We are finally feeling like we are almost done. The City inspectors have been through the house and have given us a final set of signatures. What a relief that is! I knew that I was dreading the City inspections because the rules about building are pretty arcane and change year-to-year. Since our project has taken a whopping six years from initial design to completion, a lot of rules have changed.
Once the final inspection was over, Miranda and I opened a very good bottle of champagne and just wandered around the house for a while. It was hard to believe the amount of time and effort put in to get the house into the shape necessary for the inspection. All of the little things you put off need to get done before the inspector shows up. All the lights need to be installed, all of the switch plates and outlet covers need to be on, all the plumbing needs to be functional (no leaks please!).
Master Bathroom
When I last blogged, we had finished all of the structural and had started the final details, namely the master bathroom tile work. The master bathroom tiling went pretty smoothly. The only hiccup was the frameless shower door. We made many decisions that should have made the shower glass go smoothly as well (tile placement, making sure the walls were plumb, etc.) however, you don't think of everything. We thought we were smart to have the shower glass sales person came over to take measurements before the tile was grouted so that if anything needed to be changed, it would be easy to do. However, the sales person seemed very hurried to take the measurements and get out of there instead of taking time to work with us on what we really wanted. Had he made one suggestion to have us change some of the decorative tile, many if not all of the problems we encountered would have gone away. Instead, he told us that we would have to cut a channel into the decorative tiles for the glass to allow it to be mounted properly to the wall. He told us to have our tile person do this, because you never know who you'll get to do the glass install and they may just butcher the tile to get the glass to fit. That should have been a warning to us to find someone else. He also wanted to sell us the standard glass instead of the more expensive Starlight (ultra clear) glass because "you'll never notice the difference."
We did as he suggested and cut the very expensive decorative tile to make room for the glass. When the glass installer showed up several weeks later, he told us first that the glass would need to be installed oddly (not flush to the tile in all places) because of the decorative tile, but that they needed to reorder the door to be cut oddly to fit the out-of-plumb glass. In doing this, the upper hinge for the door would sit half on the decorative tile and half off. The installer was trying to get us to cut the tile to fit the hinge in. Instead, I suggested that we simply move the hinge on the new door up until it was above the decorative part.
When the new door arrived, it fit fine, but the cuts in the tile that we made in response to the sales person's advice were unnecessary. So, we had to go back to the tile setter and have him remove the cut tiles, and replace them with new ones. This was a little tricky especially since the glass door was now in the way.
Luckily we had insisted on the Starlight glass and at least the color was better than it would have been had it been the typical green glass.
The glass is fine, but not exactly what we would have liked based on the odd shape and the need for lots of caulk.
We also had a couple of scares with the installation of the shower fixtures themselves. One of them had a minor leak immediately after being installed. We didn't catch it immediately, but we did fix it by the next morning. That meant a minor leak in the walls for about 12 hours. The result was that the wall of the floor below got wet causing the paint and caulk around a pass-through to need to be replaced along with one of the casement boards.
The second shower fixture was bit more of a problem. When the fixture was installed the first time, one of the parts was accidentally stripped. That meant frantic calls to the manufacturer who told us that we would be lucky to get the showers installed as the vendor that provided the shower to them went out of business several years ago and there are no spare parts. Here is when having a very good contractor comes into play. Instead of telling us to go find a new shower, he found both a place to have the stripped part re-threaded and a replacement part made to fit the new threading. He also found a plater to have one of the damaged parts re-plated to match the other parts. The result is a perfect match to the other shower fixture.
All-in-all, the master bathroom is complete and very beautiful.
Final Details
The other major portion of the project that needed to be completed was the basement. We needed to cleanup the wavy walls and reset some doors so that all of them were the same height and swung correctly. Along with installing all of the trim work, it took the better part of two months to finish out the basement and get it painted. With help from Miranda's Mom and step-Dad and our painter, we got the basement painted in a pretty good time.
What's next?
With the house basically complete, we have embarked on correcting a couple of details that weren't in the original plans. Specifically, we are replacing our old galvanized steel water main with a shiny new copper line and at the same time we are fixing our front steps to the house.
Now we just need to move out of the upstairs for a couple of days next week to have the first floor and stairs sanded and urethaned for the last time. Then comes the crazy task of moving into our new old-home.
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