Bathroom accessories

The bathroom got a bit of a face-lift today with our medicine cabinets and towel accessories going in. The carpenter also finished the backerboard for the tub surround and the drywall above. The Corian people came to template the countertop too, which makes us very happy!

Upper cabinets and vanity

We had the upper kitchen cabinets put in today, as well as the bathroom vanity. The vanity is actually the same cabinet style and color as the kitchen. This wasn't the original plan, but our chosen vanity style was going to take another 3 weeks to get and we weren't patient enough ;)
All the doors and drawers are out right now so they don't get damaged during the rest of construction. I think we are going to add one more cabinet on the right hand side of the kitchen (over the dishwasher) as well. We had one on the original scematic and then it got dropped somewhere in the process, and looking at it now, it looks a little unfinished to end with a corner piece.
The counter top people are coming tomorrow morning to template for the Corian. Wohoo! We're finally getting somewhere!

Cabinets!

Yes, the rumors are true- we actually DID get our cabinets today. Wohoo!! The base cabinets have been put in place and shimmed up to level. One problem so far- one of the light switches was placed too low and will have to be moved up by the electrician. Other than that, things are looking pretty good!

Marble

Here are the marble thresholds we got today. They are next to a couple of the floor tiles. Hard to see the colors, really, but I tried.

No tile today

We had an interesting morning here. It involved our carpenter trying to start the tiling project with another of our contractor's carpenter's, who is the "tile guy" in the company. Unfortunately, "tile guy" decided to get into a long conversation about how starting a tile job without the cabinets in place isn't the ideal way to do it and that we didn't have the marble thresholds on site yet for two of the doorways. The original plan was to wait till the cabinets were in to tile, but because the cabinets were delayed, our contractor was trying to not lose any time by beginning the tile while we waited for them. We realize thte tile guy had some good points, but what this all amounted to was our contractor getting mad at him for not coming in and just doing what he was told, and he sent the tile guy home. Our carpenter was sent to another job that had to be done today, and was not to thrilled that he was here on Saturday to prep the floor that was now not being tiled (he is not trained in tile yet). Our contractor came over this afternoon and apologized. The cabinets are slated to be delivered on Wednesday, but he knows they are sitting in the show room in Nashua right now, so he may actually drive up there and get them himself so we can start tomorrow AM. Wouldn't that be nice! I did go to a local floor place today and buy the marble thresholds so they would be here when we start tiling again, so we should be ready to roll for our next try at tile.

Happy Birthday Carpenter!

It's Saturday AND my carpenter's birthday, but he was here at 8:00am scraping my kitchen floor to get it ready for tiling on Monday. That's dedication. I bought him a chocolate cake, which we didn't eat together, because, well, it was 8:00am, but he brought it home to enjoy with his family. Unfortunately, part of the process involved a chemical on the floor that smells vaguely like sewage. (Hmm... maybe he wasn't so happy to be here on Saturday afterall...) The smell diminishes as it dries so we have all the windows open and fans going and it's getting better. I'll put up with just about anything to get this done at this point.

Painting

In a last minute decision I nixed the Butter Pecan for the kitchen and went with Malt instead. I was afraid Butter Pecan had too much pink/purple undertone. It's really hard to capture these colors in a still photo, so we tried some with flash and some without. I affectionately call the kitchen color "Barbie Doll Flesh". The bathroom is just a very light grey, that will hopefully make the white fixures pop. It's hard to tell what it looks like at all in the picture, except when compared to the white primer, so I tried to capture that. I was going for a sort of "upscale hotel" look. We'll see if it all comes together once everything is in place.
While we have been painting, the carpenter has been putting up all the new trim and the backer board for the tub. These should be simple jobs, but of course we ran into some issues on how to do the new post in the kitchen because the front has 1/2 inch of drywall below it, whereas the back has 1 inch of old plaster... so equal sizes of wood surrounding it wasn't going to work- but I think we've figured out what to do- I'll post pics when it's done. The backer board also had issues when the carpenter realized the studs were warped just enough (from old water damage we think) to make the board bow just enough to mess up tile that is placed on it (stupid fickle tile!). He's going to fix the studs tomorrow.
Cabinets are arriving "early next week" (so much for us getting them in this week by doing the painting ourselves) and we're starting to floor tile job first so as not to have any unproductive days. Can't wait to see what the new floor looks likes!