Randy had a tough day today. He had to go downtown for a client launch party when he really wanted to be here to work with the construction guys. Then he had a little plumbing “incident” while doing the rough-in for the island sink tonight. He solved the leaks by draining the water heater and opening all of the upstairs taps so that he could get a proper seal with the solder. I knew he could do it! Randy can do anything.

But I’m still waiting to find out how much extra the contracting company charges for letting him help. <ducking>

I’m still sick and the cold is progressing from my right ear and sinus to the left, so it’s a total virus party in my head! I still can’t hear anything. The huge amount of dust from the renovation isn’t helping. Christine, the Housekeeper from Heaven (or maybe Heck), is coming on Saturday with her dust mask and hopefully a friend, so that we can attack every surface in the house.

Today Steve had to help us reposition the pot lights in the kitchen and the breakfast room. We had planned for 20 total, but our best positioning ended up with only 19 (yay…some extra $!). So, no less than three designers helped us place the pot lights. Then when the sheetrock was gone and we saw the joists and the availability of pot light connections in the kitchen ceiling, the placement we had didn’t work. According to Steve, pots are spots that get wider as they hit the floor. So if you have a pot that is slightly behind you, it will throw a shadow on the countertop. So we need to make sure that the pots are directly overhead when standing at the counter. The pendants/chandelier over the island will take care of any shadowing there.

Randy doesn’t feel comfortable with the moldy yellow batting insulation so we are going with the blue blown-in, à la Mike Holmes. This requires a one week lead time. Project scope impact: delay of sheetrock installation by one week. Amazingly, critical path items aren’t moving. Sweet.

Chevy stayed in our bedroom all day today with all his toys and, uh, accessories. I hate closing him up! But he could get under a plastic sheet and into the kitchen, and there are holes in the floor. Likewise in the basement, stuff is falling through from the kitchen, so the bedroom is the safest place for him. He spent the day under the bed for some reason, rarely coming out, although Randy and I both checked on him quite a lot. The nice part is that because he was a breeder, he’s used to being by himself in a room for long periods. And we’ve moved his litter and food from the kitchen to the basement to the master and he’s so far just gone with the flow. Good kitty!

Oh my goodness, the stuff we found, today. Randy’s description on the Current page pretty much says it all.

What he didn’t say is that we found sooo many things wrong with the construction in this house. Remember when I said to stop me watching Mike Holmes? Well, if I hadn’t been watching Holmes on Homes, I wouldn’t have known about vapor barriers and insulation. And I wouldn’t have understood when the guys ripping out the kitchen said that the vapor barrier (what little of it there was) wasn’t installed properly. I stuck my hand in a hole in the drywall and there was a nice cold breeze in there. When the tile floor in the kitchen/breakfast room was removed, several holes in the plywood revealed laziness – the framers didn’t bother to cover the floors when it rained; it’s apparently easier, faster, and cheaper to just break holes in the plywood so that the rainwater just drains out into the unfinished basement. The cabinet installers either didn’t know how or didn’t bother to do the math on the stud placement in the walls. There are tell-tale hammer hits in the walls where they looked for studs on which to hang the cabinets.

Also kinda scary was the condition of the inside of the wall oven cabinet. Let’s just say it was scorched inside. Randy will post pictures of the stuff we found today on his “post-mortem” page after the project is complete.

I figure that if we were to take every room in the house down to the studs, we would find stuff like this everywhere. Don’t builders and construction people have any pride at all in their work?!

SO…what this all means is that the scope alarm may be going off soon. We’ve decided to take down all of the kitchen drywall so that the vapor barrier and insulation can be redone properly. We’re considering whether or not to replace all of the insulation with the blue blow-in kind, which we are told is expensive, but is much faster to install . . . so, from a “consultant economics” perspective, it may be the best option. I get to make that call tomorrow, since Randy has to go to a client project kickoff meeting tomorrow.

Thank goodness this is the slow season for me and I’m not having to travel every week. I don’t expect that to last much longer, though!

Chevey was such a good boy today, despite all the banging and hammering, and the strange voices. He spent the day in his favorite basement room and was quite happy with the light and the TV on (on the Food Network). Randy and I both went down to see him many times during the day and he was just fine. He’s such a little trooper! Nothing seems to bother him. He’s the best kitty! 🙂

Tonight he spent time with me in the sanctuary, on the loveseat. He scared himself while playing with the doorstop, and then decided that he had to be up on top of the TV table, just in case I needed him to change the channel or something. I think our little boy Bengal is settling in very nicely to our home!

Things are totally coming to a head. Randy says that I’m sick to my stomach because my immune system is affected by nervousness about the reno. I think I just have an ugly bug. In any case, I spent way more time packing and sorting kitchen stuff than I should have, and now I’m paying the price. I had to come into the Super Bowl during the second quarter. That’s bad, ‘cuz then I wasn’t able to “magic” Chicago the way I wanted to. And so, they’re in trouble. I’m sure that’s why.

And speaking of the Super Bowl . . . is Prince not a GOD?!?!

And now… Indianapolis are the Super Bowl champions. How weird is that?

Oh yeah. Back to the reno:

We’re exactly on schedule. Critical path is the floors on the 19^th, and cabinet delivery on the 27th. So far, so good, but then, so far, it’s been only Randy and me doing stuff according to the project plan. When others are introduced, we’ll see how the one week of slack can be distributed J

I’m going to have “words” with the General’s rep tomorrow, ‘cuz I’m convinced that it’s more important to have the proper permits than to cheat and save a couple of bucks. If we were spending $20K I might be willing to forego proper inspection and permits. We’re spending a whole lot more than that. It just doesn’t make sense to risk that in a home we’re planning to spend the next 20 years in, and plan to sell in our 60’s as our nest egg.

Cheveyo is a little bit scared, and still uncomfy with the activity in the house. He asserted himself this morning by peeing (nee: spraying) his kitty bed. Randy and I got very used to his bringing us a present when we woke in the morning. This morning, it was a spray. Bad kitty!

I forgot to mention in Sunday’s blog that on Saturday we took Randy’s grandmother’s dining room chandelier, circa 1930, to a restoration shop for rework and refinishing. This all started when the handyman we hired to paint the old house, with all best intentions, took down the chandelier and took it home to “fix” it.

Bless his heart.

Long story short, while trying to rewire it, he broke part of one of the arms off. Randy was sick, and almost inconsolable. (Question: why do men obsess on “things”?). So I found this place downtown with a Web site that had some magnificent pictures of chandeliers they had restored. We took the chandelier and one of the lamps I have from my mom’s house down there a couple of weeks ago for evāluation. Long story short, when Randy spoke with the restoring expert about the amount of work that needed to be done, he got very emotional . . . and so he just had to decide: do it or don’t do it, but the emotional #$@!’s gotta go.

We met with the restoring expert and she was very careful to ask us what I thought were all the right questions, as well as considerations we wouldn’t even have thought to give. In the end, Randy said “yes”, and this will be several grand worth of renovation money. But very very well worth it. The dining room will be spectacular.

Check back for before and after pics!

OK, so, we haven’t even started this project yet, and already we are at risk. Coco, the kitchen designer, let Randy know today that the cabinets will be delayed by three or four days because the doors won’t be ready. There are, like, 50 (OK, two) REALLY BIG THINGS linked as dependants to the cabinet installation: the countertops can’t be measured, cut, and installed, and the appliances can’t be installed. The solution? Install the cabinets but leave the doors off until they’re ready. Bingo!

I guess the project has actually started since the cabinets are being made . . . we just can’t see that, so my perception is skewed. What is it that we consultants say to each other to bring us down from the outer space our clients send us to? “It’s all about perception.” It doesn’t actually matter what the fact/truth is at all. The only thing that matters is what is perceived. And btw, I’ve learnt that perception can also be contrived if it’s useful.

I’m looking forward to being a client for once, just so I can give back what is so often and so generously shared with me 😉

Marie-Ann, the head designer, has given a cabinet-colored wooden post a thumbs-up on the Jatoba island extension. That or stainless steel. I’m not convinced of either. I think it should be the same granite as the countertops. I’ll defer to her good design knowledge, though. I already know that I’m not good with color.

Robert, from the general contracting company, has put a project plan together at last and will share that with us sometime this week. It will be interesting to see how his plan and ours lines up. Stay tuned!

We have included a week of slack. I’m not a big fan of slack, unless of course I’m on the hook for delivery as well as project management. Then I’m all about slack. Slack is good. And BTW, it really is good to be a wire fish!

The more I watch Holmes on Homes, the more frightened I get about this reno. Somebody stop me watching Mike Holmes.

We went to the winter Home Show at the Toronto Convention Centre yesterday. The same people we always see there were there, except this time we spoke with a couple of custom furniture builders. One was an elderly Chinese lady with some beautiful Teak tables and chairs, and an incredible mahogany desk. The other was a second-generation woodcrafter who learned at his dad’s knee, so to speak. I fell in love with his jaw-droppingly-beautiful, Tiger Maple dining table and tulip chairs. The wood pattern on the table he had at the show is indescribable. I’d include a pic here but unfortunately the company’s Web site has disappeared. That’s OK…it’s more important that he keep working in wood rather than in html.

We saw a stainless steel-surrounded gas fireplace with a straight slit of fire and river rocks on either side. In talking with the guy in the booth, he’s the designer and this is a test fireplace. The rocks are from a dollar store. He designed and built the surround, and the basic fireplace is from a fireplace manufacturer. SO…again…Randy and I keep either finding or wishing for stuff we can’t have yet.

We talked seriously with a guy with a solarium and additions company. Randy asked him to come out to the house and have a look. We are seriously considering a small solarium off of the breakfast room. So, like, we need another room in this house! How many are there? Well, including the finished basement…16. Anyway, we’ll see what happens.

We have finished my favorite room in the house, the so-called “sanctuary” which is a lovely, robin’s-egg blue with a beautiful hickory floor. For Hanukah-mas, Randy got me a lovely sheepskin rug that absolutely makes the room! Combined with the dark wood tables and an elegant lamp, this room is now stunning. The floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the front yard and the park, and the light that comes in is amazing. My white overstuffed love seat is just too big and bulky, though, so we are looking for either a very smallish love seat, or – even better – a plushy chaise.

Out of scope for the kitchen reno is our next step: reno on the master bedroom and “en suite”, which is a fancy-assed Canadian (OK, Torontonian) way to say “master bathroom”.

<rant>What really irks me about being in Canada versus in the US is that it’s so freeking hard to find what you want/need, and never, ever in one place. Or even to shop and get ideas. I spent almost six months buying and researching home décor and design magazines for ideas, most of which are produced in the U.S., and constantly finding that either the items I want aren’t available in Canada or that they cost twice what they cost in the US, accounting for the exchange. One trip home to Texas over Christmas had us in Expo and I saw everything I wanted all in one place, at prices in US$ that, even with the exchange, were far better. Amazing. </rant>