NFPA

Protip: Use hearing protection when doing anything with smoke detectors. Hearing loss is not on the NFPA's agenda.

Shower doors, stair treads, and a waterproofed front porch

Some remarkable progress was made this week. Our tile guy, Alex started doing the waterproofing to tile the front porch. His assistant was female. I think this was the first woman other than me who's physically worked on this remodel. I give her kudos! The tile that we picked for the back-splashes was discontinued, so we went to Daltile on Wednesday to pick out new tile. There were strict social distancing protocols, we had to make an appointment and anything we touched was sanitized. By having an appointment Odessa, gave us great recommendations and we found a back-splash tile that we now like even better than what we had picked before. Odessa was impressed with our decisiveness and our sense of taste, but this is about the fourth time that we've been there picking out tile. We've become a lot less picky, and a lot better at just picking something that works for both of us. I gave credit to Ian's sense of interior design to his mother. (I hadn't intended this to be a feminist blog, but I seem to be giving a lot of credit to women this week. Mother's day was Sunday, so maybe that's fitting.  Thank you to my mom, who taught me that I could do whatever I set my mind to, even things that are traditionally men's roles. Thank you to Bev, for entrusting us with her family home and letting us embark on this adventure [yes, it's made us late for supper several times, and worthwhile none the less]). Today, while I picked up our car (that had been in the shop for 5 weeks) Robert installed two of the three shower doors.  They are amazing! We're not supposed to use the showers for 24 hours. Oh my goodness, I want to take a long luxurious shower now! Some of the parts weren't in yet, so the 3rd shower should be finished on Wednesday. And yesterday and today Ian (with some help from me) focused on the staircase. The bottom three steps are in. Our cats are not comfortable with the changes to the staircase. I've been amused watching them use all their senses to understand what's being done. They used to jump through the gaps left without blocking for the stair risers. The flooring company says that there should be plywood there. And the precision that the stairs were originally cut to is just not even close to what we expect. So, Ian's measuring, calculating, measuring again, shimming, gluing, screwing, and biscuit joining, I'm making pocket screw holes. And we're getting a much more solid staircase.  It's where i'm going in an earthquake. Wow, that was an essay. It has been a week!   

A Waterproofed porch

Bob inspecting the staircase, disappointed that it's now harder to jump through from below.

The master shower, with a door!

The downstairs bathroom shower.

Handwashing made easier

With all of the talk in the news about the importance of handwashing to prevent the spread of disease, it feels timely to have installed two more sinks this weekend. The counter in the master bath went in on Monday after a long delay because the color we originally ordered was discontinued. Working through the change order seemed to take longer than normal because of the pandemic.  But finally the counters are in! We spent the weekend installing sinks, drawer handles, and re-installing cabinet doors.  Also this weekend we got in touch with "Glass Robert" who came out today and gave us a quote on shower doors.  If everything moves according to schedule, the shower doors for all three bathrooms will be installed on Saturday.  This is feeling like another leap forward. 

Hot and cold news

I was dealing with cleaning the ERV filter and got thinking about the heat pump. I pulled out all the directions and started reading through the installers guide. I ended up tracing cables and realized that the installers used the white wire for the "D" wire instead of brown like is documented in the instructions. I also hooked up a few other items that were not hooked up yet. Low and behold, the thermostat was able to communicate with the air handler and the compressor. This is very exciting news. Now we will be able to cool the house down on those hot summer days. We will not need it much compared to our neighbors. We had a few days recently that got into the high 80s. The neighbors had their air conditioning cranked up and we were fine inside in the mid 70s. When winter comes we will will also be able to heat the whole house instead of relying on the gas fireplace.

Yay!

Pumped up kicks

To get ready for baseboards, we put in the toe kicks in all of our counters on tile.  It's amazing how much nicer the cabinets look with the little extra finish. I'm so happy with my pumped up (toe) kicks!