Odds and Ends

You might've guessed already by the sad lack of pictures in this post that there was no stunning or significant progress this week. In our weekly construction meeting, the contractor planned to have the subfloor in on the first floor, the windows installed and the framing largely finished. Taking stock on Saturday, we have about 80% of the subfloor finished, the windows have arrived on site, but are not installed, and the framing upstairs is largely done... almost no framing done downstairs. Though we're both disappointed and a little nervous about the pace of work this week, we're not going to get our our panties in a bunch quite yet. We're aiming to have our cabinets ordered by the end of the coming week (the cabinet guy is on vacation the last week or two of June). Once ordered, those take about 8 weeks to arrive, and according to the contractor and his schedule moving forward, that may hold up the completion of the project. Can't order the cabinets until the framing is complete... keep your fingers crossed.

Other news:

Andy and I went on an appliance bargain hunt this past weekend and bagged a few great deals... wall oven is now sitting in our living room next to the dishwasher waiting for installation, and the Advantium microwave/convection oven/miracle worker is resting comfortably in our storage unit. Still to buy/order: bathroom fixtures, toilet, sink, kitchen fixtures, garbage disposal...

In yet another reversal of fortune, the BAR came out a few weeks ago and established that yes, we do have original siding on the original section of the house (back wall of original house was the dining room wall... old kitchen and second bedroom upstairs added circa 1910). The rule states that we have to preserve the existing siding if less than 10% is damaged beyond repair. Our contractor is hoping to find that it's in poor shape. He claims it's mostly a safety and standard of quality issue, but I think he's hoping for a bigger payout (and he'd likely make a lot more on materials for replacing everything, than he'd make on labor to restore the original). Nothing wrong with that, but I'm a preservationist at heart. If the siding is in decent shape, we'll try to do what we can to keep it.