Office Cabinets Ordered, Backsplash Tile Chosen

On Tuesday of last week (9/22), I finalized everything for my office cabinets and put in the order! Torrie came out to get all the measurements and talk through the final details. I'm excited about the office. I like the J-shaped desk configuration because it puts everything conveniently at arm's length. Here's a Google Sketchup version of what I ordered. These images show only the cabinets and the drawers that will be suspended under the countertop:

I also settled on the tile for my kitchen backsplash. I placed the order today, so hopefully I'll have the material by this weekend. I may take a whole day off work Friday and start the project. This is the last big project for me to do inside the house. Then I can mount the range hood and call for the final inspection!

I'm still making some decisions about drawer cabinets for the master closet, cabinets in the laundry room, and whether or not to let the cabinet people make wooden panels for the front of my kitchen island.

Water Pressure Fixed, Dishwasher Installed

The plumbers were at the house Tuesday and Wednesday this week taking care of odds and ends as well as running the new line from the attic to address the low hot water pressure.


They put the dishwasher in place and hooked it all up. Now that it's in the hole, I have to complete my idea of putting the legs back together with the brackets we made. It's going to be a tight squeeze getting my hands under there. I'm going to try it tonight. We can't test the unit until the legs are back together and the top is screwed to the wood plate to keep it from jumping around.



On the spa tub, they hooked up the replacement control pad and attached the air pump. So we were able to fill the tub and run it with the bubbles for the first time! That was cool. The pump was loud, but that may change. I still have to complete the cement board and tile panels around the front of the tub and create a access door to close off the opening in the closet that provides access to the pump. So I can probably do some sound insulating things there to muffle the noise. I had forgotten a feature I learned about early on: that the air pump comes back on a few minutes after you turn it off. It waits to give the water time to drain, and then it comes back on to dry any remaining water out of the conduits. This is supposed to keep mold and bad smells from creeping in.



Regarding the new hot water line, the guys started the work the first day, but ran into doubts about whether the new line to the master bath would fix the problem. They cut the sheetrock in the wall and started to cut pipes, etc. Then they started asking me if I had any more pictures of the pipes behind walls in other bathrooms. Hmm... I started to get a little worried! It turns out they were just being cautious. It was their boss who had told them where to run the line, but they weren't sure why.



They came back the next day having gotten a deeper explanation from him. Apparently, there's a problem with lines running under the slab between the half bathroom and the laundry room fixtures. We know this because the laundry room sink is the first place you begin to see a difference in hot and cold water pressure. But it's not really obvious until you run both the laundry room sink AND another fixture in the master bathroom, which is downstream. So, the course of action chosen was to run another hot water line directly from the tank in the attic to the master bathroom where it joins up with the existing system again. Here's the diagram:

The old line from the laundry room to the master bath is still hooked up. So the hot water system is kind of weird. It's being supplied at two points. One thing I need to keep an eye on is: assuming there's a kink in the line between the half bath and laundry room, it COULD develop into a leak years down the road. So I could potentially have a leak under the slab that's not near the outside perimeter. Meaning it won't be accessible to fix!

Pictures of Office Floor

Here are some pictures from the process of installing the laminate wood floor over the weekend:

Office Floor in One Day!

Last night, I laid out the underlayment for the office floor. Today, I started and (even more satisfying) completed putting down the laminate wood floor!

Pictures to come soon. It was a joy to complete something like this in essentially one day. A friend from church came over to help (thanks Stephen), and it made the job go faster and smoother.

The planks were simple to link together side-by-side. The only detail that took some attention was having someone watch the joint between the end of two planks as the other person tapped the block to push them together. The trick is to tap them just enough to close the gap but not so much that the joint starts to buckle and protrude upward.

The one part of the job that I thought would be very tricky wasn't at all: laying the last row against the last wall. The instructions gave you a complicated procedure of planing off the tongue and groove to make it easier to slip in and filling the gap with wood glue. But when we got to that wall, the only thing different was cutting the plank lengthwise to fit in the space. Once you did that, you slipped it in and it locked in place the same as the others.

Ah, one tip I can offer: you always want to end a row on a straight wall. I have a bay window in the office, so there are two wall segments at a 45 degree angle. Without thinking ahead, I started at the back wall and worked my way forward. My last plank was cut at a slant to match the wall, and I couldn't easily use the pull bar to tap it into place. From that point, I always started a row at the front and moved back. This way every row ended with a flat-ended piece, and it was easy to use the pull bar.

After the months-long saga that was laying tile, this job was fun and exciting! Stephen wanted to come over so he could learn the ropes. He's about to lay more than one room with laminate wood in his house. We had a good time.

Ordered Window Shades, Office Underlayment Done

Yesterday, I placed the final order for my window shades at Lowe's. Kathy, the designer who works there, has been a phenomenal help! She's spent time helping me pick the right colors and types of shades. She's really good at that. And she came in on her day off so she could finalize my quote in the computer and get the order processed. If anyone from Lowe's is reading this, your employee Kathy in the home decor department at your Metairie, LA store is one of your real treasures, and you should treat her well for it!

On another note, when I started this house process you'd never have convinced me that it would cost me over $2,000 to put shades in all my windows. I think that's insane. But I'm getting nice ones. Not the generic mini blinds, but a variety of types from a reliable manufacturer. I'm just glad I caught them on sale! It never occured to me that this would be a high cost area.

Ok, so enough of my budgetary woes. Tonight, I laid the underlayment down in my office. This is the padding/moisture barrier that goes under the laminate wood. Tomorrow, I plan to lay the flooring. I guy from church is coming over to learn with me so he can put down the floor at his house. It should be fun.

Grouting in Progress, Second Front Yard Chain Wall

I only have 4 more tiles to lay in my pantry and I'll be done with that! In the meantime, I started grouting the rest of the tile floor. The foyer and A/V closet are done. At that point, we changed gears to build the second chain wall in my front yard. I wanted to take advantage of what was supposed to be "cooler" weather. It wasn't as cool as a couple of weeks ago, but at least it was down into the upper 80s!

I neeed to call the plumber back over to put the dishwasher in now that I've got the legs cut and it can be slid into the hole.

My sofa and love seat are in at the store, and they're going to hold onto them for me until I get the floors grouted.

I also need to chose my tile for the kitchen backsplash and get that done. Then I could mount the range hood. After that, once I get the cabinet guys to stain the wood for the front of the kitchen island they can come out to finish the cabinet trim. Then the fridge goes into place, and I can call for my final inspection!

Here are some pictures from yesterday when we were preparing to pour the new chain wall: