The Granite is Here!!!!!

The granite is a very dark green almost black. It sparkles with greens, blacks and has deep shines. The granite installer subcontracts with Christopher's boss's remodeling company. The installer offered us two large scraps. We understood that the kitchen and the bath would not match. However; it cracked while being pre-fabed. That caused the delay in the delivery. The granite arrived yesterday and he bought it fabed it on site and installed it! It took seven hours. Also both the kitchen and the bath are the same color.


All we need to do this week is installl the sink faucets and towel hardware!



I'm including the next two pictures to show the master bed room and its closet.The far wall in the master bedroom is a dusty a avocado pretty much as it appears here. The walls and carpet colors show-up pretty well is this picture.



The walls are pale sage green, almost a sand color that changes a lot with different lighting. The wall going in to the closet looks closest to how it appears to me during the day.




























This is the kitchen. The stove is here it is the white thing at the left of this photo. All we need to do is install the stove, sink, garbage disposer, dish washer and put in the back splash tile. Se what I mean about how the wall color changes under different lighting?

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

New Front Curb View

It has been a year since I started drawing the house plans. This is one of the photos I had to take and send to the Historical Society. They had no interest in any part of Claremont by the way.









This picture was taken last week, but it hasn't changed much. The old front porch slab and walk ways were removed. The missing gravel where the walk ways were is hidden behind the planted islands in the picture. The new gravel goes in tomorrow finishing the landscaping.



This is what the front entry of the house looks like today except that the paining is now complete and the rotten wood above the front door has been replaced. Notice the entry slab that goes all the way to the corner The fence was rebuilt and moved behind the entry.















Almost all the wood you see in this picture was too sun, rain and termite damaged to remain. The 1970's stained wood look did little to protect woodwork. The sheds were torn out.
The redwood paneling was stripped and stuccoed over and the trim boards (facia) was removed and replaced. The new entry slab was pored over the foundation of the chipped and broken concrete that was pored as a foundation for the sheds.

The Exterior Painting

This week we worked! It took all week but the house is painted. Jonny worked with me 3 days and Mike was here in the mornings and one afternoon.
The house is silver-sage gray and the trim is a gray avocado. The doors are red-orange, kind of bright! They do look good with the brick fireplace. I thought the paint was a Chinese red, but it is really a dark orange. A very nice contract with the gray walls.
The agent we are working with choose the colors.

The concrete slab in the back yard was not a planned expense. We have had so much rain here that there is moss on the garage roof! The garage roof drains to the yard between the garage and the south side of the house. There isn't any slope and the ground stays wet for weeks. The water can't drain off. Also this old house is stuccoed all the way to the ground. The water wicked up between the foundation and the stucco under the wall studs and into the the two south bedrooms. I didn't want to disclose that the house has a flooding problem. We fixed the water damage and killed the mold on the walls, but we thought that the water was coming in from an improperly installed window. We had the window sealed and stucco framed to fix the problem.
I guess I should be glad that we had big rain storms to show us that we didn't fix the problem. However, since putting in the patio slab Mom and Dad's and the girl's old rooms have stayed dry. I plan to put up a rain gutter on the garage also for good measure. With California's disclosure laws I have to tell about the water damage that was repaired, but I want to be able to describe how we fixed the underlining problem.

The garage was hard to paint Christopher got us a 12 foot later. We had to climb up onto the roof to get the green paint on the trim. It is done now except for a facia board ( warning to all of us painting every 12 years or so is not enough protection for wood work) that got rotted on the west side and touch-ups.

The Bathroom

Dad built a storage area above the bathtub that was confining and aging above the bath tub. I removed that cabinet, and added a decorative tile and stone accent to hide the difference between the old white tiles that existed and the new ones I added to go all the way up to the ceiling.





The original blue tile that Mom and Dad put in was destroyed when the sewer line going to the bathtub had to be replaced. Carol had a darker blue tile put in when the room was repaired


The next picture shows the white sink
and blue tile floor that used to be in the bathroom.

While Danny and Jessica lived in the house there was a lot of plumbing problems. They replaced some of the drywall and added some new bathroom hardware as well as two new wall cabinets.

Mom and Dad once had a large mirror in this bathroom. It had been removed and stored in the garage when the new wall cabinets were added.

I repaired the wall further. Replaced the old stained sink vanity, toilet and tiled the wall behind the sink and toilet. Christopher re-tiled floor to match the tile in the new kitchen and master bath. We reused the bathroom hardware and the shower control cleaned up like new. It is the only bath with bright chrome fixtures.

Laundry Room and Half Bath

I took down a white cabinet that we had hanging up in the boy's bedroom of my house. We are going to redecorate that room for Allie and it was made to go above a washer and dryer. (I'm writing this after the fact to fill-in some of the blog as I haven't added a post since Jan. but notice the water heater is just standing there not hooked-up. There will be more information about that.













The old laundry room included the second bath within the same space. For many years the toilet was crowded behind the water heater and next to the dryer. We divided the room into two separate spaces.

Dad did move the water heater
out of the house and outside, but the
copper water pipe came out of the slab in front of the toilet so he boxed it in and built a holder for an ironing board.





We reworked the plumbing a little and added a sink. Now the house has a separate laundry room and a half bath. The new half bath has the avocado
accent color, it's own window and it is not a crouded space.

Christopher scavenged a few expensive brush nickel bathroom hardware sets from homes that he remodeled. So we continued with brushed nickle door handles and faucets thoughout.

Painting

After the framing, electrical wiring and gas piping were completed we hung the insulation. The insulation went very quickly. It is an itchy job, but it didn't take but a couple of days. The inspector came in and we were ready to hang drywall.
Eric Read came over and we started to instal the ceilings first. It took us two evenings, with Eric and I holding the sheets up while Christoher screwed them in place. He also cut out the openings for the lighting. I still don't know how his notes worked, but he located and cut out the solatube skylights after the ceilings were in. They are all that remains of the old diningroom Mom and Dad had.



The walls went up easier, Eric, Hunter and Jonny helped get the panels in place while we screwed them in.
Next we started the taping and mudding and sanding the walls to a smooth finish. We decided to go with a smooth because the existing bedrooms were all finished that way.
Jonny came over and covered the livingroom walls with a thin coat ot drywall mud to smooth out the orange peal texture that room had. After that Tara, Kay, and Matt came over and helped us paint the livingroom. Chris and I were busy sanding to keep ahead of them. That became the pattern for finishing the rest of the walls. We were busy sanding while the primer was painted on right after us.




This is David painting the ceiling in Mom and Dad's old room. It was the the last of the bedrooms to get paint. The old flooring and base boarding were removed.
The last rain uncoverd a new problem, the garage roof drains into the small lawn area behind that room and enough water collects to flood the bedroom. This has been going on for sometime. We had a lot of wall work to due to repair the south bedroom wall.

We will need to decide how to fix that. I'm not sure how I'll get that into he budget. It needs a gutter-drain system and or a slab poured.

Michael came home from BYU Hawaii for Christmas and David is home between semesters from BYU Idaho. Between Christmas and New Years we were all the painting. Even Sean Rohrberg joined in for a couple of days.



With the painting done the cabinets are going in! They are a dark red cherry finish. It looks really good with the sage green walls.

I'll soon have photos of the cabinets and interior doors!