I promise to have an updated picture of the whole arrangement soon.

It came unfinished so I brushed on two coats of Waterlox Marine Finish. I expect it to be relatively long-lasting, though probably not as durable as the Caesarstone we chose for our kitchen.

Basically it’s just like how you would handle a butcher block countertop with an undermount sink. Bamboo is naturally more resistant to water compared to other woods (though bamboo is actually a grass)…

Check back for more updates after our Big Move this weekend!

Here it is in all of its glory: The Master Bath Bamboo Countertop!

(I apologize for the poor quality iPhone camera picture)

We weren’t actually “bamboozled”, unless you consider the cost of shipping and installing our bamboo countertop was actually a few dollars more than the actual slab itself! We still saved a little (emphasis on little) over doing a Caesarstone countertop in the master bath. I think the bamboo looks a lot better as well with our choice of faucets and sinks.

Here’s a better picture of the faucet courtesy of the manufacturer:

We went with Kohler’s cast iron “Ledges” sink in white. Here’s the sink from Kohler’s website:

More iPhone pics of the master bath double vanity:

We like the inlay.

And here are some shots of the Caesarstone “Blizzard” countertop in the kitchen and sink we purchased from Overstock.com:

A better image of the sink:

Hopefully our appliances come this week so we can finalize our permits, get the rest of our plumbing, and move in before the end of the month!

After weeks of saying “I’ll install the cabinets in the master bathroom tomorrow” I finally hunkered down last Saturday and did it. The reason it took so long was because we had a bit of a technical challenge: the IKEA legs were too tall and the cabinets couldn’t rest on the floor because they would have been too low. That, and like the rest of the 85-year-old house, the floor isn’t quite level.

I decided that the best course of action was to use a ledger board to hold up the back of the cabinet on a level line and find some shorter legs for the front of the cabinets. Skipping over the fact that it took me almost four hours to attach three cabinets to a wall and get them level.

I’m also lucky that the kick plate will hide my jury-rigged leveling system for the front of the cabinets…

If you look closely at the bottom you can see some of my “handiwork”.

The door handles.

Our floors are shiny.

Agnes’ sister was still recovering so we couldn’t get any pictures of her, but Sam just couldn’t get enough of his son!

Congratulations to Lee & Sam!

So it had started very badly:

Our floors were the wrong color, our baseboards were trashed, and the same crew that did the bang-up job was back again to fix their mistakes. That foul-up meant our kitchen was still incomplete, further delaying our final electrical stuff and countertop installation.

Then our countertop and appliance supplier shocked us with the news that AMEX was not an acceptable form of payment — just as we were making the deposit.

While those were big problems they weren’t anything that couldn’t be solved with some more research, a good attitude, and a malted milkshake from Powells Dairy Freeze in Starke, Florida.

I snapped this picture as nonchalantly as I could. The young mother was sitting directly across from her newborn baby…smoking a freaking cigarette and blowing smoke (inadvertently, I hope) right back into the baby’s carrier.

The reason for the stop, other than the fine milkshakes at Powells, was because we found an alternate countertop supplier in Gainesville, Indigo Green Home store. We were incredibly excited to go because the perfect substitute for the CaesarStone we had chosen was the recycled glass countertops from Coverings Etc.:

…that is, until they rung up at $4600 $ a slab (and we needed 3). $14000 for counters was a little bit out of our budget for this project.

The trip wasn’t a total loss. We put in an order for a bamboo counter for our master bath. That should really add some nice spa-like qualities to the room.

Continuing our upward trend was the flooring company’s surprising 180-degree turnaround on the floors. They went from mismatched, discolored, and dull to deep, mysterious, dark, and glossy. We are extremely happy with the results of the second run at the job.

The living room

Dining room (temporary table)

The kitchen with ADEL birch cabinet doors

A view of the APC Cork plank floor. It’s soft!

Agnes’ studio

Our floor contractor wouldn’t start until we had the A/C systems running for two weeks so that the moisture would work its way out of the pine floors. So after we waited for JEA to finally hook up our power and the A/C company to finish their third attempt at installing our two Trane units, we called the floor company to start their part of the job.

Adding urgency to the flooring situation was Agnes’ sister’s baby shower, which was scheduled to be at the Dellwood House on Sunday, January 27. Because we had worked everything out to give the floor company over a week to do the patches, sanding, staining, and coats of polyurethane, they committed to a finish date of Friday, January 25 “at the very latest”.

As it turns out “at the very latest” wasn’t quite as accurate as they had originally predicted.

The contractor got a later start than originally planned, Thursday instead of Wednesday the prior week, and worked at a less-than-speedy pace up until Tuesday (or so our neighbors reported). So on Tuesday the contractor called me in hopes of extending his deadline to Saturday, which would basically ruin our chances of staging the already incomplete house for the baby shower.

That wasn’t going to happen. I told him that he was just going to have to meet his deadline and speed up the pace a little bit.

Mistake #1: Apparently holding some people to a deadline means they will do the absolutely poorest and quickest job possible to hit that date.

The floor patches didn’t match the rest of the floor at all and the guy managed to get stain on most of the baseboards and doors.

It reminds me of the Michael Keaton movie Gung Ho.

Mistake #2: Color is important

In this case it meant the flooring guy forgot to do a “test board” to show us how the stain would look on our floor.

When we started the process we had to choose a stain and I remember the conversation vividly:

Me: “What’s the darkest stain you’ve got?”
Flooring company: “Ebony”
Me: “Great. We’ll go with that”
FC: “Are you sure? Because on pine it ca—”
Me: “We’ve seen it on pine. We like it that way. That’s what we want.”
FC: “Are you sure?”
Me: “Yes! [dammit!]”

Unfortunately when they ordered the stain they didn’t actually get the “Ebony” color I picked, which looks like this:

They instead ordered “Jacobean”, which looks like this:

Which on our floor looks like this:

The Result

Agnes was furious. I was upset but at the same time very happy I paid by AMEX — and told the company so.

So they did the entire house in the wrong color, got stain on the freshly-painted walls, doors, baseboards, and generally did a really awful job.

Now the same crew is over at the house sanding off the stain and redoing the entire job. I have a feeling that the owner’s regular checkups on the job will influence the quality of the re-do.

At least the baby shower went well…

We had to really encourage the floor company to meet their promised completion date of tomorrow (Friday) — and even now it’s still not guaranteed that both polyurethane coats will be done on time. Of course the last thing we want is a rushed job, but with that being said the Baby Shower for Agnes’ sister is on Sunday and we’re going to do our best “Flip This House” impression on Saturday to get it at least slightly presentable!

Here are some pictures of the pre-finished floor. Hopefully the next time I post the floor will be much darker and kind of glossy!

If the floor isn’t done tomorrow I may have to don my Cobra Kai t-shirt and go “No Mercy” on somebody. Here is some Karate Kid inspiration for the floor company…

The weekend at the house was a qualified success. Thanks to the help of friends and family: Jonathan, Ed, Chris, and Sam, we were able to get the cork floor down in the kitchen, two layers of polyurethane on the cork, the in-wall speakers installed in the studio/presentation room, and all of the base kitchen cabinets built.

I say qualified because an extra wrinkle was thrown in at the last second on Saturday that ended up altering the course of Sunday’s work.

The short version is that we decided to put on a second coat of polyurethane over the cork and realized all too late that it wasn’t dry yet! All was okay after doing some sanding and mineral spirit rubbing. Here’s a picture from the first (and uneventful coat of poly).

My Saturday and Sunday both began like this:

Funny thing is today when I came out of Lowe’s I saw that another Prius chose to park right next to me. Sadly I know this wasn’t coincidence because I tend to park next to other Priuses/Prii when I’m able. It’s something strange that us Prius owners do!

Here’s a bonus picture of Agnes’ Prius after one of our recent trips to IKEA Orlando. These things can lug a ton of stuff. I think they’re pretty well suited for construction

Yeah, I’ve been bad at posting updates. I’m sorry. I promise to try to do better next time (emphasis on try).

The good news is that we’ve made incredible progress with the house. We’re not living in it yet but we’ve got most of the items necessary for living installed or scheduled to be installed this month. Our painter finished up over the weekend and our electrician has been incredibly patient with us as we’ve delivered fixtures to him in bulk.

Over the course of this week we hope to get some toilets installed and pass our final electrical inspection, which will in turn mean we can turn on our air conditioner. Once the air conditioner runs for a week or so we should have the bulk of the moisture out of the floor so the flooring company can install the patches, sand, stain, and coat the floors. While we wait for the floors to dry out we plan to install the cork floors in the kitchen and then assemble and mount our kitchen cabinets…

Anyway.

I’ll skip the slideshow and just post the pictures with some comments for context. I apologize for the poor quality but I was trying to get as many as possible before it got too dark — since we still don’t have electricity yet!

Here’s the view from just inside the front door.

Flipped around. We still haven’t figured out what we’re going to do about the side of the stairs.

The really awesome, translucent-bladed fan. I can’t take credit for this idea; I stole it from Jason Hammond’s modern home journal/blog From the Ground Up.

A view from the living room to the dining room and kitchen.

From inside the studio. The fireplace stays!

The central data panel for the house.

The downstairs half-bath. The lines are a little straighter in real life

A view of the mud room/back entry.

The properly re-installed downstairs A/C unit. The second time is the charm apparently.

Up the stairs…

The laundry room

The hallway. The Master Suite is on the left, two bedrooms on the right, and a bathroom at the end. The leg is Agnes ducking out of the picture…

Inside the master suite. The walk-in closet is through the door.

The other side. The master bath is past the french doors.

The french doors are tall. Eight footers (for when Yao Ming visits).

The shower still needs some painting done above it, so it will stay under plastic for a few days. The glass enclosure should be in very soon!

The office/bedroom 1.

The guest bedroom/bedroom 2.

The guest bath.

Back down the stairs. We still need to find a lighting fixture for this area…

And the thing that capped off an amazing year: The tankless water heater!

Another view of this fabulous piece of green technology.

More to come as we finish more!

Let’s get to it!

0. World Peace

1. The Black & Decker Gecko Grip Level ($24.99)

2. Nordstrom Smartcare dress shirts, 16 1/2 - 33 (sale-priced only, please)

3. Westin Heavenly Bed (~$1500)

4. Red Ryder BB Gun

That’s all for now, I guess.