<p>Casement windows would be very nice indeed in that house. Oh well! I’m sure the double hung will look fine.</p>
<p>So, I sit with the window guy today (he’s not busy on Easter Sunday) and he confesses to me that he asked the Rep and we could have had casement windows after all. The jamb width he kept telling me was for double hung, not casement. That makes sense because there is only one window pane. Unfortunately $665 each for new casement vs $265 for clear upper sash so we are going to have to buy upper sashes. Not happy with the guy right now.</p>
<p>I have been so down in the weeds on Project #2 that I have not been able to provide any updates on the Spanish Bungalow. </p>
<p>But, I have to get Project #2 done by the end of next week so Spanish Bungalow is the step child right now. Meanwhile, we are almost done with one of the most beautiful Master Bathrooms (well, besides one that has 500-1000 sf available). The shower design is to die for. I’m not sure it will come out well in the picture I posted to our Flickr group. I’ll post more pictures when the lighting goes in and the tile work is completely done.</p>
<p>The photo makes it look like stark white tile. It’s really a gorgeous polished cream tile, with two waterfalls coming down the sides of blue/turquoise glass with a detail design of the ‘waterfall’ spilling into a reflecting pool on the shower floor. This is a walk in shower… no door. It took a lot of engineering and restructuring of the subfloor on the 2nd floor to allow for the slope down to the drain.</p>
<p>coralbrook, that shower looks beautiful. </p>
<p>We will be redoing our master bath [eventually]. What are the dimensions of the little triangular bench seat in your shower? </p>
<p>Unfortunately, that’s not the type of bench you can actually sit on. That’s a shaving shelf for the ladies. It should be about 18" high and as wide as you want.</p>
<p>The important thing is to make it solid and not just a shelf with open area underneath. It is a cleaning nightmare under the open shelf, even though open shelf makes the shower visually larger</p>
<p>Ah. Thanks. That’s why I asked – it looks very small. I was wondering if a sit-on seat could be that small, but apparently not!</p>
<p>PROGRESS UPDATE</p>
<p>Well, I finally gave in and picked a neutral window trim color for the house. If it was my house, my flip, I would have chosen something really fun because this neighborhood has homes with gorgeous and fun color combinations (craftsman colors). But, since it’s not my house I took the stucco color in and had it toned down 75% and used the lighter tone for the wood trim and garage door.</p>
<p>Then the Buyer wanted a metal iron gate for the side of the house. What a mistake, you can see through it and all you see when walking down the sidewalk is the neighbor’s ugly little strip of weeds.</p>
<p>Then we went to install her cabinets and discovered they butt up right next to the actual window. We had to take off the original wide window trim and now I have no idea how to trim the window. Probably going to have to put on some small trim.</p>
<p>Photos loaded</p>
<p>Meanwhile, over at Project #2 I have until Saturday to get the job done. All hands on deck, no one is working on the Spanish Bungalow this week. This is causing a problem because the buyer of Spanish Bungalow has suddenly sold her house in Pennsylvania and wants to move in quickly. </p>
<p>Sooooo, we are installing the new wood flooring on Project #2 and open the box with the stair nose and it is the wrong color, does not match the flooring. Big issue… I run to the flooring store last Thursday and show the salesman and he agrees and gets on the phone with the manufacturer’s rep. Yes, they will hand pick some new stairnose and ship it immediately. I beg to get it by Saturday but they tell me it will come on Monday.</p>
<p>I ask the salesman to please call me on Friday to confirm that it has shipped. No call. I call him at 10am on Saturday but he’s with a customer. He returns my call about 3pm on Saturday and confirms that stairnose will be here on Monday.</p>
<p>Well, today’s Monday. Flooring guys left the job at noon because they cannot go any further without stairnose.
I call the store and salesman is not working today. So I ask when they get their UPS shipment… between 12 and 2pm. I am at the store with my truck at 2pm and no one knows what I’m talking about. They can’t find any information. They start calling the wrong manufacturer. Then they call the right manufacturer and the manufacturer doesn’t know anything about the order. Manufacturer’s rep remembers the conversation but didn’t get an order. Salesman never faxed in the order. I have no idea what happened. All I know is that there is no stairnose and it looks like there isn’t going to be any stairnose until Wednesday.</p>
<p>My flooring guys have another job they have to start on Wednesday. They cannot return to my job after Wednesday and I have left them in the lurch with no work for 1 1/2 days. This is not good. Plus, I now have to reschedule every single thing that has to happen after the flooring goes in; final touch up paint, baseboard install, caulking and painting baseboard, final cleaning, carpet install.</p>
<p>I haven’t even figured out how to explain this to the owners yet. I really don’t like having to explain things to owners 
</p>
<p>Oh, coralbrook. You are teaching us all so much!</p>
<p>What is it with people? Ye gods.</p>
<p>Today, Tuesday, the salesman from the flooring store calls me like nothing happened and let’s me know that the stair nose replacement is coming via delivery truck from Los Angeles and he will call me as soon as it gets in. About noon he calls to tell me “Sorry” but he just doesn’t know what happened. Yes, the stair nose arrived but it is even darker than the original wrong color stair nose. He just doesn’t know how that happened. Obviously, they didn’t hand pick the stair nose and make sure that it matches the flooring in their current lot. </p>
<p>He has no idea how to fix the issue so I am going to have to drive back to the store and pick up the original 3 pieces and wish this had never happened. Owners are not going to be happy because they were counting on me to make it right.</p>
<p>Project #2 - we did not finish by Saturday (yesterday) as I had promised the owners. My lead carpenter got a phone call on Wednesday that his nephew passed away. He literally dropped his tools and told me he had to go to the funeral which is in the hinterlands of Mexico somewhere. 18 hr bus ride from Tijuana. He couldn’t even give me a date that he would be back. We have 500 linear feet of baseboard that needs to get installed and we have no progress since Wednesday. Yes, there are a lot of other details getting done, but I don’t trust just anyone to come in and start cutting the intricate baseboards we need.</p>
<p>So, had the weekly meeting with owners on Saturday and had to explain that we were not done. They were OK with it, but I am not OK with it. Every day that the crew is focused on Project #2 we are getting nothing done on the Spanish Bungalow. The Spanish Bungalow is where I am going to make any profit and it is just sitting dormant at this point.</p>
<p>BTW, had to go back to the flooring store and pick up the original stair nose. All flooring is installed now and the stairnose looks just fine. I have no idea why I spent a week going around in circles over that stupid detail!</p>
<p>coralbrook, that’s terrible for your carpenter, and terrible for your project. Is there no one else on your team who can do what he does?</p>
<p>He’s back today and we are on a mission to get done by Tuesday night. Hopefully we make it because garage door opener installers are coming to Spanish Bungalow Wednesday and we need to clear cabinets out of garage because they need to get in there. The install date sounded good on paper when I scheduled 2 weeks ago and now it doesn’t look good to make that date.</p>
<p>What a juggling act!!! Here to hoping that progress has zoomed along…</p>
<p>Project #2 Finished!</p>
<p>We finished Project #2 remodel last week. I was about a week late in finishing but the house looks amazing. This house was stuck in the 90s with mauve granite everywhere, soffits in the bathrooms, cheap Pergo flooring and weird 12x12 marble flooring. We gutted the two bathrooms, ripped out flooring, got rid of the intercom system and completely reconfigured the living room fireplace to make everything more contemporary.</p>
<p>I am putting the link here for the final photos which were taken for the sales listing. This link is not a blog, just a set of photos so it should be OK.</p>
<p><a href=“http://tours.previewfirst.com/virtual_tours/24224/photos”>http://tours.previewfirst.com/virtual_tours/24224/photos</a></p>
<p>Back to work on the Spanish Bungalow. I posted some more photos to the Flickr group but for some reason my Yahoo ID expired and I had a hard time trying to get back into the photos on Flickr. It has been so so so hot here, with fires everywhere, that I’m just too exhausted in the evenings when I get home to give updates. Hopefully I will be able to give full updates soon.</p>
<p>coralbrook: Don’t know what happened, but when I go into the Flicker account I think it’s your real name at the top left. Someone’s name, anyway.</p>
<p>The photos of Project 2 look wonderful. Someone will be very happy there. </p>
<p>Almost time to find the next project, eh?</p>
<p>Congrats on getting it done. House looks great!</p>
<p>Coralbrook, it looks lovely!!!</p>
<p>Thank you so much for letting me know that my info was showing up. As I said earlier, for some reason my Yahoo account had ‘expired’ and I had to create a new account just to get into Flickr to work on the photos. I think I fixed it now.</p>
<p>We are working all weekend trying to make a deadline for appraisal inspection next week. The buyer of the Spanish Bungalow is getting a 50% loan for her purchase and the lender has to send in an appraiser. We are doing all kinds of stupid stuff to get past the appraisal inspection. </p>
<p>For example, the Buyer hasn’t selected flooring for the bathroom yet so we are throwing down vinyl flooring left over from her kitchen selection. The radiant floor heat cannot be turned on with that vinyl flooring, so I had to make sure it cannot get turned on. Also, to make it waterproof we had to cut pieces of quarter round and put a bead of silicone around it to anchor the ‘floating’ vinyl floor and make sure water from the shower dam doesn’t run underneath the vinyl floor and eat up the thinset that is holding in the radiant floor heat. </p>
<p>Had to run around and put white ceiling plates over all the lighting wires because she isn’t going to install lighting until after she moves in.</p>
<p>She doesn’t want any paint on the walls yet because she wants to select her color after she gets to San Diego. So, we had to madly paint primer over everything because there was peeling paint and the appraiser wouldn’t like it.</p>
<p>And on and on. Spending the week making a long list of things we need to get done before appraiser comes in.</p>