send in the pros

kevin the pro
Originally uploaded by bredto

My mother has been trying to convince me for a week to hire a professional painter to finish painting our home. I'm not spending my money on a painter when I can do it myself. No way. Well, she went ahead and hired a painter. He showed up around 10:30 am, looked around asked what colors go where and started to cut in the ceiling. By 1 pm he was finished with 2 coats on the ceiling and waiting for me when I got back from the paint store with the wall colors. Quitting by 4 or so he had completed the first coat on the walls. The dude is fast. He made me feel bad about myself for taking so long to paint the upstairs. You can see the color (silver fox by Ben Moore) in the small picts below.

Friday the carpet guy came and did his thing. We now have super smooshy carpet throughout the upper floor and it looks like a real house.

So Time Warner Cable... I called and expressed my displeasure with them by using lots of potty words and describing in detail what I've been going through for the past two months trying to get cable in our new house. The very nice lady on the other end said that she was going to send someone to install Friday between 8- noon. I was at the house Friday and when 1 pm rolled along I decided to call and use my potty words more to see where the installer was. I got a call back from a very high up and he assured me that they were going to make sure that I have cable by the promised September first if it killed him. Today around 4pm rich came out and installed our cable. The moral of the story is --- if you freak out on enough people you can accomplish anything!

 

staining isn't fun

half and half
Originally uploaded by bredto

For the past two nights we've been staining our bannister trying to get it done before the carpet guy comes. We got it done, sort of. While there is still some more to stain, everything that will touch carpet is done. The first night our screens weren't installed so we couldn't open the windows for fear of insect attack and I lost a few years of life by huffin' the fumes. Tonight I was all smart like and put the screens in for a little fresh air.

We're going to be moving into the incomplete house this weekend and continue to work on it. We're picking up our bamboo flooring this Sunday. If I can get enough flooring down by Wednesday morning, we can then have our appliances delivered. Can you lend me a chop saw?

Other bits... We have water (but not hot yet) and it tested negative for all bad germs and such. We can flush toilets, take cold showers and everything. We picked up and installed our cool glass shower door for the master bath. Time Warner Cable is run by clowns. I've called about 6-10 times in the past two months and each time I spoke with someone they assured me that service would be hooked up by September 1st. I got a call yesterday from them saying I was good to go and do I want to transfer service. I told them I'd call them back because I couldn't believe that they ran the cable to the house since I was there the previous night. After a quick trip to the house it turns out they didn't. Idiots.

  

Paint tour

Paint tour from Bret Olsen on Vimeo.

Too tired to write anything. Will update later.
 

2 weeks to finish?

plumbing going in
Originally uploaded by bredto

We told our GC that we need to be in the house September 1st and he insists that we'll be in by then. Looking at the state of things it's hard to believe. That said, this past week some big projects were started... the plumbing and heating systems. I'm hoping to have running water sometime this week. They also finally have installed the window and door in the basement so we now can lock the house without jamming a piece of wood against the basement door.

They are still working on installing the banister of the main stairs, but I think that the last main job inside the house (there are dozens of small jobs though). Once they get their equipment out of the house we need to paint the entire first floor, stain the banister and install 1000 sq. feet of wood floor. On the outside we need to have stairs to the front and side doors built to get a Certificate of Occupancy. The stairs that they want to build are lame and we're hoping that we can sneak around having to build them so we can have some time to design some stairs we won't be embarrassed by.

 

paint and more

front bedroom green
Originally uploaded by bredto

I've been on vacation for the past week, but work still got done in my absence. Chris painted the front bedroom and the second bath, the siding was completed and the main stair railing worked continued.

Our appliances were delivered this past Wednesday. Unfortunately, we didn't want them delivered since we haven't put the wood floor down. hrumph.