Wednesday, November 07, 2007

I’m So Glad You Asked!

What’s that you say? You want an update on the house re-model? Really? I always thought those were boring!

Whenever I talk to people about the re-model I know that all I ever do is complain about how much things cost, why isn’t everything done yet, it’s all so much money, I hate having to make all these decisions about colors and fixtures and man, this is getting so incredibly expensive!

But since you have insisted, I guess I just have to let you know how things are going. Who am I to argue?

In reality things are progressing very nicely. We had a bit of a setback when we discovered that our house is shaped like a freaking corkscrew. Now, most older houses (ours was built in ‘64) settle over time and things get a little out of level and plumb. But not our house! It seems to have gone to great lengths to make itself taller in some areas and much shorter in others. I’m not real clear on its motives for doing this, but over the years, it must have devoted all its energy into contorting itself into a yoga pose. Yes, our house is doing “downward facing dog” and so we had to go to some pretty extreme measures to level everything out. Lots of planing and shimming and sweat on the part of my contractor.

Somewhat surprising in this whole drama is the fact that I still very much have a hetero man-crush on our general contractor. He’s been more than fair with us on costs and rolls with the punches when certain people who are NOT me, but are my truly awesome spouse, changes her mind about the paint colors from moment to moment, bless her heart.

So the upstairs floor was out of level by many, many inches. And because we removed walls and made the living room/dining room/kitchen into one ginormous room, the place had to be leveled. When you come over for dinner (yes, you! I’ve invited EVERYONE for a HUGE dinner party), you’d be able to see the place dip and dive from one end to the other. Not so great and particularly bad for the wood flooring.

As you can imagine, this took a while.

But we got back on track in the last week or so and have now completed the painting and RIGHT THIS SECOND, very industrious people and putting in the hardwood flooring.

This makes me happy on so many levels that I can’t even begin to to describe the joy of seeing some guy’s booty crack as he bends over to nail-gun our über-ginchy recycled rubber tree hardwood planks down. Of course, seeing the guy’s butt crack isn’t pleasant in a purely aesthetic sense, but in a symbolic sense, seeing that guy’s fuzzy booty is a source of ineffable elation.

We are almost done.

The cabinetry gets installed this week after the flooring guys leave and then the concrete countertop people show up and perseverate and sweat `over measurements and moisture content and sealers and then we are done. Like really done. The concrete countertops take an extraordinary amount of time to fabricate. Something about curing. But we can see the end of the line, so a couple more weeks isn’t that bad.

Reha said to me the other night, “When the house and kitchen are done, I’m not going to spend more than $100 at the grocery store per month. We are going to cook EVERYTHING from scratch. No more frozen dinners or take out for a YEAR. It’s going to be so great.”

Now, I don’t believe that for a second, but I totally understand the sentiment. Late the other night I was downstairs in the garage, fondling examining our new and incredibly lickable and sexy double oven and gently whispering to it, “I’m going to bake cookies in you, my darling. You are so hot. Perhaps even a pot roast. Would you like that? Yes, you would, my dear. How about a turkey? Maybe for Thanksgiving, baby. Ooooh, brownies, let us make sweet, passionate brownies together.”

And then Reha walked in, while I was in a “compromised state” and I had to explain that I really do love her more than I love our new oven. I was just flirting and messing around. It meant nothing, I promise.

More than a little embarrassing, let me tell you.

Anyway.

Let me show you some pictures to satiate your clamoring for details and then be done with it until it’s all done and I can make a dreadfully boring slideshow you can use for those nights when you have insomnia and there isn’t anything good on TV. You’ll hit play and the soothing and boring tones of pictures of our remodel will lull you into peaceful slumber. I know, I can’t wait, either.

We start in Ellis’ room. Because she is quite possibly the most excited I have EVER seen her about anything, except for that time when I said she could watch Dora DVDs ALL DAY LONG and eat Toaster Strudel frosting packets until she threw up. That was a good day for her as well. She really likes what will eventually be her room.

We hate the color.

We tried, and I mean strongly tried to convince her that she might not always be so into pink. “Look at Carrie, she’s a girl and she has a BLUE room, Ellis.” Nothing doing. And then we went the rounds with her about the shade of pink. We wanted to go with a pale pastel flavor of pink, just the barest hint of pink, but we made a strategic error. Two errors, really. A) We told her at the beginning that she could choose ANY color she wanted for her room. B) she found out one of the colors was called “bubble bath” and latched on to that color like an Idaho Senator to a toilet stall and would not let go C) we had her in the first place, that was our FIRST error and I know I said there were only two errors, but I suck at math. My idea was to just pick the color that we would like, lie to her and say, “This IS the bubble bath paint color, E. It’s lovely. You chose a very nice color!” Reha wasn’t hearing any of that; she has this crazy policy that we shouldn’t lie to the kids. Or beat them into submission. She’s a softy.

The one saving grace of the color, really the only good thing about it, is that we’ll know when our Pepto-Bismal has gone bad. We can just check the color against her walls. “Yep, I think this bottle is still good.”

Next we have Jonah’s room. Turned out nice, though the blue is bit too bright for my tastes, he’s fine with it.

We are very happy with how the dark trim looks in all the rooms. Reha’s incredibly daring with her color choices. The dark trim made me a-scared, but it really does look beautiful.

This is the “daring” that I’m talking about. This is the stain and wood for our cabinets. Cherry wood, stained to within an inch of its life and dangerously close to ORANGE.

We think it’s beautiful and you are dumb if you don’t like it.

We got all new interior doors, too. Love the color, not too happy about the panels, but we had to choose them in 4.5 seconds and these were the least offensive options presented to us.

It’s a Forest of Doors! They are nailed together at tops and make a big accordion right there in our kitchen. So the paint dries properly with them standing up. Very clever.

This is the master bedroom, looking into the master bath. The wall color in here is totally funky. Depending on the light it looks either gray, green or blue.

We absolutely love the way it turned out.

More of the master bedroom.

Doesn’t everyone want a toilet in the middle of the room? I want to keep it this way, but apparently it presents a “plumbing challenge.” Whatever. No one listens to my genius.

OK! No more pics or updates until the frickin’ place is DONE! We shall not speak of this again until late November/early December. OK?! And we really must never speak of that incident with me and the double oven.

1. Wow, everything is looking really great Jon!  And I actually really like Ellis’ choice of paint.  Can’t wait to see it all finished!

   Posted by Ellen  on  11/07/07  at  01:01 PM

2. Ellen — You are dead to me now. DEAD, I say!

   That pink is just wee bit too strong, in our opinion. But she’s quite pleased and keeping that adorable demon happy is Goal #1 at the Deal Family Compound. :-]

   Posted by Jon  on  11/07/07  at  01:15 PM

3. Yeah, Ellis’s color choice doesn’t do much for me either.  The grownup sections of the house have cool colors going on. 

   My house was built in ‘62, I doubt much was plumb or square when it was built and it sure isn’t now.  The Nisqually quake back in ‘01 didn’t help much either, but the house rode it out better than its owner did.

   Posted by michael  on  11/07/07  at  07:12 PM

4. Better to ogle and fondle the oven than the floor installer guy’s you-know-what.

   Probably.

   Posted by Radioactive Jam  on  11/08/07  at  05:19 AM

5. Also you might want to put one of these on your Christmas list.

   Posted by Radioactive Jam  on  11/08/07  at  06:19 AM

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

 

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2008 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. All comments belong to the respective commenters.