cb, do not lose sleep about the closet organizers. I hate the metal lattice things… my friend hates wooden shelving. And I redid the closets soon after we moved in because I wanted more flexibility - and because I started my collection of shoes! 
So… if the closets are bare, it will not kill the deal.
Where is the UES of Manhatten? I cannot imagine having the luxury of renting for 6 months while you renovate your new home. What a luxury for her!
Right now the congratulatory gift I would want is a massage and foot rub. My feet hurt so bad right now.
But all kidding aside, you should visit and go kitchen design shopping with her or something. Or maybe offer to buy her dream stove for her new kitchen (although then she cannot take it with her when she moves - not even sure if she cooks enough to warrant the dream stove!)
There are lots of other things you can do to help. Ask her to send you 3-4 pictures of her dream kitchen style. Then you could do some online shopping for her and find similar lighting fixtures at a bargain price, appliances on sale, wall color ideas. Of course, this might start annoying her or she might appreciate it.
Loaded some new photos. I was actually going to take ‘twilight photos’ but my phone died
Love the pics! The house looks great!
cb, I love the light in the staircase! And to think those stairs didn’t even exist when you bought the house!
I also love waking up in the morning on East coast time and seeing what you posted at night on West coast time.
I like the brick wall painted dark. I didn’t mind the light color, but it does look better in the darker color.
My job is so glamorous!
I am living off 5 hours of sleep for 4 days in a row here. I can’t get to sleep at night because my head is swimming with details missed and worrying about stuff. Then I am getting up in the dark really early in the morning to start making lists of things that need to get done and rushing off to Home Depot to get stuff so that I can get to the project by 7am.
Today we have to go through everything and make a giant dump run. Our main County Dump makes mulch and compost and you can load it for free. I"m going to come back from the dump with a lot of compost to finish out the front yard and give it a polished look.
I contacted a landscaper guy and he is going to the wholesale nursery today and dropping off two big trees to complete the front yard. After a lot of phone calls he located a Slim Red Bottlebrush that is called out on my landscape plan but a 15 gal specimen is $250! that’s not going to happen. We are settling for a large White Bird of Paradise that will cover the utility boxes. And then he suggested a dwarf Magnolia Gem for a second tree with some height. I panicked in the middle of the night because I realized where he suggested planting it is going to cover up the house numbers and house numbers are big deal to the City to pass final inspection. We are going to have to find another place in the dinky small yard to plant it. Don’t really want it on the other side of the walkway because then it will block the railing (which still hasn’t been built!!!)
Regarding staircase… like everyone else I thought it was going to turn into a dark horrible tunnel. That’s why I spent time and money on the step lights which you all recommended (thanks for the input!). Between the window located at the bottom of the stairs, the recessed lighting at top of stairs and the amount of natural light in the house - staircase looks wide (probably will shrink up when we get the handrail on), bright and inviting.
We had an interesting issue with the ‘meter’ inspection yesterday. First, no one, including building inspector, could figure out why we had to have a meter inspection. We never touched the main meter on the front of the house. The meter was upgraded by the contractor who did the Quiet Home program retrofit - house needed more juice for the new AC system that was installed.
For some reason the meter is located at about 7-8ft off the ground level at the street. This is definitely not to code and very difficult to get to. My electrician immediately told me that the meter was located too high and we could get in trouble. But, knowing that we were going to have an inspection, I researched the permit history and was armed with Permit Nbr, Contractor Name, Date of Final Inspection and name of Building Inspector that approved the 2012 meter retrofit. I think that the meter ended up so high because of the cage built around the house and the fact that there was a wood deck walkway built up about 2 ft from the street level.
Anyway, by coincidence, the meter was approved by current inspector’s boss (who must have gotten a promotion since 2012). Inspector definitely noted that meter was not to code, measured the height and then said, “Well, it is a pre-existing condition and my boss approved it in 2012, nothing we can do”.
Regarding closets
It is very hard to design a nice closet organizer to sell the house. Every person is different on what they really need to make perfect storage in their closet. Hundreds of shoes?? Unusually large amount of long dresses? A single bachelor that needs a lot of drawers and pant hanging?
Many times I will leave the closet bare and either not bother with it, or offer a $$ credit to buyer to purchase and install closet interiors. I even offer to provide installation of a closet system that they purchase.
My main issue is that I don’t even have closet doors on the small bedroom closets yet. They are both some strange size that I cannot find and I haven’t come up with a solution yet. One closet did not have doors on it because the renter had converted it to a small office with a desk built into closet. the other closet had cheap flimsy doors that were thrown away.
@coralbrook re #2761: The UES of Manhattan is the Upper East Side – generally between 59th and 96th streets, from Fifth Avenue to York Avenue.
I think I’m repeating myself…over and over. It looks fantastic!
We Made It!!
Front is done - railing is built and I love how it gives another dimension to the front yard. Lots of sweat and money went into all this landscaping. When I watch the flip shows they just throw down some sod and some edge plants. I’d get shot if I put down a whole yard of sod here in San Diego.
Another freakish hot day - it is so hot in the front of the house trying to get work done. The house blocks all the breeze.
Countertops arrived and if it wasn’t the last minute I would throw out the granite I chose for downstairs bathroom. It looks horrible with the strange brown color of the vanity cabinet. I was going to have the poor painter sand down the whole cabinet and paint it a complementary color to the granite (because it is too late to change the granite). But my agent prevailed and said we will live with it. “Buyers will have decided if they love the house before they get down to this last bathroom in the back”. That entire bathroom is just an embarrassing design mistake, I feel like I treated it as an after thought and I shouldn’t give up that quickly. Sure hope she doesn’t put that ridiculous "Professional Designer’ in the listing descrption.
Tons of touchup paint and an entire cleaning of the house today (except kitchen which is still a disaster!). Of course… cleaning help is standing around trying to clean bathrooms and finally the countertop guys show up. They immediately set up saw horses and start grinding everything and granite dust is just flying onto my pristine clean windows. They are tramping all over and did not get done until about 2:30pm, about one hour before the cleaning help left. Guess who gets to clean the bathrooms now. I have never been so mad at the granite guys. They were supposed to install on Saturday. Now we are going to have to do our stupid trick of just dropping in the faucets and not hooking them up to any real plumbing.
I forgot to mention that I have a favorite window cleaning company because they do a really good job. But they have become so expensive that I am not going to be able to use them again. After job all done, the guy tells me $587. WHAT??? $600 for 4 hours of window cleaning? Are you kidding me? Ridiculous.
Some new photos loaded.
Wow, what a day! Off to peek @ photos.
OK, we made it but the staging company did not. We were scheduled to have photos Wednesday Oct 14 at 11am. Staging company has been scheduled for several weeks for Tuesday Oct 13. She sends an email last night to my agent “Ready for Wednesday?”. Uhhh no, we have made it clear that it is Tuesday. She shows up with a truck about 2pm and drops off 2 rooms of stuff, sets up one bed (which is hideous and we are going to have to put our own bedspread on it) and then starts explaining that the ‘rest of the stuff’ is arriving about 10am on Wednesday. Then she just leaves and doesn’t set anything up.
The one thing she set up in the entryway, we hated. So, in the end I am going to have to load up some of my personal furniture and drag it over to the project. I really wanted to avoid that.
Twilight photos will be Wednesday evening and we had to postpone day time photos to Thursday afternoon. Guess my agent is going to have a Broker Open House Caravan before the property even has photos or gets listed. This will be interesting whether anyone comes.
Wow, be sure to let the realtor know about the staging company dud–what a HUGE disappointment. So sorry your granite counter guys added so much work for you and threw your time schedule off. You’ve certainly had a TON of things to coordinate. I’d be annoyed as heck, but you seem to take everything in stride.
The houes looks amazing! Everything you add just makes it look better & better!
Were you required to put a railing up? Is it going to get painted to match the house?
I will confess I am not that fond of the railing. I think the open porch looked fine.
How many guys were there cleaning windows? There were two in one of the pictures. If there were only two, that would be almost $75/hour for the labor. You are a repeat customer, I would call the company and find out what is going on, and get a more realistic price.
I second the NRE’s sentiment about the railing. It will provide a nice hiding area for UPS etc. delivery guys to dump packages, but other than that, it kind of stands out. I too think the open porch was OK. I think in my neck of the woods, anything less than 2 ft off the ground does not need railing at all.
Other than that minor thing, WOW! It is amazing.
I’m not a fan of the redwood railing either.
As it’s been installed, I would vote to paint it the same blue as the door, which is a great accent color. It’s a risky move, but I would love it. Others may not. Unless the full view of the house shows otherwise, I think the redwood railing looks out of place in front of the porch even considering the matching gate and fencing across the driveway.
No, leave the redwood railing. Matching with the gate and fencing pulls it all together.
If I were your agent, I’d be furious with the staging company. That is not professional. They must understand that timing matters with these things. Basically they didn’t keep their end of the bargain.