Hell Week

So where was I.....

Moving again was just hell. We weren't ready to do it a second time in one month. I'm promised we'll hire movers to take us back into the house, we had no business doing this alone (even with Steve's help moving the furniture). I'm an exhausted, blithering idiot and although he might argue the point, Stan is no better. Our large 3 car garage is packed to the rafters with boxes and furniture. In the driveway lives a porta-potty, a huge dumpster and a load of lumber.

On Wednesday demo began, by Friday night all the walls, cabinets, plumbing, drywall and some of the floor were gone. How they worked so quickly is beyond my comprehension (most of them without masks!). Monday and Tuesday floor removal will continue and framing will begin.  (Pics shows a view of the "family room" fireplace area before and after plus a view of the "breakfast nook" soon to be my work space)



Fast tracking the decisions has also been exhausting and frustrating. We seem to be all over the County of San Diego looking at floors, plumbing fixtures, doors, granite, Caesarstone, etc. ( I sent you a link to our granite choice in the last post but I understand it didn't work - perhaps because it was misspelled. I'll try to improve my skills with this blog thing.) Caesarstone is a product made up of 95% granite, the rest resin - some of it with recycled glass. It is less expensive than granite, more contemporary looking (to my mind) and has all the qualities of granite - durable, hard, easy to clean. We're using this material in several locations. In the kitchen all the counters, except for the island (the Jurrasic Green granite) will be Caesarstone, color "Buttermilk". It will require 2 slabs with nothing leftover. Since my office/work space is adjacent to the kitchen, the counter will be of the same material. In the laundry room it will be "White Ash" (white with flecks of gray glass), a remnant that will look great with the red washer and dryer. The guest bath and powder will be remnants of "Mocha". We've also selected glass tiles for the backsplash in the kitchen, glass mosaic tile for the bath backsplashes and a polished limestone tile called "Seagrass" for the floors and shower surround. Selecting a wood floor was the final bit of insanity for last week. Too many choices and after standing in the showroom for two hrs. in Santee (out in the middle of frickin nowhere!!!!), I would have picked just about anything to get it over with. We brought samples home (a more relaxing place to make choices) over the weekend and were able to make a decision - Brazilian Tiger Mahogany. Reddish, lots of grain, I hope it works cause we're both over it!

Sorting out our issues with Marrokal, our contractors, is difficult and anxiety producing. Basically we're used to having a line-item budget and regular meetings with our contractors to know where we are visa-vie the budget. When we nixed some of their great plans for this house and said we'll spend X amount, what exactly did they cut to get us to that number? One cost reduction (without our prior knowledge) was fixtures - turns out we were supposed to pick toilets, sinks and fixtures for two baths and kitchen for $2000!!!! HELLO OUT THERE- what were they thinking??? There was no discussion regarding our choices or likes and dislikes. At the outset we made it clear this house is to reflect champagne taste on a beer budget ..... it can be done. Marrokal is more interested in the champagne budget because, duh, they get more money. I get that but I don't get creating a budget and not sharing every item with the homeowner. Annoying. Obviously we didn't ask all the right questions and make our desires known - a problem created by hurrying the process and minimal brain cell activity on the part of the homeowners!

I started this blog entry Saturday evening and here we are on Monday morning. Things look brighter today. It helped that we did nothing yesterday, absolutely nothing. We'll take a field trip to L.A. this week to look at doors, maybe rent a truck to bring them down here unless we find something equally as good at the right price. We have to return our samples to the floor store in, OMG, Santee and sign off on the final plan revisions. Need to select knobs and drawer pulls and make some decisions about window coverings and/or replacing some of the windows. Might get in some garden design and implementation - that would make me happy. And Stan needs to golf this week!

Maybe if we were younger the fast pace would have been easier. I liked having time to researcher everything well in advance of choices, not a luxury we have now. Having said that, we can't wait for all to be over. Stay tuned...........






Bless that man I love - he just had to bring his Ikea chair to the rental house and I'd already left in the Volvo.