into a small problem with the master bath vanity when Brian discovered that the installers drilled the faucet holes too close to the sink, leaving no room for the valves.  I would be upset but it was the end of a long day for the installers and it's a problem easily fixed...just as soon as I get the granite company on the phone tomorrow and get them to send someone out.  In the meantime, I am still spending far too much time admiring the marble kitchen countertops (gratuitous picture above) to be particularly bothered about the bathroom.

All in all, it feels good to be making visible progress on the second floor, especially after so much time spent laying the (sometimes literal) groundwork for these projects.  We'll spend some evenings this week ticking more tasks off the list and hopefully be ready to start painting next weekend!

This is not DIY

I had a little trouble posting these pictures yesterday (I'm clearly not the IT side of the family) so they're a day late but I think the (near) finished product, the kitchen, makes up for the delay.  We had our countertops installed yesterday and it's definitely not a DIY project - it took two big guys to even get the island countertop into the house, much less set it in place, but the countertops are in now and we're really happy with how they look!  We went with a honed white carrera marble and a simple Grohe faucet for the sink and a small soap dispenser so everything is very streamlined and unobtrusive.  We still need to pick out and install a backsplash but the kitchen is coming together and we're looking forward to hosting some great dinner parties here in the coming months!

More pictures to follow tomorrow as we also had countertops installed in both second floor bathrooms and Brian is, as I type, installing faucets.  We finished the last of the master bath tile today as well and will grout tomorrow, and I spent some quality time going around the second floor with painter's putty getting the trim ready for finishing.  The clock is rapidly ticking down to April but I still think we have a shot at getting moved in upstairs by - or at least around - the first of the month.  Regardless of exact timing, we're not far off now!

Delivery!

Can't wait to start using these.

Wall tile... Check

We finished up the master bath wall tile today. All that's left to tile is the curb and we are waiting on more of the grey floor tile to finish that. Hopefully next weekend we can grout everything and get some paint in here. There was also a fair bit of trimming, puttying, an painting going on all weekend. Getting close to the finish line!

The little things

The good thing about not living upstairs is the entire floor is our workplace. The bad thing is we need to be 100% done before we can move upstairs. So it seems like we spent an entire day doing small jobs. There's still a lot of detail work to do before we are ready to paint which hopefully is the last step. The big pain of the day was tiling the shower pan. The little tiles were tough to get them nice and straight. After that we knocked out some trim an hung the last door. Plus we finished up all the odd pieces of hardwood flooring and the master bath marble threshold.

Floor... Check

We finished up the master bathroom floor today. The large format tiles are a pain to cut, but they do make installation much quicker. Once the floor tiles were down we could set all five cabinets for the vanity. The countertop template guy is coming Tuesday and hopefully both bathrooms and the kitchen countertops should be installed in a couple weeks. For the past year and a half we have been sharing a tiny 1950's bathroom with the words smallest sink so having a 7 foot vanity is going to be a nice reward for all the hard work.

Chugging along

An hour here and there this week and the master bathroom floor is almost done. I also got the first of five vanity cabinets built. By tomorrow night we need to have the floor done and all the cabinets built so we can get the countertops measured next week. We should have all the countertops installed the following week so big changes are coming!