August | 2016 | IT STARTED ON SAWYER

The week started with some great news, we have rented the 2nd floor apartment! The new tenants will be moving in just under 4 weeks, which gives us some extra motivation to get as much work done as possible before they move in. The tenant unit only has very minor work remaining, but we also had to give our new tenants a heads up that some items that affect them will not be ready for some time, such as the garage re-build (which we haven’t started on yet) or landscaping the backyard. Otherwise, their unit will be complete and we hope they’ll enjoy it!

The past two weeks have seen a great amount of activity. Our electrician came back on site to correct a few items, including moving the disconnect switch for the double oven which allows us to get the appliance installed. We also had our handyman install the utility sink in the laundry room and the range hood and associated exhaust in the kitchen. Our countertop contractor came back to install our kitchen island and some floor pieces in the master bathroom. And finally, we have made great headway on painting and staining the unit.

Our painting contractor has been working non-stop for the past two weeks. What’s taking this unit much longer than the 2nd floor unit (besides an extra floor) is all of the added woodwork that has to be sanded, stained, and finished with 2 to 3 coats of poly. Once the staining was complete, the contractors moved on to painting the walls, ceiling, doors, and trim. With the woodwork being a dark walnut, we choose to go with lighter colors on the wall (various shades of gray) and a shade of white (“snow bound”) on the basement doors and trim. Do to financial reasons, we had to break up the painting into a few phases. This first phase included painting and staining the majority of the first floor as well as the corridor and media room of the basement. Hopefully over the next few weeks, we’ll have the crew back to complete the staining and painting in the basement bedrooms.

Installing the range hood and ductwork

Laundry room utility sink installed

Double oven disconnect installed

Living room trim getting stained

Trim to the dining room getting stained

Dining room windows and beams getting stained

More paining and staining

Bsmt corridor painted

Oven and fridge get installed

Bsmt corridor painted (trim to be stained on later date)

Kitchen taking shape

Painting the dining room

We stained and polyed the 2nd fl baseboards

Protective poly applied to the 2nd floor kitchen storage shelving

1st Floor kitchen countertop!

Bsmt masterbath stonework being set

At this point in construction, many trades have wrapped up the majority of tasks that would keep them continuously busy. Because of that, going forward we will most likely get a contractor per day on site to finish the remaining items / doing punchlist items. Hopefully this process won’t slow us down too much, but it helps us make sure there is enough to do for a contractor to be on site and so that we’re not paying someone to simply stand around.

Over the past two weeks, we did make some exiting progress. First, the exterior front stairs have the limestone lintels installed. Next we had our 1st floor appliances delivered to site. This allowed us to bring our carpenter back so that he could precisely cut the correct openings into the cabinet paneling to install the double oven, microwave, etc. Once the panel was cut out for the double oven, we learned that the 220V disconnect installed by our electrician doesn’t leave enough room for our oven to be correctly installed. We’ll have to have our electrician back on site to correct this before we can install our oven. Besides the oven, our contractors were able to install the built-in microwave, range, dishwasher, and laundry units in the basement.

While on site, our carpenter detailed the dining room woodwork, which included adding quarter round trim to the wooden beams, window trim and wall trim. Other then making the woodwork look more elegant, the drywall takes less volume then the old plaster walls did which in the case of the old woodwork which we kept meant a large gap between the woodwork and the new wall, the trim covers these gaps. Our carpenter also leveled out our back stairwell concrete wall, allowing us to install drywall in preparation for our painter to start work on the unit. Finally, in anticipation of our painter, we rolled out protective covering through out the unit so that in the following week they can get started!