Let’s talk about something lovely, this backsplash. It’s only partially done, but I am in love. And I am super proud of it coming together because I wanted to do something special, but I didn’t want to spend $15 sq. ft. I searched high and low for grey beveled subway tile that wasn’t glass and initially wanted to do a herringbone pattern, but seeing all the outlets in place made me realize it was a bad idea so I switched it up to this basket weave style today. I’m excited to see it grouted and finished around the edges and I think it will go great with the wall color.
Lots of things are going right and getting done, but it is really hard not to focus on all the stuff that isn’t.
This week started off which the electricians dropping the double oven on Tuesday and the result was not only a shattered oven door, but scraped up cabinets.
Fortunately, there is a trim piece under the over that hides a large portion of it, but we are still waiting to figure out exactly what to do on the rest of it. The irony is that this is the same cabinet we found sitting in water a few weeks ago, the cursed cabinet!
This week all the lights went in and it’s so nice to have lights and electricity in the house! There was some confusion about what went where and a few missing lights, but it was all sorted out.
Carpet also went in in the basement. It’s a very neutral brown. I don’t really like carpet, but downstairs it seems like a necessary evil. With the lights and the carpet, you can see the basement living room in all its glory. I do not really like the river rock wall down there, but we left it because some people love it. And I was concerned about it costing me a million dollars to have it removed- those rocks are huge! It goes well with the wood burning stove and it’s cozy. I picked up some leather sofas on FB Marketplace that are in great shape for down there and I am actually really looking forward to getting that space put back together because we’ve never really decorated down there. Taking out some of the wood actually modernized it a little, too.
We’re also trying to get our washer and dryer in. It’s a VERY tight fit and we can’t get the dryer vent to not kink when we push it back. We finally gave up tonight. I want to do laundry at home SO BADLY, but it’s just so hard to do even simple projects in the house right now because we have no good place to put the kids. The house is full of hazards for the kids and we have about 30 seconds at a time to do something before one of them is doing something they shouldn’t like “just sweeping” the glass shards off the floor. I finally just told Mike to give up and we’ll try again tomorrow because we were both getting a little frustrated. The counter over the washer/dryer is going to be so nice, but man it makes installing them very hard. We were planning to reuse our washer/dryer, but got a crazy good deal on new ones, but as a result it wasn’t part of the bid and
In other news, the basement is still flooding on every warm day and the contractor told me this afternoon that they are doing to excavate the foundation from the outside and access. This means out yard will once again be destroyed, so maybe it’s a good thing that the landscaping didn’t get done. I am super relieved, however, that they are just biting the bullet and digging it out. This isn’t normal.
The biggest news of the week was that Christmas in the new house just isn’t going to happen. While I wasn’t terribly surprised, it’s still pretty disappointing. Back in November, they told us January and we were okay with that, but then they moved it up. I wish they hadn’t. We might have made it, but our main project manager contractor went out of town for a few weeks and as a result, things just didn’t go as smoothly as they were as he’d been our main contact and knew about a lot of the details and preferences.
Our new date is mid-January. Another month of trailer living.
I’ve had some people ask if we can move back in before they are officially done and we can’t because the house has not passed inspection to be liveable and it is also not insured as a dwelling. It would also just slow everything down to be working around us.
TL;DR We have another month to go, but finishes are looking great!