Days 33-40 - Our Plumber Is Our Hero

This house became our house almost six weeks ago.  From that first demolition day til today, hardly anything remains of the original fixtures inside!  By next week we should be able to say, "Welcome to our 'new' house."

As much as we like to "Do It Yourself", this house - especially the plumbing - has taught us to appreciate the value of professional help a lot more.  From that big gash in the major waterline to an incredibly heavy old tub to leaky shutoff valves, we are thankful for the pros.  Even the laminate floor install turned out to be a blessing since the professional installers did way more repairing and leveling than we would have thought to do.

This past week we definitely need them again.  The "plumber" we've been using is really more of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to home repairs.  His son helps and his brother is a trim carpenter so between the of three of them, they can accomplish a lot!  We hired them again to come out Monday to install the new banisters for the stairway.  It looks amazing!  The balusters we chose are metal and have two "twist" designs in each rod.  We put these in upstairs on the landing and on the bottom half of the stairway.  One thing I really appreciate about this crew is their attention to detail. On the bottom half of the stairs, they put a baluster every 3 inches so little Maria can't fall through (the previous balusters were 9 inches apart!).  On these balusters, he lined them up with care to create a perfect diagonal line between the tops of each twist descending down the stairs.  It's a small thing, but I love the precision.  Daniel had sprayed the new handrail and newel posts white over the weekend.  They need touched up, but it's already a major improvement!  Here are some before (taken before we even owned the house) and after photos.  Carpet goes in on the stairs next week.

Daniel has finished tiling over the gross old counters and it looks great!  He also put in a small 4 in. back splash matching the counter tile.  Right now the edge of the tile is pretty sharp so we're going to soften the edge a bit with a tile grinder.  The hardware for the cabinets is "coming soon". We chose a granite composite sink.  Supposedly they are excellent for resisting scratches and staining.  I'll let you know if that's true once we move in.  Daniel put in new white trim around the window.  And now appliances have all arrived so this place is starting to feel like a kitchen again!

 

Just a reminder of what it looked like before we bought the house:

Daniel pulled out the old sink and planned to hook up the new one himself the next day.  The next morning when I went to the house, I found a slow leak coming from the water line, flooding the cupboard and pooling... you guessed it, on our beautiful new laminate floor.  I had terrible visions of warped floor boards in my head as I scurried to wipe it up.  So much water had leaked that it was dripping through the basement ceiling.  We set up three fans to blow on the floor for the next 18 hours and prayed for the best.  Thankfully, none of the board have warped so far.  Since John (our not-really-a-plumber plumber) was already coming Monday with his brother to do the other work, we just added this shutoff valve repair and sink install to his list.  I'm glad we're finding all these leaks and getting them fixed BEFORE we move in!  Shutting off the main water valve is not as much of an inconvenience when you don't live there.

John was also tasked with installing the over-the-range microwave.  He was a lot cheaper than Lowe's install rate and, as with so many of our projects, there were issues.  The electrical cord that had connected the previous vent hood was actually dangerous and a fire hazard.  So John and his son ran a new breaker for the microwave and installed a new plug.  Again, thank goodness for professionals!  Had we done it ourselves, we would have never known it needed rewiring.  It's possible we could have burned the house down when we started using the microwave... gulp. 

John's son handled the drywall repair.  He was able to blend the textures pretty evenly.  Now we just have to paint those areas (again). 

I attempted to install the new light fixture in the powder room while Daniel was at work.  Sometimes I like to pretend I know how to do these things...  I really do think I could have done it myself had it not been for issues with the mounting screws not fitting the box.  Apparently they had used an outlet receptacle instead of the larger box for a light fixture - weird.  We found some other screws to fit and Daniel finished the job.  I'm going to put up a mirror in here instead of replacing the medicine cabinet.  We didn't patch the hole though since it will be covered by the mirror and leaves the option open for a medicine cabinet later.  So if you ever come over for a visit... don't look behind the mirror!

A tip on bathroom vanities - We chose the Allen + Roth Norbury vanities in different sizes for all three bathrooms.  The largest vanity for the guest bath had a cracked counter due to being shipped without the center support piece.  When we went to Lowe's to exchange it, 2 out of the 3 other vanities were also cracked due to shipping!  The powder room vanity was supposed to go in Monday.  It had a hairline crack in the sink.  Surprise surprise, the other two vanities in that size at our local Lowe's were also cracked.  Aargh!  I ended up driving to another Lowe's 30 minutes away just to get one vanity that wasn't cracked.  Overall, I love how these vanities look and so far (without really using them) they seem to be of good quality.  I think they just package them poorly for shipping.  So word to the wise, if you're picking one of these up, make them open the box to check the counter and sink before you take it home.  Save yourself the extra trips to the store.

So as you can see, the house is coming along.  I've started the cleanup process, and it's going to take awhile.  Just the amount of dust on all our furniture will be a lot to clean up.  But fortunately, I have friends to help!  Faith came on Saturday and we spent some quality time together sharing a bucket of soapy water.  Good company makes every job easier!

By this time next week, we hope to be moved in!  Wish us luck.  We'll update you after the move. It's starting to make more sense to update the blog weekly so I will be shifting to more of that type of schedule.  Daily is a little too much for this busy gal!  I got tired of staying up past one in the morning writing. :)

In the mean time, keep dreaming!