As with most remodels, there will inevitably be a week where a holiday falls. And here in the south, holidays are very important. It is an excellent excuse to spend time with friends and family, eat lots of food, and no one, not even clients expect you to work. Quite a difference from living out west. I must say, I really enjoy it! Most contractors do too. They work really hard, long hours, and vacations give them a moment to recoup, energize and hit the ground running when they return to work. Sometimes homeowners don’t like holidays falling in the middle of their remodels. And I can understand that. You feel like you have a remodeling pace that’s working well and perhaps that holiday could cause some interruption. Not true. That vacation is going to revitalize an otherwise overworked contractor….and may even put a pep back in the designers step too!
So as we came into our pre-holiday weekend the things that were hot on the list to complete: Paint prep, lighting, trim work and marble selection. We had to reselect our marble slabs 🙁 Unfortunately the original slab just wasn’t going to work.
1) Trim:
One of the hardest things that I come up against with remodels as do many homeowners: matching a homes original products! Mrs. S loved her previous trim….the one that is 26 years old! As luck would have it, it was no longer milled and unavailable to purchase. Ritchie has a wonderful company that hand mills trims, doors, and moldings for historic homes, but we found out…it wasn’t cost effective, at all! So what are a designer/contractor duo to do? I wasn’t worried, I had Ritchie, the contractor extraordinaire!
The original trim (shown below)…OK, totally bad pic, but it’s all I got, sorry!
And the new custom made, hill-billy/macquiver trim, by Ritchie (shown below). He took four pieces of molding, smashed them together, included the wall as a part of the trim, and then finished it off with quarter round. I’m sorry folks, but he’s a genius, and it cost pennies compared to the alternative. And yes it took Ritchie awhile to build it, but it looks amazing!
2) Walls
Walls were completed on Monday. They received a final sanding to prepare for the base coat of paint. Now this does not guarantee perfection. Ritchie requires the base primer to be applied to confirm that his walls are perfect. The first coat of primer goes up Friday, at which point Ritchie may or may not require drywall guy to return for minor touch up. Perfection required!
3) Marble
Shown above, this was our original selection for our counters. However, despite the fabricator telling me he could make this slab work…turns out he couldn’t. Each job is completely different and requires different things. For this remodel I want marble counters, and tub surround. Had we only done the counters the slab would have worked fine. But adding the tub brought us up to 65 feet of needed material. The average slab is 9’x6′, and is 50 square feet. However, with waste, a typical slab yields about 35-40 feet. And being that the material is natural stone, each piece can vary slightly in size. Our slab (shown above) was 12′ long by 5.5′. By looking at the numbers we should have been able to achieve what we were wanting to do….but the cuts were not coming out favorable for seams, so we moved on to this one:
This one was beautiful in person, Mrs S loved it, and they have two available slabs for purchase. Our previous selection only had one slab, hence the problem of not enough material.
4) Lights
All of the lights were installed, and they will get hooked up to the juice next week. The patches that look like water spots on the ceiling are where the old lights were. I am a huge fan of lighting. But not so much of the 6″ can with black craters for trim. All lights, previously black holes in the ceiling, were replaced, updated and added to, with new 4″ halogens, with beautiful clear trims.
Week 7 in a nutshell. Our next post, week 8 will be light on work. The holiday has consumed most of my contractors, including Ritchie for three days worth of work. And as I mentioned above, a contractor coming off of vacation is a happier more productive contractor, so don’t stress if a holiday hits your remodel!
If you missed week one, click here.
If you missed week two, Click here
If you missed week three, click here
If you missed week four and five, click here
If you missed week six, click here
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images: AB HOME Interiors, spoonfed design
This is really fascinating. Even though I am still living it three years after I started it