The Burro Has Landed.

Yep. We haz slate.

M and I had an alarm system installed on Friday. Nothing at all against any of the folks we had working here...with the possible exception of Grampa Munster, but we think he was harmless, just creepy. We just felt more comfortable going with a more secure option.

Today, M calls me and said, " I don't have Alan's number and we need to tell him about the alarm system!!" We'd forgotten about telling him about it! I called his cell and he said he was sitting outside the house waiting for the slate and for our window to be delivered. He actually didnt need to go into the house, thank Providence, but if he did it may have been a mess.

I don't know if I have mentioned the window before. The window on the side of the house facing out to the deck was delieverd and installed and they determined that it wasn't tempered glass, which is 'code'. So they'd sent the wrong thing. The correct window was shipped and arrive right before we moved back in, but one of the panes was cracked, so Alan sent it back. So, now we have a complete window. WooHoo!

I hope he's going to be able to fix the fireplace before we leave!

Stay tuned,

CC

2 down, 1 to go...

I have no idea what this .gif file means but it somehow spoke to me.

We have a working dishwasher now. Alan B was able to stop the leak, we re-christened it last night without incident. Whew. That's a relief.

The innards for the middle pendant over the breakfast bar arrived, and Alan installed them, so now all 3 pendants light up when you flip the switch. We practically wept with gladness.

Sometimes, it's the little things.

There are several minor things left on the punchlist, but the biggie is the slate surround for the gas fireplace. Which is still not done. No word yet on when the burro will arrive with the slate. The poor thing was last seen in outer-darkness Kentucky, laden down and plodding along.

Stay tuned.

S'all for now,

cc

Coming Together...but don't look too close

Hey, ok, so the saw horses are gone and the boxes are mostly dealt with, but we've still got a ways to go. No art on the walls yet, but hopefully soon.

Below is our new Stickly dining table that arrived on Tuesday, much to our surprize. We didn't expect it until October. We purchased 2 arm chairs for either end and it came with 2 extenders. So, no more squeezing 6 or so guests around a table meant for 4. We didn't get the side chairs yet, they will be another expenditure down the road, in the meantime we'll make do with other chairs. Currently we're using the chairs that came with the round maple table, that co-incidentally, we are selling on Craigslist and Ebay...for the low, low price of $499! But wait there's more!! Not only do you get the solid maple table with 4 matching chairs, but you'll also receive all of our round linens AND our vinyl table pad! Channeling the late Billy Mays...so sorry. Seriously it's a nice table and if you know anyone that needs a nice table for 4 let them know about these listings.

M and I took Friday off, to do more stuff around the house. Friday afternoon, we made trips to the outer-darkness of Chantilly to visit Lumber Liquidators. I wanted to do business with them because they are supporters of NPR, as are we, and they offer an assortment of sustainable wood flooring like bamboo and cork. We're in the market for flooring for the den...you'll see it below...horrorshow that it is. We went to their showroom out in Chantilly, and ordered from an animated salesman ("Everyday is Friday at Lumber Liquidators!" he exclaimed...he exclaimed everything), a 240 sq.ft. of a medium brown carbonized bamboo click-flooring, we believe we can install this our selves...stay tuned.

I mention this because while we were out on Friday, M wanted to swing down to Crystal City to the Danker that we bought the dining room table and 2 chairs from, which has been going out of business for nearly a year, and look for a rug for the dining room. He shocked the 'H' out of me by buying this rug! He even haggled the rug seller down $200! It's got all of our colors, and we're very pleased with it.

Moving on, Alan completed the message centre last week. Here it is closed up.

Here it is opened up. We have our ugly rechargers, phones and building access badges here. The little drawers are excellent for scissors, small tools, etc.

Here's the front door with the floor all cleaned up.

Alan also finished Tim's display nooks with these tiny puck lights. They're perfect for displaying glassware, and I am so glad that Melissa Chernick, Designer Extraordinaire of Commonwealth, insisted that we go with a bold color in the backs of these nooks. The objet de arte in the nooks are not permanent, but only so we can have something there for the time being.

Kitchen is looking a little more lived in. The dishwasher has a leak in it that occurred after Alan came back to reattached it to the granite counter top, Steve came out on Friday morning, but couldn't find it. It's probably an easy fix, but a Dishwasher repair person will have to fix it.

Here's the behemoth music storage units, partially put together with albums and stuff. M wanted me to leave a couple of those holes empty in each cabinet, so we'd have a space for knick-knackery. This is un-finished, but it's coming togther. The slate is STILL not here, for the fireplace, Alan says it's supposed to be in this week. I cannot imagine what the hold up could be. Also, the middle pendant at the breakfast bar isn't working, and the innards are on order. Those 2 things are the most irksome, because they make the space look 'under construction' still.

Here's the breakfast bar. About 3 weeks ago, we bought these chairs on a whim! We were going to go out and look for bar chairs for this space, and on our FIRST stop at Pier 1, we found these cool and comfortable chairs...on CLEARANCE!! That never happens. We liked how they played off the curves in our space with the oval holes on the backs. We almost went with 2 chairs, but I am really glad we bought the 3rd one. They were only a little over $100 each.

Now for the horrorshow...this is what they don't show you in the Divine Design-type shows. The OTHER ROOMS. Here's our den. As soon as the construction was done, we tore out the carpeting in this room, as it was absolutely filthy, with dust. The room is still a sty, but there's hope on the horizon with the bamboo flooring we ordered on Friday. We believe we can do it our selves, and it's going to look really nice.

urgh. We are going to have the cushions on the couch recovered, btw, but not until we get the floor in. I haven't got my 46" Samsung lcd tv back in either, it's still upstairs in it's box.

Ew, we need to dust that lamp.

So there we have it on August 23rd. Hope y'all had a great weekend. We certainly did. Saturday we had our first guests for dinner. Sunday we went for a morning kayak on the lake, and had an upclose encounter with a juvenile beaver, he didnt see M until he'd almost swum into M's kayak, and he did a quick reverse manuever that only beavers and Michael Phelps can manage. We attended a production on "Dirty Blonde" at Signature Theater, with our theater pals, Bugs, Raj, Maurice and David, and had dinner at Carlyse in Shirlington. Dirty Blonde is a lot of fun if you are in the DC area, I'd highly recommend it. It's based on the life of Mae West.

S'all for now.

cc

The weekend project...

OK, so we love this unit because it stores a ton of my old vinyl and has cd storage galore (remember my music problem?). When we moved back in, the movers wouldn't put the units back on their plinths (those base thingys) because they were afraid it would destroy them. They were right. When we got them back up, on that Friday we moved in, M was so disturbed by the state of the plinths that he was up most of the night worrying about them. He thought they were so rickety that if on side gave way, the weight of the unit would cause it to collapse into a heap of splinters. I actually slept ok that night, but as you will see below, it was not in great shape.

So, here's the base, where it sits on the plinth. You can see it sort of separating, and the triangular part tilting slightly downward. M was concern about adding any more weight to it, and the more I looked at it the worse it looked to me too.

So when we took apart completely this is what we found. It's amazing that this splindly thing held all that weight to begin with, 8 drawers of cds, each drawer can hold about 45 cds. Each of the square nooks can hold about 40 to 50 albums, and those weigh a ton.

When we moved last in 2001, there was some damage to the plinth, and I had to tape it to hold it together, this was on the back of the unit, and it shared support with the adjoining plinth so I wasn't overly concerned about it's integrity.

This was on the other side of the same plinth, and it is really wobbly. This is why, the base bowed out a bit on the side. Scary. This thing was being held together by spit and whispered prayers...probably a couple of desperate novenas, well...whats the patron saint of scary wall units? He/She was probably Swedish, and was martyred by a fallen cd collection.

I should have taken more pix of this during construction. M and I bought a compound mitre saw with the birthday gift certificate that his Mum sent him for Home Depot...THANKS ANN!! I purchased some 2x4's and M found a snazzy decorative moulding, and we decided to make our own base for this unit.

I got the hang of the saw pretty quick, I fastened all the peices together with M's help with 3 inch deck screws. Next we used 3 cans of primer, and 3 cans of semi-gloss black spray paint to coat every thing well.

Here's M sanding away before the first coat of primer went on. I didn't know how expensive spray paint was, the 6 cans cost roughly $25. They didn't seem to go very far at all.

We allowed all the new bases to dry in the garage on Saturday. After church, and a nice lunch on Sunday (fresh tomatos with garlic and basil served over angel hair pasta). We got to work. We took all the CD Drawers out, they are held in by 4 screws, and are rather heavy.

Next we assembled and lined up the unit on the new base. We also put 8 of those 'Magic Glider' thingies on the bottom of the new bases, in case we need to, God forbid, move it again.

Next we assembled the side units on it. These, literally, snap in place, this part took no time at all. Then we nailed our new decorative baseboard in place. It's really lined up nicely, I LUVZZ MAH SAW!

Then we put those heavy drawer back in, and reattached them to the drawer assemblies.

We finished around 5:30pm on Sunday afternoon. Both of us were BEAT! But we had a great sense of accomplishment and were envisioning all sorts of other projects we could tackle!

Not counting the saw, which was a relatively affortable Ryobi model, only $115, the wood cost about $25, and paint was around $25, the screws were about $3, and the nails $2, the slider thingyies were $16 for 16 sliders, so we're out about $70 - $75 give or take. Oh, and the weekend, too.

All in all, not a bad price to pay for peace of mind.

S'all for now.

CC

Boxes boxes everywhere

This is where we stand on August 16th, 2009. We've been back in our house for about a week and change, and we still have a ton o' crap to unpack. Below is the entry way/foyer. as you can see it's still full of boxes. Many of these things were either knick-knackery from the old living room that we can't unpack yet or things for the den/media room that is all tored up at the moment.

The next phase is assemilating all the stuff from our house into the new space. We did a really good job in the kitchen, but the rest of the areas are problematic, as you will see.

Here's M in our new Kitchen putting things away in one of our many new spacious drawers. I love that none of my appliances show as they're all in the 2 appliance garages.

Here's the 2nd stack o' stuff. Much of it is records that will go in the media storage units, more on them in a bit. There's a side table in front ot the window with boxes on it, that was down in the den, but we're going to redo the floor down there, so it will remain upstairs for now. The fireplace is STILL unfinished, the slate is on backorder and is supposed to be here this week, but Alan wasn't for certain on the actual date of it's arrival. You'd think it could have been mined, finished and transported by burrow by now! It's going to be lovely whenever it gets finished, however.

Here's those IKEA Media units (KUBIST if you are an IKEA fetish-ist), the new speakers and audio distrobution system (Aton is the brand name, and no, I'd never heard of them either) terminates behind the stereo shelf. One of the speaker sets was working intermittantly due to a wiring issue, but Alan fixed them and we've been enjoying them daily. I haven't even hooked up the Bose speakers yet! It's great being able to hear 'All Things Considered' or 'Prarie Home Companion' while cooking dinner. I will camoflage the wiring behind the stereo equipment when we get a bit farther along.

Here's the temporary dining room. Temporary, because we learned last week that our new table will be delivered on Tuesday. We're going to put the table on Craigslist. We're sad to see it go, a lot of good times have been had around that table, as well as a lot of great food! If your interested, it's made of hard-rock Vermont maple, and M is selling the table, the 4 chairs and all of our round tablecloths for $495 o.b.o. It'll hit Craigslist tonight.

Man, we have so much to do.

See the next post about what we did this weekend.

CC

Meet the Commonwealth Builder's Team

Yes, yes, yes...we're moved in. I have been too overwhelmed to post anything, but I am cooking in the new kitchen daily and L-U-V it. We love the New Space and have admired it for nearly a week. We aren't done. There's still boxes about and such. The IKEA Wall unit (KUBIST, if you are an IKEA historian, it's in the early posts on this blog, go look) has had it's last move. The base plinths are compromised and M is concerned that if we load it down with my major tonnage of vinyl-age it will give way and there will be much rending of clothing and gnashing of teeth.

So, we're making a new base this coming weekend. The plan is to build it on Saturday, paint it, let it dry, rebuild the storage units and load them up. Stay tuned.

In the mean time, I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet the Commonwealth crew. These guys are amazing, and honestly if you live in the DC area and are thinking of remodeling, give Commonwealth a shout. They are the real deal.

Meet Dave! Dave worked on our project in the very early part, but was rotated to another project just after the footers were poured. Dave was always upbeat and positive and always had a smile on his face. He's a carpenter and he lives up past Point Of Rocks, and, Gals, don't get any wild ideas in your head cuz he's a married man. If you'll remember when they were doing the footers we were having record amounts of rain, and I joked with Dave that I didn't recognise him unless he was covered in mud. Dave, we really appreciated your hard work and dedication.

Meet Tim! Tim was hired recently by Commonwealth recently, after he was laid off by a competitor, their loss, Our gain. Tim is also a carpenter and does extraordinary precision work. He did our display nooks, and the deck that he's standing on, among other things.

Meet Steve, the project manager. Steve deserves a special place in heaven for having to deal with Grandpa Munster, on a daily basis during the last days of the project. Steve was ALWAYS there at 6:40am every morning, and when he walked thru the door, I was usually reading the Washington Post at our table, I knew it was time I headed up stairs...now that he's not here every day, I've been cronically late to work! Steve is a remarkable man, and I will truly miss seeing him every morning. He insisted on the picture in front of the dumpster, BTW, because he'd spent so much time hauling stuff to it. I however, insisted on...

A better picture of he and the Tim-ster on the deck they built. This is a great picture.

Finally, Here's Commonwealthe Designer Extraordinaire, Melissa Chernick, and the Production Manager, Alan Bennett. They both came over on Tuesday afternoon to go over the 'Punch List'. The Punch List is the stuff what still needs doing. Melissa pointed something out to Alan that we didn't notice...Alan may not be doing anymore Punch List inspections with Melissa. They are both amazingly talented people, who love their jobs and it shows.

We'll that's it for now. I'll post more snaps when the house is a bit more together.

S'all for now!

CC

Move-In Day Looms....

Friday's the big day.

The interior is mostly done, with only a couple odds-n-ends. Message center is almost done, Alan's still working on the drawers. Appliance garage is complete. Bosch dishwasher installed and we think, functioning...we havn't run a load yet. Alan finished the wall controls for the speaker volume in each room, he needs only to terminate it to the stereo inputs, which I saw he was going to work on today.

They guys that are installing our guttering come-back today and finish them. It's a good thing too, there are storms in the forcast for tonight, though it's beautiful right now. It rained most of the day on Sunday, and without guttering it became a real mess outside.

The Commonwealth guys, Steve, Alan and Dave (who's back this week for the first time since May), are also working on a retaining wall in the back, the lumber for it was delievered this morning.

Stay tuned.

CC

1st Meal in New Kitchen

Because how better to christen a new kitchen than with a greasy morning fry up?

You got your bacon, you fried eggs over-medium, hash browns and garden fresh 'maters.

Not bad. It's nice having all those burners, I had 4 of them going and the new hood worked really well. Previously, when I cooked bacon you could smell it for days afterward. Now only our neighbors will know!

S'all for now,

cc