While I was busy with furniture yesterday the kitchen counter tops were being installed. They look amazing and I couldn’t be happier with the kitchen. Now if we could only use it! Still no word on when the electrician and plumber will be here. Tomorrow our painter will be here to refinish the bay window and closet door.After that he’ll be painting the kitchen ceiling and back entry. He will also be doing touch ups through the house as a courtesy. After all of this all that’s left is the cleaning work and the rest of the wood work being installed. I did find out yesterday that the duct work and duct cleaning will be done next week at the earliest. After that they’ll come back in to clean carpets upstairs and steam clean the tile floors in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom. I have to admit I’m not happy that we’ll end up waiting again. We’re just so close to being done that I’m getting impatient.

Since I have been bad with posting pictures recently, hopefully this one will make up for it.

Our living room:

Dining room:

Close-up:

Hallway to the main floor bedroom:

Main floor bedroom:

Quality test – PASSED:

We have to wait until Monday to move stuff in to allow it to fully “cure.” So, after 5 months of living upstairs, Monday is our “move-in” day. If I didn’t owe a good chunk of hours to my employer, I’d love to have taken the day off. For now, we are going to have to settle for cleaning all the dust off of the wood work and windows.

Some time today, our main contractor is supposed to be coming over to install the main kitchen counter top. That will allow the plumber and electrician to show up on Monday and get the kitchen finished. I should say that is the ideal scenario. I emailed the second tier “general contractor” to set up the plumber and electrician and haven’t heard from him yet. I’ll assume they’ll just show up sometime early next week.

What’s left?

1. Kitchen counters (today the main piece is installed, early next week the island and sliver between the stove and fridge is installed)
2. Sink, dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator hookup
3. Baseboard trim in the kitchen
4. Cabinet crown
5. Kitchen ceiling paint
6. Baseboard trim re-installation in the dining room by the door to the kitchen
7. Dining room door to the kitchen trim
8. Baseboard trim in the main floor bedroom on the wall opposite the kitchen (where we took out the added door)
9. Main floor lights installation
10. Upstairs hallway trim installation
11. Upstairs bathroom trim installation
12. Upstairs bathroom cabinet installation
13. Duct cleaning

All-in-all, not too huge of a list. Most of the items are pretty simple. 80-90% of it should be done this coming week. I probably missed a few things, but if I did, they probably aren’t more than a 5 minute job.

We’re getting there!

In the last week, I’ve removed popcorn ceiling from the upstairs bathroom, and from the main floor living/dining room. The former was not painted, the latter was.

Removing the non-painted (or lightly painted) popcorn ceiling is as follows:

1. Take a large putty knife (8″ or so) and knock off the bigger popcorn
2. Take a spray bottle or a garden sprayer and get the stuff as moist as you can without having it drip all over
3. Let sit for 5 minutes or so
4. Take the large putty knife and scrape off the goop
5. Have a beer

Removing the heavily painted (and possibly multiple textured) popcorn ceiling is as follows:

1. Have a beer
2. Schedule a back/neck/shoulder massage for the day you plan to be done (add a day or two overage)
3. Have a beer
4. Find an ice scraper (the kind you use to remove ice from a driveway, about 6-8″ wide and with a 4′ or so handle), and sharpen up the edge
5. Attempt to scrape off as much of the large popcorn as possible
6. Take a garden sprayer and moisten the ceiling. It will only penetrate the areas you knocked off in the last step
7. Wait 5 minutes
8. Spray the ceiling again
9. Wait 5 minutes
10. Spray the ceiling again
11. Wait 5 minutes
12. Scrape away. You might not even get down to the plaster (or drywall) at this step. If not, repeat 6-11 again
13. Have a beer
14. Call it a night and repeat 1-13 over again until you finish it

If you can get your entire ceiling down to the plaster/drywall without settling for an inbetween, mad props to you. For the first area, I went down to the plaster. Of course, I didn’t think of the obvious things I’d find doing so. Things like cracked plaster, bad patch jobs, etc. If I had a few weeks to work on this, I would have taken all of the texture down to the plaster. However, the painter is here to work on it today or tomorrow so I had to settle for what I could. 90% of the ceiling is just scraped down as much as I could without breaking through to the plaster. It will be heavily textured again, but only about 50% of what it was before. Ideal? No, but it will work for now and will look much better than previously (hopefully).

Still no pictures. Sorry. I take the pictures, but I tend to write these posts away from the camera and computer. I will do my best to get them up here soon.