We made it!!

After six months of some of the most challenging moments in recent memory, we FINALLY moved in to our lovely little home!

Our absence on the internet (and the Palm House Journal) was replaced by a whole lot of hard work and dedication. Long nights, early mornings, creative solutions, and a massive amount of problem-solving defined the past two weeks. We had a tremendous amount of support from our parents, as Larry came straight from work several times to do a nighttime shift. We had help from Mom, Phoebe, Melanie, and of course, the ever-dedicated Kimber in these past weeks. We even had a visit from our friend Dominique!

Pili's new best friend, Dominique

Our goals were pretty straightforward. We were hosting Andy’s parents for Christmas and the following week (in addition to watching our Adam and Eliza’s pup, Alice), and we needed at least a working shower. We couldn’t guarantee a functioning kitchen – plan B for the Christmas dinner was Chinese food – but we sure were going to try.

In order to make our deadlines, as always, there was a whole lot of prep. The IKEA cabinets had to reach some level of completion in order for the countertop installers to come in and create a template. We made it just under the wire for the last orders to be installed in time for the Christmas weekend. Yet, there was still no promise of countertops because those guys were working up until the end to get their customers countertop. In the meantime, Andy demonstrated quick-thinking yet one more time when he asked them to plan for a quartz window sill, thus reducing our chances of water intrusion quite a bit. They grumbled and mumbled about the extra request, but we had high hopes. They returned on Wednesday of this past week to install the cabinets. When Jessica (who was out running errands at the time) asked Andy over the phone how the installation was looking, he responded “wonderful”. It was the first time such an effusive word was used for any of the work in the house, and there is no better descriptor.

East wall, with new sink and dishwasher

West wall, with new range and fridge

We had to wait 24 hours for the glue to dry before bringing in the plumber. When he popped in to give us an estimate and consultation the previous day, he had mentioned that our sink was a problem. Now, if you recall, the sink was the primary problem when we were planning for accommodating the countertop height in with the windowsill. Our options at the time included finding a different sink. But we were pretty headstrong about finding a working solution because we just really liked that sink. Here, we were facing the same dilemma, except this time the reason why the sink was a problem was because it only had one hole – for the faucet. We were missing an “air hole” to drain the water from the adjacent dishwasher. Well, Andy and I were at the “whatever” stage…we just wanted a sink and were willing to let that detail slide (which is unlike us). But the plumber was insistent. So much so, that he threatened to walk from the job unless we do it right. In another ingenious display of quick-thinking, Andy stopped in on a job site right around the corner of our house where some guys were doing tile work. These were the people who were equipped to drill a hole in a porcelain sink without cracking it. Seeing as it was the day before Christmas, they were in a generous mood and offered to swing by the house to take a look. Five minutes later, we had a second hole in the sink, and we were ready to go. In one afternoon, we got a kitchen sink, a dishwasher, and a range. Life changed in that moment for the better.

Meanwhile, we were wrapping up the endless bathroom project. Our goal was to be able to shower. We let go of any illusions that we’d be able to finish painting, but we needed to caulking to cure completely before introducing water. Up until the morning that we all waited in line to take our turns at the shower, we were problem-solving. The pilot light had gone out, the shower curtain rod wasn’t fitting, the anti-scald setting was too low…but we did it! And now we are squeaky clean and ready to take on our next task.

Completed bathtub surround

Besides all that, there was a multitude of details that we wanted to attend to to make the home feel, well, homey. Kimber worked hard to get all the lighting up. Jessica didn’t make it easy on her by sourcing all manner of lamps from antique fairs to craigslist to the local reuse shops. Every light was a project. But in true Kimber form, she embraced the challenge and completed them gracefully. Mom swooped up the textiles, the curtains, and ironed and hemmed them all. Melanie dedicated her architectural skills to the IKEA cabinets, and Phoebe polished off the painting in the main house – all on a ladder. Jessica spent every moment bouncing from project to project and cleaning – taking up the cardboard off the floors, vacuuming and mopping, bringing up boxes from the basement and doing the job of actually moving in. In the end, our house looked good enough to host Margerie and Marty over Christmas.

Mom sewing curtains with help from Izayah; Kimber installing dining room light

Dining room, the morning after

Dining room with Grandma Shirley's china, Entryway with wreath and Moroccan light

On Christmas eve we joined our dear friends Jared and Joanna as they hosted their first big event in their new home. It was a warm and lovely evening. We attended midnight services at an Oakland Presbyterian church where there was one of the biggest organs we’ve seen. Yesterday, for Christmas day, we had a Dungeness crab feast. Here’s the menu:

Appetizers

Port Salut cheese

Brie

Blue cheese

Apples

Crackers

First Course

Acme sourdough bread

Acme pain levain

Spicy vegetable lentil soup

Main Course

Local Dungeness crab

Spinach artichoke soufflé

Baked potato

Green salad with pistachios, pumpkin seeds, avocado, green apple, and cranberries

Dessert

Homemade lime pie

Assorted cookies and chocolates

Coffee and tea

This morning, the day after Christmas, we will shuck the rest of the crab for crabcakes, and then head east to the Wichters for lunch. With just a few weeks until the baby arrives, we’re grateful every moment to be in our home. Seasons greetings to you all!

Kitchen progress...and more!

It’s been a fun week and a half since last checking in. We’ve seen two old friends visiting from Chicago, celebrated with a baby shower, and started on the kitchen in earnest.

Our dear friend, Meaghan Burritt, graced us with her presence for about 4 days over the weekend. Her visit inspired us to take a couple days off and actually enjoy the Bay Area. We visited Point Reyes (a first for Andy), saw elephant seals (another first), visited the Pixar exhibit at the Oakland Museum of Art with Eliza in tow, and Meaghan helped out with the baby shower. She also made the best batch of Burritt dip that I’ve ever had.

A portrait of two pregnant ladies at the Oakland Museum

Pili and Alice after a romp at Crissy Field with Meaghan and Eliza

The baby shower was more than I ever could have imagined. It was perfectly small, intimate, and meaningful. We played games that weren’t lame, laughed a lot, and ate some great food. There’s nothing better than kibbutzing with close family and girlfriends.

On Sunday, Joey Feinstein came to see the house and have dinner with us. We had a great evening of Burmese food followed by cardomom and bay laurel ice cream. Yum! We miss both Joey and Meaghan very much, but we were so excited to spend time with them.

Back at the ranch, we’ve been working late and making slow progress. In addition to finishing up the last vestiges of painting (touch-ups, second coats, etc.), Andy has been plugging away at the bathtub surround. However, the timing of the kitchen countertop installation has put that project on hold for another day or two with the hopes that we can install the kitchen countertop by the time Margerie and Marty come visit for Christmas. With Larry’s help, we assembled the bathroom vanity and plumbed it, so now we have running water inside the house! Additionally, we had a very special guest come by to inaugurate the installation of the refrigerator. Climate Cycle’s Executive Director, Joey Feinstein, held a ribbon cutting ceremony and was in attendance at the fridge’s first jolt to life.

Climate Cycle Executive Director, Joey Feinstein, joins Andy for a ribbon-cutting ceremony

Guess who helped plumb the sink?

Progress on the bathtub surround

As I mentioned, we’re currently dealing with the countertop deadline. We encountered an interesting hiccup in the whole kitchen installation. We knew all along that the windows in the kitchen were somewhat low, and that the countertop would likely butt up against the sill. However, it wasn’t until we had the exact measurements of the toekick, the cabinets, the plywood under the quartz countertop, and the countertop itself until we knew how close we were. As it was, we figured out that we had to modify the window trim to accommodate the countertop. But when we factored in the apron front kitchen sink (that sits on top of the countertop), we realized we were in trouble. We had two choices: a.) build a custom box (instead of the IKEA provided legs) to shave off the 5/8” needed, or b.) rebuild the window box to make it a picture window. With the help and advise of our friend and carpenter, Cassie, we decided on option b. Andy removed the sill Thursday morning, and we anticipate we’ll rebuild it once the countertop is installed. Fingers crossed, the installers will squeeze us in to their schedule right before Christmas. If not, we’ll throw some plywood down and welcome mom and Marty into our home, as it is!

Andy demonstrating the principle, "measure twice, cut once"

There are lots of requests for pictures of the belly. It seems that the belly has a celebrity all it’s own. Well, here you are! In this picture, I’m 35 weeks pregnant. Feeling good all around, but definitely textbook pregnant with all the symptoms. Thank goodness for an excellent pre-natal chiropractor and yoga!

Level?

Alice is blue.

In the Palm House today, we celebrate two latest and greatest achievements...one is blue and the other a toilet!

You'll notice that to get to the point where we could install a toilet inside the house, we had to first, finish the bathroom tiled floor, and second, finish painting the wall behind the toilet. Yeah! This means that Andy was free to take on the next major bathroom challenge...tiling the bath surround...

We're doing classic craftsman bungalow style subway tile, offset like brick, and we'll add in a glass tile detail at the top (the same glass as is in the floor of the bathroom). Projected date of completion? Oh, 4 more days or so.

So what have we been doing since the last post? A whole lot of painting. While the painting party was invaluable, we couldn't imagine how long this took. Every day we plod towards the finish line. The day that we can move in. Painting the front room, the living room, blue was a huge indicator that we're really really close. Here's a pic of the first coat.

Trust me, it looks really good in real life. Though the color is dark, it's offset on three of the four walls by a large window or the opening to the room. And, the upper section and ceiling is white (as is the molding).

While we were hard at work today, Pili and Alice watched over us. Pili curled up in a little ball, and Alice decided to play with paint. If you look closely, you can see a patch of blue on her side. At one point today, I looked behind me to see little Alice looking up at me with her sweet little face, as she sat on the ground and leaned up against the freshly painted blue wall. Oh silly dog.

In other news, Dad nearly completed putting together our IKEA kitchen cabinets. Tomorrow we'll start hanging them. Appliances are right around the corner. Kitchen, here we come!

On a personal note, I'm entering my 34th week of pregnancy!

Painting Party!

We are reeling from an awesome whirlwind weekend of painting and bathroom tiling. We had SO MUCH help from our friends and family and it gave us a big boost. It's amazing how much work it takes to paint a house. Prepping, priming, patching, taping, cutting, first coats, touch-ups, second coats...initially it seems pretty simple. Just dip a paint brush into paint. But these guys re-acquainted themselves with the complexities of many different types of paint (semi-gloss, eggshell, high-gloss), and with many different colors. We had to stage it just right, and choreograph the coats of primer and paint to dry in such a way, in such a time, to maximize our friends' help.

Here's a little tribute to all our helpers:

Thanks, Sarah Isabel, Jen, Shawn, Ryan, Adam, Larry, Melinda, Melanie and Dedula!

We'll still be painting for a few more days if anyone feels like popping in and picking up a paintbrush.

Drywall? Check! Floors? Check!

Here is a quick catch-up from the past week's worth of work. We completed so much, and here's the lowdown...

The drywall guys finished up their work:

I suppose it only looks impressive if you saw the previous house pictures and notice not that there are no holes, and the walls are in shape. This was a natural step before painting. But before painting, we had to refinish the floors. Why, you ask? We wanted to finish the floors so that there was no activity to generate a tremendous amount of dust that would settle on the new paint if we had painted before. So, I hope you took a good look at what the floors did look like, because here are pics of the floors being refinished. We saved and refinished the original oak floor in the living and dining rooms, and laid new oak flooring in the kitchen and bedrooms.

You can see the difference in this picture between the old dark stain, and the gorgeous light oak underneath it. For many reasons it wasn't practical to stain and seal the newly refinished floor this light, but we really appreciated it when we saw its natural beauty revealed.

This final picture shows you the stain that we chose for the floors - it's a medium coffee brown stain. It looks amazing because it shows the natural variations in the floor.

All this work was to prepare for the painting party! Andy and Jessica spent two days priming and protecting the floors so that the friendly crews could come in and just start painting (as seen by a previous post - Andy priming). We worked for four days straight, and we estimate three more days of work. Here we go!

Drywall, floors, paint, oh my!

In addition to the Lumber Liquidators fiasco, we've run into some other *ahem* professionals that have offered up less-than-professional services.

The long and short of it is that we spent last week working with a drywall guy that seemed a bit pathological. At first, Andy was convinced that his say-one-thing-do-another mode of operating was a result of a language barrier. Leave it to Andy to give the drywall guy the benefit of the doubt. So, we switched to spanish to try to eliminate any communication barriers and Jessica stepped in to mediate conversations. Nope, language wasn't the problem. It was him. Thank goodness we were able to get him out of the house before he did any damage. But we sure didn't feel good writing him a check.

With the drywall dudes out of the picture, and the drywall patched and ready for paint, we threw on some paint samples to see what would work in the house. Most looked good, but there was one that stood out above the rest. Apparently, Larry felt similarly about the color that we tried out for the bathroom when I walked into the room to find this:

And yes, the color definitely looks like poop. Needless to say, it didn't make the final cut.

We spent all day on Friday priming the walls to prepare for our painting party this upcoming weekend.

This morning, the flooring guys are in our house working like whirling dervishes. They are buffing and refinishing the original oak floor, preserving the parquet details and patching the holes (such as the place where the fireplace lived). They'll also lay the new flooring in the bedrooms and kitchen. We could've laid the floor ourselves, but at this point we're happy to delegate some tasks, especially since it'll take them a fraction of the time and they're already in the house.

We'll spend Thursday/Friday getting ready to host a painting party for any friends that want to come and help. With a successful weekend, we can start putting our house back together next week!

So you want to renovate your house?

This is a victory post.

Few of you know the struggles that we've had with a little company called Lumber Liquidators. I'll make this as short and sweet as I know how. Here's the story.

August 27. Andy and Jessica walk into the local Lumber Liquidators store to check out a sale. Jessica has done a ton of floor research up until this point, so they know exactly what to look for, and exactly what is worth paying for. We find an interesting real wood oak floor of medium quality (but good enough) for a damned good price. We are assured that the shipment will arrive on September 21. Done and done.

September 20. Jessica calls to confirm shipment. It hasn't arrived yet, but they assure us it's on its way.

September 21. No call from Lumber Liquidators. Jessica calls them. They say that a truck just arrived and they'll check the inventory to see if our floor is on it. They'll call us back. No call back.

September 22. Another phone call to Lumber Liquidators. They claim their system is not functioning well and they are sure our wood will arrive that day (they have been claiming to be victim to a faulty system since our first visit in August). Little do Lumber Liquidators know that they delay of the arrival of the wood flooring means that we will have to delay a number of other items between us and move-in day, like the appliance delivery, painting, etc. Their tardiness is becoming a larger problem as we have to call all the other guys lined up and move dates back.

September 23-27. Same story. Phone calls to Lumber Liquidators. False assurances of a call-back. No wood.

September 28. One week has passed since our wood should've arrived. Andy goes in to the store to talk to them. Here's the story: "We sold 5 times as much of this flooring as we had in stock. As a result, we can't get you your flooring. Instead, you'll have to pick out some different flooring. No, we can't get you flooring equal to, or better than, the flooring that you have bought. We can get you more expensive flooring of the same or better quality, but not at that same price." So, here are the salient points, 1.) we had already paid for the flooring (like suckers), 2.) they were pulling a bait-and-switch, 3.) we had little choice but to pay more money for same/better quality wood because they delay in pulling our money out of Lumber Liquidators would've cost us another month of waiting for wood to ship in from someone else. On this day, we got a refund for our original payment (or so we thought), and paid $300 more for another oak floor - thankfully it was a better quality wood. The refund, we were told, would take 3-5 business days.

October 2. No sign of the refund in our bank account.

October 5-13. No sign of the refund. We make phone calls to Lumber Liquidators nearly daily asking for our money back. At this point, we involve our bank and complete an affidavit stating that Lumber Liquidators has promised us a full refund but we have not seen a penny.

October 15. Affidavit complete, we wait for Lumber Liquidators to respond. Nothing comes back.

October 16-25. We loop in Lumber Liquidators headquarters. They avoid/apologize/promise to make it right. They fall short every time. Every time they promise to call us back. Every time they promise to take our claim to someone who can do something about it. Finally, someone gives me the name and direct line of the woman in charge of our case. Bam. I spare her the whole story and simply say that I will give them six business days to refund us our money, and if it's not in our account by Monday, November 1, I am walking into small claims court and suing. Now, she knows as much as I do that settling in court is a much more costly route than just giving us our money.

October 26-28. Daily phone calls asking for the status and reminding her that Monday, November 1 is right around the corner and that this was not an empty threat.

October 31. I sit down to prepare the necessary paperwork to walk into an Alameda Courthouse first thing Monday morning. I see the funds were deposited yesterday.

I am at once filled with a sense of victory and rage. I want to punch Lumber Liquidators in the nose. I can't believe that this company only acts when their ass in on the line. Okay, I can believe it. But I don't like it. The threat of court was the only thing that gave us our money back. Those mother fu@*ers.

So, you want to renovate your house? These are the kinds of a-holes you'll probably have to deal with too (disclaimer: we've also had some really great people work for us). I'm spending some time online with the Better Business Bureau tomorrow morning.