Long Time No Update

Hey there, folks. We are not dead, and the house is not collapsed in a pile of rubble. We went on a cruise for a week, and I got really, really sick, like seven weeks and two rounds of antibiotics kind of sick. If you are considering a souvenir to bring back from the Caribbean, may I suggest that this one was not the best choice?

Anyway.

Some stuff has happened. When last we saw your fearless heroes, we'd brought some books over to put in the library and messed around with the chandeliers a bit.

Well, the chandeliers are installed now, though I think it took longer and was more complicated for the electrician than it should have been.

The chandeliers in the front parlour and the library are the same, mostly because the two rooms are very open to each other and there's already different light fixtures in the dining room and in the front bay. I didn't need more stuff going on in there.

And the dining room chandelier is also working. I got a message from the electrician today that putting the LED chandelier bulbs in it was causing the arc fault breaker to trip, which didn't make sense at all (an arc fault breaker is supposed to trip when there is an arc fault, not when... I'm not sure what a light bulb could do to cause this to happen). Anyway, Noel and I went over after work and tested it out, installing each bulb one by one, and nothing was going wrong, so I guess our magical touch healed the chandelier.

We also got a new driveway, which is pretty cool. Seen here, the money shot of the new, wider curb cut that allows us to park side by side without having to drive around each other.

And the electrician installed the towel warmers, which is kind of not a massive thing but neat. This is the one in the front bathroom, our Victorian theme bathroom. It looks suitably fancy.

One thing I haven't gotten around to doing yet, on account of spending seven weeks sick and then another couple weeks trying to get all the work I was not doing while sick done, is installing the closet system we picked up at IKEA. There are a few pieces that were not available (like ALL THE SHELVES), but for the most part I could in theory install this system any day now.

And today, we took delivery of our new stove and refrigerator. There are some issues with the refrigerator (a big old dent in the front of it, plus for some reason there is no outlet for it?), but the stove is now in and looks great.

I guess in a different kind of world the edge of the stove would be flush with the counter, but I wasn't about to install extra-tall cabinets for that given my own height, so the stove is a little taller than the cabinets around it. This does not bother me, though the installer seemed to think it would. Clearly I have some issues.

Anyway, you may wonder when we are moving back home. I also wonder this, but we have one thing that is keeping us from doing so. Let me show you:

In places where protection paper was taped down, the top layer of the floor finish came up with the tape when it was removed. Initially I thought this was the tape delaminating and leaving the sticky stuff behind, but no, the whole top surface of the flooring finish peeled right off, leaving behind a more shiny surface below. It looks like what they did was finish the flooring glossy, then without sanding add a satin layer over the top. If you know painting, you know not sanding a glossy surface before painting it is asking for trouble.

Anyway, the certified independent inspector for the flooring company is coming next week to check it out, and until something is done about the floor finish we can't really move in or do much in the house, because no matter what he decides we're going to have to refinish all the wood flooring in the house (either the manufacturer pays for it or we do). And until that happens we can't really move anything more into the house that we'd just have to move out.

So there you go.

posted by ayse on 05/08/19