| C'est la (working) vie |
[May. 22nd, 2012|05:33 pm] |
May 11: Company-wide request gets distributed for technical assistance on a manufacturing process at one of our French facilities.
May 14: I offer my two cents on the matter.
May 15: I get asked to go to France to help with the investigation.
May 21: I'm in France.
So it's been kind of a crazy week and a half. I'm thankful now that I have one working day under my belt and have gotten my bearings since arriving. The trip started with a four and a half hour delay out of O'Hare due first to mechanical problems and then to meteorological ones. One small bonus for me: I assented to trading my middle seat that couldn't recline for a bulkhead window seat with no legroom and got a complimentary toiletry kit from the airline for my troubles.
Back to the flight delay. Funny how losing four hours at one side of the trip can seriously tweak the other. Originally the four hour layover in Paris before catching a train to Limoges was expected to be enough time to find something to eat, get cash, and buy a SIM card for my phone. I think we got to the gate at Charles de Gaulle airport right when the train was scheduled to depart. Providentially, I had opted for the full traveler's insurance on the train ticket, which allowed me to exchange the ticket with no penalty up to two hours the scheduled departure. Clearing customs and taking the subway to the train station took approximately one hour, fifty eight minutes, and thirty seconds. Which then left me about 20 minutes before my rebooked train was to leave.
The train ride was uneventful. A leisurely four hours through the French countryside in steady rain. The prepackaged chicken salad sandwich that I bought from the rolling snack station was disappointingly unimpressive. Thankfully, the dinner at the hotel restaurant was much better and was a fair enough way to end an exhausting day of travel. Falling-off-the-bone lamb shank for 15 euros? What's that horse in the news these days called? Can I Have Another?
The business part of this business trip has been, well, work, but it's been good too. Meeting other folks from within the company and important customers, putting our heads together to figure out how to solve some manufacturing problems, eating croissants, eclairs, foie gras, and veal, drinking wine. Not always in the same meeting.
C'est la vie. Bon soir. |
|
|
| Orange Room |
[May. 16th, 2012|10:35 pm] |
So named for obvious reasons. Currently a playroom. We'll get a sleeper sofa in here eventually so this can also function as a guest room. Last we saw, the dry wall was not up yet.
Taping.
Primer.
Testing paint colors. Don't want it too fleshy. Hannibal Lecter is not our interior designer.
Flooring.
Paint and trim.
New closet. Using it before they took the protective paper from the floor.
Finished product. Need to order curtain rod rings for our Chinese import window treatments.
And the evolution of the art glass and back wall:
 |
|
|
| Done. Almost. |
[May. 16th, 2012|09:54 pm] |
There's always something left.
Final inspection was repeated today but still didn't pass. The village wanted extra grounding for the A/C units' electrical boxes, which was completed later in the day, but the inspector will have to return at a later time to do one last check. Everything else cleared so we cut the final check to our contractor this afternoon and had a pleasant wrapup with him. We still want to get the drive and walkways repaired relatively soon. And figure out why our landline is so static-y. Naturally, the phone company blames the wiring in the house and the electrician blames the line coming in.
But enough pessimism! Here are some pictures. We'll do the pantry evolution in this post and the other rooms will come in subsequent updates.
A previous post has some wide shots of the framed pantry. Then it got drywalled. There's the gasline to the space heater that was hanging out upstairs (also discussed previously).
After painting the walls and hanging doors:
Our contractor's finish work has been among the most impressive craftmanship in the house. Here's a shot of the hardwood. The stuff outside the pantry is existing flooring and the stuff inside is new and finished to match. The baseboard was fixed later.
Another impressive piece of work was getting our old pantry cabinets and shelves to fit in the new pantry, which was a couple inches shorter in both dimensions. All the trim around the doorframe is done on the inside of the pantry as well and all the baseboards are snug and tight right up to the cabinets.
And a couple of wider shots, after we moved in. So nice not to have all of our food in big plastic crates next to our dining room table.
 |
|
|
| Aaaaaand....notquite |
[May. 1st, 2012|07:53 pm] |
Final inspection did not pass today, but not for anything major. Some minor adjustments that should be relatively easy. Famous last words, no doubt.
Obviously, since the last update all the interiors have been finished. The new old basement looks great with the walls around our furnace and water heater that give us another spacious closet to hide things in. The patched walls where they fixed the leak and where they installed the new electrical box are tidied up as well.
We had professional cleaners through once to scrub down the first and second floors. Next week they'll return and help us with the basement. All of our new spaces are in various stages of move-in and use, which has been pretty fun.
With this ending dragging along (plus the plumber needs to come back to fix our handshower and we have yet to hire someone to redo our driveway), getting our new house has been a bit anticlimactic. Not that we don't appreciate and enjoy it all, but there hasn't been one big moment that you see in real estate commercials when the happy family stands with arms around each other's shoulders beaming as the agent hands them the keys or puts the "sold" placard on the yard's for sale sign. I suppose we're just gratefully easing into it.
Yes, yes, pictures to come. |
|
|
| Trickles |
[Apr. 17th, 2012|09:33 pm] |
The first time it happened, it was sort of ok; rainwater was coming in through exposed rough construction, we didn't have roof and gutters, etc. The second time a heavy rainstorm brought water into our house was less ok.
Sabina wandered down to the basement Sunday morning to find a puddle of muddy water covering maybe a fourth of our new space. There's a retaining wall that supports the old foundation and it ends up being kind of lowish ledge that extends across the width of the house and interior of the new basement area that abuts the old part. In the main part of the room, it's painted in finished, but the part that is inside the sump closet is exposed, and it looked like rainwater seeped in over top of the retaining wall, and then flowed out of the closet into the main area where we had quite a bit of stuff stored. The carpeting on the old side, along that same seam, was wet as well.
As before, I made an odd-hours trip to Home Depot to get supplies--a mop and bucket this time--and we spent a good part of Sunday cleaning up and moving stuff around again, to protect and to free up some space for the crew to figure out where the leak was.
I was pretty steamed all day, upset that the new foundation seemed to be shoddily done, and the gutterwork unfinished and contributing to some extremely poor drainage around our house. But when the crew took apart a wall the next day, they found what they were expecting: serious cracking in the old foundation. The thing is, we've never had seepage problems in that part of the basement. When the water doesn't go down through the gutters properly on the other side of the house, we've had water issues there, but this was a new spot. So I wonder if the stress of having new structures built into/against the old foundation caused the cracking.
Graciously, our contractor patched the cracks at no cost to us and apparently at only a day's worth or less of labor for him. Gutters and the sump outflow line were redirected, and so we move on. There have been times we've butted heads with our contractor during this long process (the length of this process has been a sticking point for us), but it's times like this when he gets serious about troubleshooting important things and follows through well that we really need to give him credit for not caring only about his job, but also for our home as well.
The interiors are so close now. On the top floor, all we have left is to refinish the floor in the old master bedroom and drill some extra holes for the adjustable shelving in the built-in desk. [Oh, and get the handshower fixed; the plumber has not been back for a while.] We've already been sleeping in our respective bedrooms since the weekend. On the first floor all we have left is the mirror in the bathroom to be mounted.
Electrical inspection passed today and all of our TV, speaker, and phone hookups are alive and well. Exterior painting is really close with just a few touch up spots remaining. The basement will require a day or two of work yet, with plenty of dry wall work, in various stages. The mechanicals closet is still just framed, we have patching that needs to be done where the leaky cracks were repaired, the area by the electrical panel needs taping and finishing, and everything needs a coat of paint. We are hunting for a concrete company to redo our driveway.
And then, we might actually be done with this. |
|
|
| Port-a-potty is gone! |
[Apr. 12th, 2012|09:16 pm] |
|
That's some measure of progress, right? Sump pump is in, as is bathroom hardware and a medicine cabinet. Screens are placed in the freshly washed windows. Doorstops and desk knobs and pulls are installed. Exterior painting is coming along even with the cooler weather. Am excited to see the red trim go up. Apparently we passed a plumbing inspection today despite the handshower still waiting to be sorted out. Maybe having these new workers keeping an eye on things is actually good. |
|
|
| Dumpster gone! |
[Apr. 10th, 2012|09:12 pm] |
Which means either 1) we're getting close to being done or 2) we're just going to continue ad infinitum at such a pace that the day's debris will be able to be removed in a single trashbag in the back of a pickup truck.
Of course, we are still having problems getting our bathroom fixtures operational. Maybe we overdesigned it, but it seems like adding a handshower to the typical tub spout+overhead showerhead arrangement would not add much more complexity. But we are again in a holding pattern, hoping that the plumber is making headway with Delta trying to figure out what isn't working. Hopefully, because the plumber is a professional tradesman and was the one who actually performed the installation, he will have more success in diagnosing and remedying the problem than I did. Sabina, justifiably, was exasperated this week that we've been stuck time and time again being the ones needing to figure out what we need and sourcing it. Shouldn't all that be in our contractor's and his subs' job description?
Speaking of various folks that show up to work (which has now dwindled to usually just a single person at a time. Progress is not exactly blazing), Sabina noticed some newbies around and is pretty convinced our construction site is becoming a front for the Polish mob. According to her surveillance, it appears an older gentleman (the "godfather") is placing a younger, burly fellow (the "muscle") in the employment of our contractor. Whether this is a mutually agreeable arrangement, Sabina will have to continue her covert investigation.
In other parts of the house we are seeing exciting progress. The sinks and toilets are in (and verified to be functional by this blogger). The built-in desk is looking great. Exterior painting is coming along, with the majority of the main color complete. Crown molding is complete in the master bedroom and the new family room--the other two bedrooms are awaiting theirs. The drywall is up around our new electrical panel but has yet to be finished. The entryway into the new basement space is painted and trimmed.
Our contractor had claimed that this week would see most things finished, but as always, we are dubious. The electrician is supposed to come back to finish the switches before his final inspection. The plumber needs to troubleshoot our shower before his inspection. And our contractor neighbor flagged us down yesterday to let us know our roof flashing was installed incorrectly. If you're a fan of these endless building updates, you may be in luck yet. |
|
|
| All the trimmings |
[Mar. 23rd, 2012|08:32 am] |
What's done? Most of the baseboards. The basement flooring. Most of the shower fixtures (we found out yet again that we're missing hardware. You'd think that between Delta, our plumber, and our GC, someone would have been able to tell us what we need to install want. But no, we repeatedly find out we're still missing components. Hopefully this is the last piece). Wainscotting in the bathrooms. Gas cutoff for the dryer has been moved and the waste stack for the new bathrooms is finally connected. We even started exterior painting.
What's yet to do? Crown molding. Toilets. Sinks/vanities. Repairing the walls around our new electrical panel. Driveway repair. We're also having walls put up around our mechanicals. |
|
|
| The plastic is down |
[Mar. 13th, 2012|09:39 pm] |
I recommend the pork belly. The seared outside is fragrant and smoky, the meat is tender and sweetly marinated, the marbling will melt in your mouth.
Even that is hard to compare to all the fun stuff we ate in Hong Kong and China: yak ribs, cow lung, pigeon, congealed pig's blood (think jello jiggler), mangosteen, dragonfruit. The best meal was fresh seafood at a restaurant in Shenzhen. For a nominal fee per dish, you can BYO from the fish market down the block. The market was a warehouse sized building with row upon row of both frozen and live sea creatures. Bargain with the vendors sitting next to buckets and tubs full of every swimming, sidling, crawling, and stationary animal the ocean has to offer. If you don't trust their scales, there's a public one for you to verify your catch. Pick what you want, it gets tossed in cheap plastic bags, and you take it to your kitchen or the restaurant. We had fish, shrimp, squid, abalone in the shell, and clams.
The trip was a culinary delight, even if the first five days were spent trying to coax Natalie to eat anything at all--she came down with some sort of virus that replaced her appetite with a 102 degree fever. A two year old who has no appetite will resist all attempts to make her eat and maintain her fluids. Which meant that ultimately we had to check her into a hospital for an overnight IV drip to get her sorted out. Not that funnest way to spend a vacation. But she recovered well after that, and we all enjoyed the rest of our visit much more. Interestingly, we stayed at the hospital associated with the Catholic diocese that also runs the primary/secondary school my mom attended as a child. We could see her old schoolyard from the hospital room.
Among the things we brought back from our trip were curtains for our new sliding door out to the deck (two sets at $30USD each! Made to order within hours of picking your fabric; it's great when the sweatshop is right there.), which is a roundabout way of getting back to the topic of our house project. We got home to find that the protective barriers between old and new had been removed. The painting and flooring were complete on the two main floors, and doors hung for all the rooms. Baseboards, moldings, and window/door trims were in various states of completion. Shelving had been installed in the closets. So far this week, some door hardware has been installed, more trimwork has gone in, and...we're going to repaint the master bath because the blue we picked looks different on the wall than it did in our heads. We went with quite a few bold, vibrant colors throughout the new space (mostly at my prodding), and hopefully it gives the house a sense of energy and fun without being tacky and funhouse-ish. But the bathroom needed attention straight away.
The basement seems a bit farther off. The entryway to the new space has been squared off and is no longer a jagged hole, but the floating floor is still in boxes and some walls are still waiting for sheetrock. Our first and second floors might actually be ready for move-in by the end of the week, but completion of the whole project still seems to be weeks away.
I think eventually I'll do a long post with all the accumulated pictures, which will show the evolution over the last few weeks. For tonight though, need to pay some bills and maybe look for my missing cell phone.
Looking forward to lots of Cutler-to-Marshall this year. |
|
|
| Flying |
[Feb. 21st, 2012|08:38 pm] |
I have a backlog of photos to post but no time to do so. We leave for Hong Kong on Thursday, and still have things to do to get ready, like pack.
But for the curious, it almost seems like we're in the home stretch. We might have a livable addition when we return. Fascia and gutters are installed and the deck is finished (except for the gate at the top of the stairs). Most all the walls have been primed for paint and they've been working on bathroom tile and hardwood floors this week. While we're away hopefully they'll complete all of that and the trim work. We get to be absent as paints and varnishes offgas volatile organic compounds.
The basement remains the place that seems to yet require the most work. The entrance to the new space has not been fully cut, the new waste stack is waiting to be connected, and the wall where the new electrical panel lives still needs to be rebuilt. One of our projects before we leave is rearrange our basement so the crew has enough room to work and make some of those utility connections. It seems half or our house is already piled down there, now we have to shuffle it somehow and stack it even higher. When we get back, we're having a closet built around our furnace/chimney/water heater, which requires even more work space, so all that clutter hopefully will have new places to sit and be stored.
See you in a few weeks. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
scwrud's journal