A River Runs Through It

I was contemplating what to write about this week. Honestly, it's been pretty boring over here on Smoke Rise. House stuff has been relatively minimal, or it's gotten a late start, with little completion in the few hours that someone's been here. Well, if it's excitement I was looking for then things certainly picked up yesterday. I went to wash dishes, in our downstairs utility sink, which is directly under the upstairs sink/fridge area. And what do I spy with my little eye?

That line. It's never been there before...and it's wet. I look up, and on top of the cabinets, behind a row of bowls, it's worse.

If ever there was a day for this to not happen, this was it. After 3 hours of sleep, and discovering this at 4:30pm when I have to leave to work an extra 12 hour shift (that I completely regret picking up) at 6pm, my anxiety spikes. I send the above pictures (minus the "fit gif") to Mike and tell him to call me as we have a problem. He calls back seconds later, as I'm measuring from the far outside wall to see where the water might be coming from. Is it the dishwasher? Mike and his plumber discovered the pump has a problem, and it's not something that they'd be considered responsible for, so I've called to line up someone to look at it through the home warranty folks.

24 feet from the outside wall. Upstairs I go, and at 24 feet from the outside wall it's the fridge. Something behind the fridge! Another water problem? Sheesh! I alert the floor sanders. Supposedly they were going to start staining tonight, but they'll have to wait now. Not that they seem to be in any big hurry. One of them, who is on what must be his 14th cigarette break since noon hollers from the back porch, "that your pet deer?" I'm sorry, "what??" He points out a doe that's resting in the foliage between our back yard and the neighbor's. She has a friend with her. This is the best picture I can get:

See her peeking between the slats? Well, I'm glad someone is enjoying their day.

The water is cut off at the street, I brush my teeth with water from our Brita water pitcher, but no shower, then I head in to work. Ryan sets up some fans to run overnight to speed up the drying process, so work can continue. One behind the fridge, and the other downstairs.

I get home Thursday morning and the pieces of wood behind the fridge are capout. The wall isn't in very good shape either. 

That water did a number on those boards; water stains and warping. At the beginning, in the planning process, Mike mentioned that wood in a kitchen was a bad idea. He didn't recommend it, but it was up to us. "It's not 'if' there's a water issue, it's 'when'," he said. Point made, Mike. I didn't think anything would happen this soon but we're committed now, just keep rolling with what we've got!! Mike says they'll be by during the day on Thursday to replace those boards, then the sand/stain guys will be back to do their thing Thursday evening. Well, it's 8pm on Thursday, and while the boards got replaced, the sand/stain guys are a no-show. Maybe tomorrow? This flooring process is taking

I'm working for the weekend...again. Maybe we'll get things completed next week! Keep your fingers crossed for us. Well, mainly for Ryan. He'll be tolerating a maniacal wife if this doesn't get wrapped up soon.

And as I'm sure you only read this post because of the title and were expecting Brad Pitt, here ya go:

"Catch me on that line you sexy man-beast, put me in your little wicker basket, and carry me up river!"-said every woman ever

Hurry Up and Wait

After all the noisy productivity of Monday and Tuesday, the relative silence on Wednesday and Thursday was welcomed. I suppose it would've been nice to see a few loose end type items being taken care of, but no one being here did give me a chance to "tag" any areas of concern uninterrupted.

I approached Mike last week about a few areas I had noticed that needed some attention. This wall isn't level down to the trim in this spot. There are a couple microscopic divots here. This whole area needs to be repainted. Mike reassured me that they'd planned on doing some more painting; the baseboards in particular as the floor installation process tends to leave the trim in need of touch up. His suggestion was to go around with painter's tape and mark what spots I was seeing. I tagged this and that, some areas where old paint was coming through, other's where it hadn't been painted at all, and other spots where it was just a reminder for me to ask Mike about something in that spot.

-----BREAK----

I have to go to work...

Ok, now it's Saturday, I'm back...

I wanted different knobs on our appliance pantry than what we'd put on all the other cabinets. Of course I fell in love with these knobs from Anthropologie:

But at $18 bucks a pop, dropping $100 on 5 knobs seemed a bit ridiculous (even if they are fabulous). So looking around, Hobby Lobby actually offers some neat looking knobs, AND they were having a sale this week. 50% off!

I brought home a few different options:

And ended up liking the one on the far right the best. I hurry back to Hobby Lobby the next day to scoop up some more (this was the last one on Wednesday, but the lady said they got their truck that afternoon and she thought there should be more on the shelves come Thursday). I get to the knob aisle, and there's one. Only one more. Harumph...Guess I'll just have to keep checking back, and buy them gradually!

------BREAK------

I just found out the new episode of Outlander came out On Demand early, so I need to watch summa this before work:

Ok, back again. It's Sunday now and I'm trying to type up some more before I go to work...again. (That episode of Outlander was pretty amazing if anyone was wondering!)

So after the floors got dropped off two weeks ago, and then we waited, and then they installed last Monday and Tuesday, and we waited again, the plan is to have them sanded Monday and Tuesday, with staining and polyurethane coating going on Wednesday and Thursday! Anticipating the floors getting done and this whole thing wrapping up, I figured I ought to test out the dishwasher as it's the only fixture left in the kitchen that I've yet to ensure is functioning properly. And I had a big box of plastic cups and mugs that needed to be washed. So in they go. I go to check on it about 45 minutes in to it's cycle and I see this:

Hmmmm...

Continue to observe....

I then proceed with hurrying to catch and sop up water.

Oh, my poor floors! 

After the cycle finished I opened the door and see that the dishwasher isn't draining in the slightest. Those Shamwow rags ended up being the best for absorbing water over and over vs. the standard rag towel. I, of course, send Mike an email right away and he said he'd get a plumber out to look at it. Fingers crossed it's an easy fix! It worked fine in the old kitchen. I'll let you know what ends up happening, but if the answer is "you need a new dishwasher" you can expect to see a broken dishwasher sitting there for a bit. 

P.S. Mike said the floors would be fine!

Floors!

Monday morning I get home from work and Mike has met the flooring guys at the house. They commence with laying out pieces and they start hammering, nailing, knocking, and making all other variety of noises. Ahhhh....sounds like progress!

I go bunker down on the couch to watch T.V. and otherwise embrace the stupor that overtakes me when I get off of three shifts in a row.

I'm in the middle of a perfectly mundane episode of House Hunters when lights, T.V., and the sawing overhead abruptly turns off. Oh hell, pull your hair back up Sam, they're going to have to come down and turn whatever breaker got flipped back on. I wait...and wait...and no one comes down. I muster up a few ounces of energy and climb up the stairs. The guys are outside on a smoke break, and we chat on whether it's just us or the whole neighborhood. We hear sirens off in the distance. Maybe someone hit a pole? Our friendly neighbor, Carolyn, starts walking up and asking if our power is out too. Well, that takes care of that; the whole neighborhood is out. I invite her in to see the progress and she's all kindness. We chat about kitchens, gardening, and delivering babies. I'm and L&D nurse and she's had 8 kids. This could go on for a while, but it doesn't because she has to get back to her brood. I go back downstairs to take advantage of the relative quiet. 

After obviously slipping off with Mr. Sandman, I wake up an hour later to air compressors and nail guns going off. Power's back on! Come to find out it was some sort of outage at the power station. After much hustle and bustle, they've got the living room finished:

And they've started in on the other areas:

Mike says Monday and Tuesday for getting the floors down. They have to sit for a day or two in their new location, and then they sand them down. He projects the sanding to be on Friday and next Monday, with staining and the polyurethane to go down over the following Tuesday and Wednesday. We're so close!!

Slow on the Home Front

This week has been pretty dull at the Wall residence. Monday we had the city plumbing inspector come by and we got the all clear in that department. The floors, after being dropped off last Friday, were to sit for 5-7 days and then they read the temperature, humidity, and/or other factors on Wednesday to determine that it's safe to start putting the floors in. Well, it's Thursday now, and no one came by yesterday. Mike said the flooring testers should be by today to get their necessary readings, with installation starting tomorrow.

Today, Mike and Wayne are here doing odds and ends. The glass has been put in the sideboard's doors. 

The toe kick vent was added. (I had spoken with Mike about that vent earlier in construction and he said he'd add it. When I noticed it still wasn't there, I reminded him about it. He said today that he'd forgotten about it; thank goodness I said something!) 

Outlet covers are getting replaced. Yeah! No more loose wires dangling about!

My personal projects have included working on that butcher block top, and I must say, it's looking darn good! After Ryan sanded it to smithereens, it was looking  a little gray (a la Restoration Hardware), and while this shading appeals to me, this is not the area we wanted to implement it. So Wednesday I did a couple coats of the stain, a few hours apart, and those wood filler spots that were the bane of my existence? Gone! The stain seemed to amplify the sanding lines and the retained original stain in a couple spots, but hey, that distressed look is still "in," right? 

Quick update: after typing this up on Thursday, I was trying to upload pictures and the computer froze. That gave time to say: the lady from the floor place came by late on Thursday and said the floors were good to go, but the guys would be coming on Monday instead of Friday. Ok, sure, fine, at least I'll get to sleep in my own bed on Friday before work! And someone from Ceramic Harmony came on Friday as well. The grout/sealant/whatever it's called in one of the joints between two slabs had not sealed completely, so he fixed that and added some extra sealant over a suspicious looking fissure. All better.

Hoppy Easter weekend!

Butcher Block Top

As you've been reading along, you will have seen my pride-and-joy marble countertops. They suit the style and flow of the space, and they're perfect. We have another area that needs a counter, and I wanted it to be something different, simply for a smidgen of variety. That space is on top of the 9 foot sideboard in the dining room.

When we knew that we'd be doing this sideboard, we asked Mike to let us know what it would cost to get a butcher block top for it. He estimated $1500. $1500?!?! You've got to be s%$#ting me! There's got to be another way to achieve what we want without forking over that kind of cash. 

In my explorations around Huntsville to get house ideas, I ended up at Southeastern Salvage on Jordan Lane. They have a beaucoup of home items, from tables and chairs, to rugs and curtains, and even cabinets, flooring and COUNTERTOP options. More specifically, they have some butcher block tops. While they have a sea of stuff in their warehouse, 

the only butcher block options they have are acacia or rubber wood. I'm not overly familiar with either type of wood, but the acacia has some color variances that don't really blend with what I was thinking, and the rubber wood has more of a maple look so that's what came home with us. 

Conveniently the measurements were perfect for the 9' we needed. Even better? The cost: $129.00+tax!! Cue the happy dance:

Ryan and I get it home, and tuck it safely away in the depths of the "band room" in the basement, and over the next month Ryan faithfully turns it over and over to get it to straighten itself naturally as it acclimated to it's new environment. Fast-forward through the past month and all it's construction, and we're to the point where we can get it ready for installation.

The butcher block starts out as raw wood. 

There are a few spots with wood filler that even out knots, dings or divots. Before applying any stain, we trimmed it down to it's new length (the depth was already perfect), and then routed the edges. Danny helped us with that last week:

Back home we did a light sanding with a damp cloth wipe-down. I also tried out a few stains on the trimmed off 1 foot piece.

Yes, that's two different stains. Top is Dark Walnut, bottom is Jacobean; both by Minwax. See that pale spot in the center of the board? That's a spot that has had wood filler put in it. Obviously, it doesn't absorb the stain like the rest of the wood. Shucks! I don't want that on the countertop...  A little more sanding ought to help!

Well, hope that worked. And only one way to find out! I picked the stain Dark Walnut, a low-lint (because I don't know that any cloth is really "lint-free"), and got to staining. I worked quickly, keeping the stain from creating any wet-to-dry lines on the surface of the wood. I felt pretty happy with the color.

But those spots!! Ugh! If a tree had the chicken pox I imagine it'd look a lot like the picture above. Well, that just won't do. After doing some more reading, most recommendations include stripping the stain off, scraping off what wood filler and it's residue you can, and stain again. So that's just what we do over the weekend.

I say "we," but in truth, Ryan did the grunt work. I helped a bit, but he really took down a lot of that stain. He used his orbital sander and a hand sander, both of which quickly became gunked up with the stain. The paint-scraper method seemed to work better at getting the bulk of the stain off so that the sanders could do their work of chipping away at the wood filler without just collecting stain residue. One recommendation (off of a thread on a gardening website) said to do a "water test" before the next stain application. Essentially, you put water where the stain originally did not set because of the wood filler. After sanding away at the wood filler, the idea is that the water should soak in, and thus, your stain should as well. It tried it on a few spots, and sure enough there were a couple spots that obviously needed more sanding. 

So now we're currently left with a butcher block piece of wood with beautifully routed edges, exceptionally sanded spots, and barely buffed areas that have substantial stain retention. The more we scrape, the more we sand, the more I worry about the overall texture and look of the wood. Will we be able to see the scrapes? Will that dag-blasted wood filler go back to the hell from whence it came? Will the stain even look good in the end? To be honest, we're not finished. I don't know what we'll have in the end. And even after the wondering and working at it, I'm still happy we haven't spent anywhere near that $1500. We'll keep plugging away and I'll be sure to fill you in on the final result. Current recommendations: if you're going to choose a butcher block top, go with one that has little to no wood filler previously put in (as there is a method to do wood filler wherein stain does absorb better than what we have, so you're safer just doing your own); also, if you have wood filler spots that you're concerned about, go with a lighter stain. I tried Special Walnut on the back of that 1 foot spare piece and it looked nice, more of the natural wood color really, but seemed like it would more adequately blend with the wood filler spots.

P.S. They dropped off our flooring on Friday!! You know you're getting close when the floors show up!

Mid-week boxes get checked

Tuesday

This morning I wake to the sweet sounds of tile being mechanically chiseled off our foyer's subfloor. Ryan and I had originally said just to keep the tile that was there, but during demo and reconstruction a few of the edge pieces were chipped.  After talking with Mike about how to replace the tile (we did have 5 extra loose tiles on hand), and then how to incorporate it with the new hardwoods, we decided to just let it go and do hardwoods everywhere. You see when the edges of mismatched floors meet up

you end up needing to do some sort of transition piece.

These are common. Plenty of houses have them. We actually had several in our last house, and I despised them. Dirt and hair gets caught under that edge. It creates a bump in the texture of the floor, and even putting a rug over it would give you a lumpy rug. I'm really glad that Mike brought up the idea of getting rid of the tile; I think we're going to be a lot happier with a nice, seamless floor.

To avoid the onslaught of new dust I:

-Picked up a few birthday presents at Barnes and Noble for my favorite almost-two-year-old.

-Grabbed lunch with Ryan.

-Went to La-z-boy/Kincaid to look at furniture and fabrics to get ideas of what we might be able to incorporate into the revamped space. "Miranda" was really trying to be helpful, but when I say I'm just looking, I mean it. "But you'll get an extra 20% off if you buy today." I respond with, "I'm not buying today, I'm just looking. I just want to see your fabrics and swivel chairs." She scampers off to look up a fabric I said I liked okay, and when she gets back she's trying to sell me a glider. I didn't say glider, I said swivel; but I don't have the heart to repeat myself for fear of losing my cool. I see other salespeople descending like vultures upon helpless chair-seekers. I kindly take her card, and vacate quickly.

-Bebopped around Target, buying a few inconsequential and unrelated-to-the-house things.

And after hearing that the glass for the cabinet doors won't be ready until later or tomorrow, I head back to the house. I get to see Mike and he's got our backsplash! It looks wonderful. He says the guys will be here Wednesday to put that in. I ask him several questions, hand over our next installment, and we both go about our merry business. I enjoy an afternoon of open windows and watching The Girls try to go hunting through screens. Ryan and I measure the sideboard base cabinets so we can get the butcher block top ready, label the cabinets with which knobs and pulls go where, use one of the ovens for the first time (just out-of-the-box scalloped potatoes), and then I check out pinterest for bifold door ideas.

Wednesday

This morning gets off to a more quiet start. There's a pressure washer running, but it's outside. And the tile guys aren't blaring the local country station. But there's a lot of work happening! The front of the house is looking a lot cleaner having all that old sawdust and drywall crumbs washed away, and the tile guys are well under way getting the backsplash laid out. I've got a few items to cover on the to-do list so I leave them to it.

-I picked up the glass from Huntsville Glass, and it looks great! I quickly run that back to the house as I do not want to ride around with these. My luck I'd get rear-ended.

-I grab lunch with a good buddy, Kim, at Viet Huong. They have amazing pho, and despite the fact that it's 70 degrees, I want steaming hot Vietnamese veggie soup.

-I proceed with hitting up Costco (gas and butter), Home Depot (paint roller and brushes), and Staples (wall calendar)...all while listening to Punjabi Hits on Pandora. Upbeat Indian music with a belly full of pho and the sunroof open is definitely a trifecta of happy. I highly recommend it. This was my favorite song today:

When I'm back home, it's nice and quiet. Everyone's finished up for the day, and I'm happy with how the backsplash turned out. The pictures are from my phone, and certainly don't do it justice. It matches up with a lot of the grey in the counter, and has a bit of a waving motion that reflects the movement in the counters.

Before Ryan has band practice tonight, he gets together with Danny up at the studio. Danny helps us cut the butcher block down then route it. 

There ended up being a one foot piece that was removed, so I'll be able to utilize that in sampling the different stains so we know which one to end up using. Ryan does the band thing, and I head back home. I'm watching "The Greatest Game Ever Played" when Ryan gets home, and a quiet evening at home after a day full of goals met is perfectly satisfying.