Nothing Happens At Ten

Our builder came in today and put the crown molding on the kitchen cabinets. He also installed the hardware on the doors and drawers. Take a look at this!

That is where the stove goes. You can see that the range hood is installed and wired up as well. Our cabinets go all the way to the ceiling now that the fancy molding is installed. This is really gorgeous stuff!Here is a closeup of our handles.

The handles are brushed nickel. Very smooth and sleek.

If we turn around and look at the peninsula…

The upper cabinet will have glass doors. That is where our fancy glassware will go. But the very best is across the room, where the refrigerator will be.

Is that spectacular, or what? But wait! That isn’t all! Let’s look at this from a slightly different angle.

If you look closely, you can see another little surprise detail that our builder has left us. Look up at the very top, left corner. Here is a closer view.

He has added a tiny, little piece of molding, mitered into the top to make it wrap around right to the wall. Here is the piece, up close.



That is the coolest thing ever! This only gets better.

The guys were hard at work today putting in miscellaneous details. For example, they have started putting in the mantel for the fireplace.

They have also been working in the bathrooms. The vanity tops, faucets, and bowls are in.

Well, OK, they aren’t totally in, as you can see that the plumbing parts are still sitting on the top.

And also….. mostly important of all…… (drum roll, please)…..

The toilets that flush!

OK. Premature drum roll. You can see that the toilet isn’t hooked up either. But we can dream. But, while we have them out, here is a peek at the magic inside of them that makes them flush.

Oooo. Blue and red. I don’t think I have ever owned a toilet that had blue and red guts. The water comes in at the blue, and goes round and round at the red, and then goes out down here:

And that is as graphic as I am going to let this get.

Meanwhile, some of the closet rods are up.

And (another drum roll, please) the range hood is up.

Well, not quite hooked up yet, but that seems to be a theme tonight.

But notice that the under-cabinet lights are hooked up, and they are really nice. There are 5 units, each one individually settable to off/medium/high illumination and controlled together by a wall switch. Stuff to tinker with!

The door to the bulkhead is up.

And last, but not least, the counter top and upper cabinets in the laundry room are in.

That is a 9  1/2 foot counter! Cool.

Tomorrow is a holiday, but more of this work will continue on Friday.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

The upper cabinets were installed today. Here is the stove end of the kitchen.

The range hood goes between the two upper cabinets.

The refrigerator side.

And the peninsula side.

The cabinet over the peninsula will have glass doors and will hold our wine glasses and other glassware.

The lower cabinets have been installed. We now have the peninsula legs in place.

The top is just a piece of plywood right now, cut to the proper size so we can see what it will look like. When it is done, that will all be Cambria®.

From the dining area it looks like this:

The drawers on the left face the dining area, and will contain flatware, napkins, candle sticks and other stuff we need quick access to.

On the other side of the room, the refrigerator will be boxed in with panels next to the pantry.

So, where are the upper cabinets? In the dining room, of course.

We are planning on replacing that lighting fixture with something a bit more elegant before we move in.

The kitchen cabinets are out of their boxes and sitting in the kitchen. These should be installed by next week, ready for the counter top guys to make a template for the counters. Moving left to right, here are some photos of the cabinets:

The ones in the photo above go under the peninsula. The ones in the next photo go around and under the sink:

Turning to the right again, we have the cabinets that go around the stove.

The stove and the range hood go into the space between the cabinets.

Then, turning all the way around and looking in the other direction, we have the cabinets that go around the refrigerator.

The refrigerator goes in the hole between the pantry (the tall cabinet on the left) and the “command center”, where the telephone and cook books go.

Meanwhile, the stairs and railings are in, both downstairs

And upstairs

We also found this while we were snooping around:

The electric panel was open. I guess they are getting ready to finish the wiring. Look at all that stuff!

Since I did not get any good photos of the house today, I thought I would show you an interesting photo I took in the Fallapartment. The dresser on the right side of the photo we call our “Titanic Dresser”.

Concerning the name “Titanic”, it isn’t the size that matters, but the angle. We figure that the angle it is sitting at approximates the angle it would be at were it on the Titanic as she went down.

Please note the decorative molding, attached to the wall at the top of the picture, under the clock. Note that it goes straight across the picture. Note that the dresser does not go straight across the picture. The dresser is leaning like that because the floors are leaning like that. This is true. We have not tilted the camera to make it lean like that. We have not propped up the dresser to make it lean like that. In fact, I have attempted to prop up the dresser to make it lean a little less than that. I failed.

We all get a little dizzy walking around on these floors. Maybe we should call this a “Mystery House” and charge admission from unsuspecting tourists. We could get some of the rent back.

They put down the loam today and raked it into a real lawn. Here is a photo of our Loam Arranger, hard at work.

When they got done, we had a lawn.

Um. With leaves on it to rake. There isn’t any grass on it yet, but they will do that later.

Oh, and as promised, here is a photo of our front walkway, in broad daylight.

From the front steps, it looks like this:

And a photo of the two granite steps that come up from the driveway.

One last development – the kitchen cabinets are in.

Cool.

They started putting in the walkway from the driveway to the front door today. Here is how they did it. First they dug out the hole for it about 8″ deep.

You can see in the photo above that the first granite step is already in place.They had to put in two steps to make the design work. I wonder what a 5 foot granite step costs? Oh well.

They did some of the digging with the back hoe, and some of it with the Bobcat.

They tamped the dirt down to the level of the first step.

Next, the fine stone dust went in.

Then they placed the second granite step.

They filled the hole with stone until it came up nearly to the top of the second step.

Below is a photo of the walkway up by the front door.

Then the coarse stone went in.

Tamp it down.

Sand went on top of the stone.

Raked and leveled.

Finally, the pavers showed up.

Well, that is all the photos I have. They put the pavers in after lunch, and my photographer got hungry. Anyway, we went back to the house after I got home from work to see the walkway, which was mostly done, but it was really dark by then, and it looked something like this:

OK. That’s an exaggeration. But I didn’t get any good photos of the walkway tonight, so you will just have to come back later to see it.

The other thing that happened today was that they delivered a whole ….uh… truck-load of dirt.

That will go under our new lawn.

For us to mow.

And fertilize.

And rake leaves off of.

I wonder if they can make the patio a little larger.

Just for grins, we rendered an image of the computerized house model again, this time from a vantage point that is outside of the house. In the model, we have colored the siding and shutters the same colors that we chose for the actual house.

The top picture is the model, and the bottom picture is a photograph of the real house from the same vantage point.

Pretty cool.