Plumbing issue might be minor

Sean and Joel came by today and checked out the sewage smell. When I had tried sniffing the various drains in the bathroom I didn't feel that it was any stronger in one than another, but Sean said it was stronger coming out of the bathtub. Since the tub and shower are separate and I haven't used the tub in about a month, he figures it was just that the water in the P-trap evaporated. He checked to make sure it wasn't leaking (via the fan hole in the ceiling of the bathroom downstairs) and it sounds like he's going to call a plumber anyway to ask, but he sounded pretty confident that's all it is.

As for painting, he's refunding us half of what we paid for painting -- so $400. Brooke will do what he can, and we'll hire a professional painter for the tricky parts. We wanted Sean to pay for half of the professional painter, and he didn't want to pay anything, so we compromised. After Sean had left, Brooke said something to the effect of, "Well, you know you've had a successful negotiation when no one is totally happy."

Weeks = Days

So after my last post, we decided not to send that email at all (but it felt good typing it) and instead wait and see what happened. Brooke went out the next day and bought some paint, as we had decided to just finish painting ourselves, and hire someone to do the tricky bits. (We had previously got 4 painters to give us quotes and they ranged from $2,500 to $10,000 for the whole job, so we chose the $4,000 quoter.)

After he got back with the paint, we heard from Sean who said that it was actually only going to be one week. So that was a definite improvement, but we decided to go ahead with painting anyway.

Joel came by on Saturday briefly and filled the holes in the grout in the shower that we had pointed out a few days before (and hadn't used that shower since then) and then off they went out of town.

Today, Friday, Joel called around lunch time to say he was back and could he come by in the afternoon. He spent a little under two hours here finishing up some odds and ends, like making the gate outside swing the other (more logical) way, and putting in the countertop above the drawers in the bathroom. I didn't mention that we'd done our own painting, but just asked him to do "everything but painting".

We'll be meeting with them on Monday so we can re-address this issue then.

Another thing that has come up is we've noticed a bad (sewage-like) smell in the bathroom a couple of times. Cross your fingers we don't have a major plumbing problem. *Sigh*

Please excuse me while I scream

Yesterday, Joel arrived around 9:00 as he has been doing faithfully for about three weeks. I left the house at 11:00 and returned around 2:00 and he wasn't there, but he often goes for lunch pretty late so expected he'd return. Nope, and he didn't show up at all today until about 5:00. He spoke to Brooke (I was making supper) and after he left I asked Brooke what he'd said.

He and Sean apparently are going out of town for several weeks, and they'll get back to us when the new window comes and finish up then.

I was so mad when I heard that I was ready to file a claim in small claims court on the spot. Instead we've drafted an email to Sean and haven't sent it yet.

Stay tuned...

Blinds

We have blinds now, and I love them. Which is nice, because it turns out that blinds are expensive! We went with cellular blinds downstairs and pleated upstairs.

The blinds on big window downstairs can be opened from top or bottom, or both.


The tall skinny window upstairs is the same way (top down bottom up) but all the other blinds are just normal.

The glass blocks now have grout. In fact they have more grout than shown in this picture which was taken yesterday, but I didn't take a picture of it today. The black things at the top are shims holding the piece of wood tight up to the trim while the glue dries (I assume). Today those are gone and it's all filled in with the grout.

A week of paint

Joel was here pretty much all week painting inside. It's looking better, but I don't think he's done much around the wall/ceiling line, which is where it is most noticeably bad. I think it's improving, though.

We had a meeting with Sean on Tuesday and he said that everything should be done in, get this, six more weeks. But that's including the time it takes to order a new window for the bedroom. The building inspector decided that the window that opens at the top currently needs to open at the bottom, so a whole new window has to be ordered. It makes me mad because it was built exactly how it was shown on the plans that they approved -- why didn't they catch it then?

The blinds people called this week and our blinds have arrived and will be installed on Monday.

Work was done this week

Since I posted on Tuesday, the rest of the glass blocks were installed (although the wall isn't done yet; there is still grout to be added, and a 1-cm gap at the top to be filled), the towel rack was hung, and the drawers were remade. They are now in a box, essentially, so the drawers themselves miss the edge of the door trim.

The flooring guy came and fixed our lino (the joins were poorly done) but I forgot to remind him to put a piece on the lid for the floor safe. He was also supposed to trim the join in the carpet but didn't have his special carpet-trimming scissors so is going to come back anyway. The lino looks great now, anyway!

Outside, we now have a gate. It's kind of interesting how they did it - we asked for the gate to be able to open 180 degrees so we could swing it right back out of the way the way we did with our original gate - we never closed it. He went us one better and made it so the entire fence opens. So there's the gate part, which is attached to the house by a hinge, and then all of the rest is attached to the big fence with another hinge. The hinge on the fence is the wrong way around though, as it swings out into the driveway (and would hit the car) rather than swinging flat against the other fence, so I will ask him to switch that around next week.

They started fixing the interior paint today, too. First coat of the entry hall was done. It needs some sanding though as it's pretty rough looking yet.

Finally a start on the glass blocks

So, no work was done on Thursday or Friday last week, and none yesterday as it was a long weekend, but today a few small items got picked off the to-do list (like hanging the toilet paper holder; seriously, how hard was it that they put it off for this long?) but they also started on the glass blocks. The plan is to finish them tomorrow, and our bedroom will finally have all its walls in place! The glue is pretty smelly, though, so I'm taking the baby to sleep in the guest room tonight.

Joel also tried to put up the drawers in the bathroom, but it turns out he forgot to account for the trim around the door. They couldn't open so he took them away again to adjust them. In this picture you can see the drawer slider things on the wall. (And our toilet paper holder!)