Hope they are really painting and not just chatting about boats, cars, or motorcycles! 
My builder subbed out the painting, the company he picked bid on the job. So if they want to waste time chatting about cars and what-not, at least itās not costing me more money. 
I guess? It is a fairly big job, but 3-4 guys x 7 days is a lot of hours.
My fancy hand-made backsplash tile gets delivered Friday! Only took 9+ weeks to get. And we were worried it would get here after everything else is done.
My husband actually hired movers who specialize in small jobs to haul the vanity upstairs. Three guys came, and they had it up there in under five minutes from pulling into the driveway.
At first the wife of the guy who owns the company had refused the job because they wouldnāt be able to use any equipment, but H called back with a bunch of measurements and they agreed to do it.
I observed that they knew what they were doing, knew what each of them could do, physically, and trusted each other. Definitely better than amateur hour led by H, who both overthinks everything and doesnāt play well with others.
Meanwhile, in contrast to everyone elseās builder woes, I love my guys more every day. The lead guy brought me fresh jalapenos from his brotherās garden today. Heās bringing another 6 chickens next week. Weāre pals now. Iām hoping they can do the downstairs bathroom. Then maybe H would agree to spring for the second bath upstairs we desperately need.
āMy builder subbed out the painting, the company he picked bid on the job. So if they want to waste time chatting about cars and what-not, at least itās not costing me more money.ā
Hope the paint job that is dragging out will not send a ripple through your project schedule.
Our siding crew was amazing. Very fast and efficient, even though cutting hardi board is not a cakewalk. Our door folks were very fast and good, too. Ditto the two window crews and the guys who came to fix the deck footings. But the guys who put back the support post removed by the previous ownerās contractors were sloppy, made a giant mess, and took twice as long as they really needed to.
Oh yeah, and the painting crew was stellar. Just outstanding. 
(We actually had people ask who painted our house. Nope, they are not available. )
Normally the pros are 5x faster than I could do something (if I could even do it) and do a better job.
What theyāve done so far looks really good, Iām just surprised it is taking so long.
I love my builder, but one thing he wasnāt really willing to do was have a detailed schedule of exactly what was going to happen when, and how long it would take. Too many variables, too many unknowns, heās not into spreadsheets and project management software and what-not. So the schedule is more like āthe floor guys will come after the painters are doneā rather than āthe floor guys will start September 5thā and then there is a slippage.
@notrichenough - Thatās how are contractor is with the time line too. It makes me crazy!
The builder of our last house had everyone scheduled down to the hour.
New construction is a different beast, there are no surprises, it makes for a much more predictable build, especially if youāve built that house before and arenāt using subs.
With renovations, every wall you open is a potential problem, tying the old to the new is often problematic, nothing is square, most companies doing reno are too small to employ all the trades so they have to sub stuff out, etc.
For example - the electrician discovered that he had to replace the breaker box and re-wire all the breakers. He didnāt know this until he opened the panel and started to work on it. That cost a couple of days. While framing, they discovered a dip in the floor. They had to stop and add some support in the basement to raise the floor back to level. There were a couple of times he had to go back to the architect to make a minor change - this involved the architect redoing some stuff, having to run it past the structural engineer to recalculate some stuff, and going to the building department for approval. Each time cost a few days to get everything through the process. Etc.
So itās much harder to rigidly schedule a renovation.
We are having project fatigue too, and weāre mostly just in the getting bids and picking contractor phase! This 1900 farmhouse was in worse than anticipated shape once we started digging. Iāve been stripping 11" oak detailed woodwork for an eternity. There are a billion other things to do before winter, and contractors here are busy.
Butā¦my painter is the best! She painted my former house and rentals multiple times and I know her skill and enjoy working with her. Prep work is everything in painting, and sheās had to do more wall re-build than paint so far at this house. A bedroom that had a bold, ācreativeā (think circus with glitter) theme is done and beautiful.
We walked in tonight and the office is an incredible transformation, especially striking against the antique woodwork. My husband loves the color, and he was a previous āany shade of creamā guy. I had to tell him the painter only had the gray primer on right now
I think I need to move over to the Bragging thread after hearing how long all of your remodels are taking. Just kidding
I double book subs and they are tripping all over each other. They donāt like it but it gets things done faster. No reason they cannot be tiling painted bathrooms while rest of house is getting paintedā¦
@Consolation I bought several of those fully assembled 72 inch marble countertop vanities. First you have to get it off the truck because, of course, they show up with just the driver. I thought the guys were going to kill me trying to wedge it around corners into the 24ā bathroom door!! It is the running joke nowā¦please donāt buy another one of those!!
We are purposefully dragging our the remodel because we decided that we like to pay as we goā¦ so no heloc draw or any other funds needed. Living paycheck to paycheck for a year and some. Except the siding project that was megabucks.
The kitchen gnomes veneered the sides of the large boxes: pantry, fridge, and oven. Wow!!! Love the beautiful look of wood.
@coralbrook This vanity was only 45". I shudder to think of what would have happened with a 74!
Reminds me of our first house remodel, where H and I decided to buy 12 ft sheetrock to minimize seams, and had to install it overhead on a high sloping ceiling w/o benefit of any mechanical lifts or scaffolding. Oā¦Mā¦G. Never again.
I ordered a couple of assembled vanities from wayfair, a 48" and a 42". The tops are not attached, which makes moving them a lot easier.
re the 12ā sheetrockā¦ been there, done that, got the tee shirt. 
Saving a few feet of seams was not worth the aggravation.
I took D19 to visit a college and while we were gone DH called to tell me the water line to our fridge broke and flooded the wood floor dining room. I thought we would just replace the part that was warped but now we are considering doing the whole house in a new engineered wood. How the heck do you pick a color for a wood floor for your whole house? I always thought I wanted hickory but now I am afraid it is too light. I am terrible with decisions and this is a huge one - at least if I pick a bad paint color it can easily be changed. @-)
And of course out kitchen cabinets are an 80ās style light wood that I am afraid will look bad with everything and then I will end up having to pay thousands more to paint them white (which I have always wanted to do but have been trying to do projects little by little especially when we will have our first college tuition bills in less than a year.)
You donāt have to do every room the same color, or even the same wood.
Hickory is interesting, because there is so much color variation between the heartwood and sapwood. I donāt personally like that much variation in the floor, it makes it very busy to my eye. But for an engineered product you should be able to get it as uniform (or not) as you like, and stained to whatever color you like.
Paging @coralbrook, our floor material selection expert!
Re: cabinet painting. If they are oak, the grain will be visible unless you putty over (not worth it). Consider replacing them with new doors pre-painted with special kitchen grade paint. Regular millwork paint will peel off quickly.
Flooring colorā¦ this is one of the most difficult decisions you have to make.
I am currently in love with the medium/light tones. For one reasonā¦ Wow you cannot see the dirt! They are so forgiving.
I have no idea what the style of your house is, but check out Garrison, Newport Collection on their website. These are my new favorites for engineered wood flooring. I like the Pebble Beach color (selected by a CCer for her remodel) and Shell Beach (in my current project)
If you are thinking laminate floors (which are extremely easy to maintain and look wonderful), check out the Garrison Laminate flooring - Vichy color is my favorite for hiding everything. I can go through an entire construction project over these floors and you cannot even tell that they are covered in dirt.
Hickory or Maple floors are going to come with a huge variationā¦ very dark and very light. They really chop up the floors. Dark flooring gets dirty really fast. Shiny finishes look dirty really fast. The latest trend is for matte finish flooring. Or at least a low satin finish.
Try to stay away from the new grey flooring. Once it getās installed it looks really āstripeyā and distracting to the eye. Those of us over on the Flipping thread have seen a lot of homes for sale with the distracting stripy gray flooring.
It is very difficult to find flooring that is not running to a red tone (cherry) or a yellow tone (oak). If your kitchen cabinets are traditional yellowy oak, it will be very difficult to find flooring that will compliment/contrast with the cabinets, because the cabinets are dated in a coloring that is not popular right now.
Weāre going with a medium brown with hints of grey for our Cape house:
The other one we liked had less brown and more grey:
This is LVT though, not wood or laminate. Hopefully the darker brown doesnāt show the dirt too much.
I like wood floors in this color range. http://www.ifloor.com/hardwood/engineered-hardwood/1-2-engineered-maple-mocha
Thank you all! I just checked out the Garrison floors and they are beautiful. I really like the color variation in hickory but I am loving the more consistent color in the oaks too. I love the look of the darker floors as well but have always imagined lighter in this house and since I have a golden retriever I figure it might hide her fur balls a little bit more. :))
Not sure how to describe our house. It is a basic 80ās Florida one story traditional house - not as traditional/colonial as my momās house in MA but very basic Florida. You walk in to an entryway and straight ahead there is one main living area with the kitchen, eating area and family room - to the left of the entryway are the (sunken, but that would be way too much of a pain to change) living room and dining room that are wide open to each other. The dining room is open to the kitchen with a regular size doorway.
The living/dining room had the narrow board cherry when we moved in, the bedrooms had carpet and the rest of the house is off white textured tile that I hate. I know it makes sense for FL and it was big when the house was built in the 80ās but I hate the look and I especially hate the textured part - when you sweep or mop the dir just goes into the textured part and is impossible to get out. When we moved in (about 5 years ago) we really wanted to get rid of it but it was too expensive with all of the other stuff we had to do. We ripped up the carpet and put matching cherry into our bedroom (it is off the dining room), put laminate in the kid bedrooms (which we later had to replace because it was the bad stuff from Lumber Liquidators!), got rid of the popcorn ceilings and painted the whole inside of the house which was all we could afford to do at once. Since then we have done a little bit at a time and the last things I would love to do are the big things - the floors, all three bathrooms and the kitchen. Oh and then there is my dream of adding a 1/2 bath somewhere so guests didnāt have to use the same bathroom as my 13 year old son!