So our renovation was going over budget. Some of it was our fault, as we have the habit of deciding on one thing in the planning/pricing stage and then upgrading on the fly when the time comes. Some of it was unforeseen, like over $10K in surprise chimney work, $9k in repointing work on the back wall, a $4K leak, and many many other things like that (man, do they add up quick). With our kitchen floor 2/3 of the way done, we had to make the difficult decision to halt the reno. With dwindling resources, we were faced with either drastically downgrading our remaining choices for the kitchen (appliances, doors, windows, counter, cabinets, etc.) or finishing things in a way that would leave us pissed off about the kitchen we should have had.

We didn't want to go the small project route, preferring to wait until we could just start up again on everything. But not sure when we'll be able to start up again in earnest, we're going ahead today with some smaller projects. There are a few things that need to be done soon, some for our sanity and some for other reasons. With electrical and plumbing done and the walls up, we're in a good position to do a few small jobs on the garden floor. Even if we won't be putting the actual kitchen in yet, a more finished space could still come in useful for a party or guests or something like that.

First on the list is a back door, so that we can use our backyard this summer. Not long before we hit the pause button, the old back door had been removed so that some work could be done on the back of the house and a new frame could be built for the new door at the same time. Since then, going out to our backyard has involved unscrewing a dozen long screws and removing a giant, heavy piece of wood. Needless to say, we don't do that much. So we're going ahead and ordering the new door.

Second will be finishing the floors on the garden level. Omer decided after the wood floor was put in that he wanted the radiator to be moved to a different wall, so part of the floor has to be ripped up and the pipes moved (see what I'm talking about?), and then the wood floors can be sanded and finished. The tile floors need to be put in as well. We still haven't picked tile for the bathroom so we'd better get moving on that.

Third is finishing the bathroom on the garden level. The four of us have been sharing one bathroom for two years now, and it's getting old.

Fourth is finishing and painting the walls.

By the time all of that is done, hopefully we'll have won our appliances on a game show.

We decided a long time ago that the garden floor will have the same unstained Brazilian cherry as on the second and third floors, except in the kitchen and bathroom. The wood floor has been laid, so now we need to pick tile before anything else can happen.

You can see the space in the middle where the kitchen will be.

I went tile shopping with Ms. Architect. It was the first time in this whole process that I felt a little highfalutin, going to Nemo Tile with my architect. (But we finished it off with messy and cheap burritos for lunch, so that brought me back down to earth.) With the exception of a solo run to Drimmers to scout out appliances, this was my first non-Home-Depot related shopping trip for construction stuff. Everything else had been purchased by either looking at pictures online or by ordering samples. But even though that had worked out well in the past, Ms. Architect insisted that the only way to really get a feel for how something would look on the kitchen floor was to see it installed somewhere else, that looking at a four inch sample just wouldn't cut it. And she was so right.

Nemo Tile was fantastic. They had dozens of types of tile laid out on the floor in about three-by-three squares, so you can really get a sense of what they will look like.

Now, Omer and I have not had the easiest time agreeing on choices for things like tile and fixtures. Often, Ms. Architect has had to be part designer, part marriage counselor. But when we saw the black slate used in a kitchen on one of Mr. B.'s fabulous "Parlour Floor Kitchen" installments (I think it was the infamous Aga kitchen), we both loved it. So, I was really just going to see it in person and confirm that I loved it. And I did. The one we chose is actually not slate, I think it's porcelain, but I don't really care what it is made out of as long as it looks like what I want it to look like.

We'll be getting it in big 1 ft by 2 ft rectangles.

We were also scouting tile for the garden floor bathroom. These both grabbed my attention. Now I just have to get Omer to agree to one of them. Not usually an easy task, but I gave in to him on a few garden floor decisions, so he owes me.

This is how our garden floor has looked for the past year. Some demo was done initially. There used to be three rooms down there and the contractor took out the dividing walls to make room for supplies and tools. This floor became the staging area for the work upstairs.

So when demo started for real on the garden floor, it exposed the really gross bathroom whose existence I had been trying to ignore for the past year. I was very happy to see it go, even if it only went as far as my backyard.

This is the only floor that really was gutted. While a lot of work was done on the upper floors, what was in good shape was left alone; rooms stayed where they were, with the exception of making one room smaller in order to make room in the master closet for the washer and dryer. On the garden floor, however, the architects and contractor all felt that the best way to proceed was to start fresh.

When the drop ceiling was removed, we found this:

Totally understandable. I can't tell you how often I've found myself needing to write down a phone number, and I can't find a pen or paper, but I can find a hot stick and a ceiling.

Once demo was complete, everything was framed out. While the living room-kitchen-dining room will all be one big space, the hallway next to the stairs was put back in to be used as a long coat closet, with a big mud room/storage area in the back.

All this crazy stuff you see on the kitchen ceiling will eventually be a very interesting series of columns (are they called columns when they're on the ceiling?), with lights nestled in the spaces.

1) For a while, there just wasn't any work going on (or nothing worth writing about anyway), and I got out of the habit of posting

2) When work started up again in full force, I was incredibly busy with other things

3) By the time I wasn't ridiculously busy anymore, there was an overwhelming amount of blogging to catch up on, and being an anal retentive perfectionist, I felt like if I couldn't recap everything, there was no point in starting

4) I was a bit burned out

Mostly, it was #4. Going through a renovation is difficult. Reliving every aspect of it for others can be draining.

So, I've decided to go against my nature and jump back in with something, one small thing, that was just completed. I'll back track and catch up when I can.

Out of the five fireplaces left in our house when we bought it (all identical), only one had been painted.

It was located in the front of the garden floor, and as luck would have it, our plans called for moving that fireplace to the back of the floor, in what would be the dining room. This would make it much easier to strip, since it had to be removed from the wall anyway. Its future location was in the old kitchen, where the old stove was.

It was stripped and cleaned beautifully. Our guys built out the wall so that it would look like an actual fireplace, rather than just being ornamental, and stuck it on the wall. The guy who installed it spent an entire day getting it just right.

I think it turned out great. Of course, it's now so clean that it makes the other four fireplaces look dingy and yellow!

There were still enough of the old baseboards left to try to match what was there rather than start fresh, so Mr. Contractor had a knife cut to approximate the old moulding. It's not exactly the same (it's a more interesting design, we think), but we can get away with it because there's only one place in the whole upper two floors where the old and new meet up, near the staircase (pics above).

Unfortunately, the moulding that's in the same areas as the original moulding (in the hallways and stairwells) is shorter than what was originally there, because the original moulding lost a few inches when new plywood and floors were put down. But in the bedrooms, where there's no original moulding, they made it tall. Omer was rather surprised/dismayed at how tall it looked while sitting in a pile in the hallway, but admitted that it looked good once it was installed and painted.

The weird thing about the new moulding is that it looks, well, new. It doesn't have thirty layers of paint on it like the old moulding and the old window casings. The extra paint softens the edges and gives it character.

The medicine cabinets are fabulous, despite the fact that they are from IKEA (I really hate that place) and cost half nothing. The shelves are not adjustable, but are set at good heights, and the best feature is the in-door storage - perfect for all those little things always rattling around a medicine cabinet. Seriously, the doors hold a lot. Much thanks to Ms. Architect for pointing these out to me. Omer didn't want them - he's convinced that they will rust. But for the price, we can replace them. Many times.

The glass shelves below the mirror are a little fussy for a kids' bathroom. They stay clean for about five seconds at a time. Oh well. I enjoy them for five seconds and then move on.

The only accessory I'm pretty disappointed with is the toilet paper holder.

I'll never understand the move towards holders that don't hold the roll very well. What happened to the old fashioned kind with the big spring inside? But we wanted something that matched the rest of the Kohler accessories, and this was it. Doesn't bother me enough to replace it, just enough to bitch about it.

We still haven't found a shower curtain that we both like. Perhaps I'm just subconsciously stalling after what happened to Mrs. B. But honestly, the tile color is very bold and I think the perfect shower curtain would be clear with a textured pattern, while Omer is holding out for some color.

I asked Mr. Contractor if his guys could come take a look at the system. Luckily we hadn't needed to turn the heat on much before Christmas, but when we did, the noise was deafening. We would heat the place up five or six degrees hotter than necessary in the evening so that we could turn the heat off altogether for the night. Otherwise, we would get woken up every time the heat cycled on. And, some of the radiators were spewing water out of the little valves that are supposed to release air. Let me tell you, one thing you don't want happening around small children is for your heating system to turn into a boiling geyser at random times.

The plumbers said that the gauge that regulates the amount of steam in the system was busted, and that there were several leaks in the system. They fixed these problems, and then went around to check on each radiator. This is when the fun really started.

First, they discovered a leak in the parlor floor entranceway radiator. They thought that perhaps it wasn't tilted correctly and water was condensing and running back out onto the floor (hence the level), but that wasn't it. The problem was that the place where the pipe screws in to the radiator was completely stripped, and whatever they did they couldn't get it to stop leaking.

They said that the radiators are about 100 years old, so I guess things like this are bound to happen. I'm in awe that they work at all.

Luckily, we had removed a radiator from the office/guest room, which for some strange reason had two. So we had an extra one that they could replace the broken one with. It worked out great.

Then, when they went to check on the radiator in the back parlor room behind the stairs, they found that not only was it leaking, but it had been leaking for so long that it was in danger of falling right through the now-rotten floor. So they unhooked it. We don't need to heat that room right now, so we'll worry about it later. The two back parlor rooms are being combined into one anyway, so maybe one radiator will suffice.

This is where the radiator used to be. Good thing nobody uses the disgusting bathroom below this room. The radiator could have landed on someone's head.

The plumbers stayed long enough that we were all satisfied the banging had stopped. But at about two in the morning, it started again. Not quite as loud as before, but still too loud to sleep through. So, they checked the system again and ran some kind of cleaner through it. So far so good, noise-wise. But now there's this weird smell on the top floor that smells a bit like cat-pee. I'm guessing it's from the cleaner and hopefully it will fade.

No matter what, this is the best part of having radiators:

But as Omer so eloquently put it the other night, "The other reno blogs are kicking our ass!" I'm not sure why he's referring to "our ass" since he hasn't made a single contribution to the blog since the very first entry (Very First Entry [Gates Reno]), but point taken. I'm back.

Luckily (for the blog, not for us) not much work has been done in the past two months. So there isn't a whole lot to catch up on.

Hope you all had a great break!

OK, first I'd like to deal with this picture because I inadvertently made everything look worse than it was.

I put this pic up to illustrate the fact that the wallplate screws weren't lined up correctly with the holes in the mortise (I'm not sure if that big metal thingy that goes inside the door is called the mortise, or mortise actually refers to the space made to accommodate it, but for the sake of this entry I'm going to call it the mortise, because thingy just doesn't sound grown up). I failed to notice that it shows a mortise without a deadbolt and a strike plate (in another picture) that is obviously supposed to be for a deadbolt. Just so that my crew doesn't look even worse, I should tell you how that happened.

That door, the current kitchen/future master bathroom door, was the first door to get its hardware. The mortise (with deadbolt) went in without a problem. The strikeplate went in, and that's when we noticed the first problem.

Should the installer have stopped short of carving a notch in the wood for the obviously-too-small strikeplate? Of course. I'm not sure what was going through his head (I've seen some of his other work and this guy is really highly skilled), but it was probably something along the lines of "I was told to install these and if I don't I'll be in trouble. I have to make this work." We've all been there. But he called me over after getting the strikeplate in and I called the architects and they called the contractor and the doors were rehung.

Things still didn't seem wrong with the hardware, until the faceplates were put on with the knobs. The top screws wouldn't go in. Since there seemed to be different holes in the mortises (mortisi?) without deadbolts than in the ones with deadbolts, one of the guys switched mortises to see if the screws would go all the way through with that one (they didn't). That's how the door with the deadbolt strikeplate ended up paired with a mortise with no deadbolt. It was just to see if the screws would go through. Everybody knew that they weren't supposed to be paired together.

Anyway, after the doors were re-hung and the strikeplate corrected, the installation of the locksets continued. By this point, Mr. Architect had seen the locksets (he made the comment that I had chosen doorknobs and locks that were worth more than the doors), and the contractor had seen the locksets, and of course we had seen the locksets. It did seem like overkill for our bedrooms and bathrooms, but what can you do? They're "European" locksets, so I just thought, OK, so that's how they do it in Europe.

Mr. Architect was not so sure. He suspected that these were entrance locksets, not regular old inside sets. He checked with the site we bought them from, and they insisted that they had sent the right items. They suggested that the screws were just too long, and offered to send shorter ones. So, with everyone still thinking that these were the correct locksets, installation continued on the other 2nd floor doors.

Finally, after a couple of conversations with Bouvet (the maker of the locksets), Mr. Architect determined that we had, indeed, been sent the wrong sets. The website had sent us (and charged us for) entrance sets (except for the faceplates, which go with the locksets we actually need). So, one piece of good news is that the sets we really need are much cheaper.

So now, all of the locksets are going back to the website, which will not be charging us a restocking fee. Mr. and Ms. Architect have used this site many times without a single problem, and will hopefully be able to strong-arm the site into taking some responsibility for our damaged doors. They sent us the wrong items, and then insisted that they were the correct items, and in my mind they are more responsible than anyone else for the wrong locks being put in.

I don't know who will be paying for this mistake. I'm taking a wait and see approach. Omer's squarely in the "we shouldn't have to pay" camp. However, when we decided to order the hardware (to avoid a mark-up from the architect or contractor) we also took responsibility for the items. Does that extend to the installation of the incorrect items? I have no idea. But I hope not.

Are the architects responsible? I have no idea. I'm not sure how they could be. They've been spending a lot of time figuring this out and making it right. It doesn't seem to me to be their fault. When they realized that there was a problem they did what they could to get it solved. When the website told them that we had the correct items, they went to the manufacturer and got things straightened out. Is it their fault that the wrong locks got installed first? My gut says no.

Is the contractor responsible? His guys installed what we told them to install. Should he have known that they were the wrong items? I don't see why he should have. The architects didn't know. The place we bought them from didn't know. We sure as hell didn't know.

I should mention that Mr. Contractor ate the cost of re-hanging the doors to make them flush. Whatever went on with the different drawings, that was clearly his fault and he took responsibility for it. There are always different drawings for everything. Every little thing gets its own detail drawing. And drawings get revised and updated all the time. Part of the difficulty of a job this size is in making sure that you're following the latest drawings.

Mr. Architect said that it shouldn't be a problem to fix the doors since they are painted. If we were going to stain them, then we would have been in real trouble. I'm not sure how it's all going to end up. I think that before this project started I envisioned it as a simple jigsaw puzzle: there are a set number of pieces and the architects and contractor figure out where they go. But it's much, much, much more complicated than that. It's like a 50,000 piece puzzle, with fake straight edges, extra corners, and pieces from other puzzles thrown in just for fun. So far, whenever we've had a problem, it's worked out in the end. I'm confident this one will be worked out too.

When the door hardware started getting installed, that's when we realized that there was a problem:

That's right, with the door set back from the wall, the strikeplate didn't extend past the door casing like it was supposed to. Mr. Architect came over to take a look and started asking questions as to why they were doing the doors recessed, not flush. Turns out that in a drawing detailing the molding that was to go around the doors, the doors were shown recessed, but in the drawing detailing the doors, the doors were shown flush, and that was the one that the contractor was supposed to follow. Oops.

They could have left the doors the way they were, but then we wouldn't be able to use the strikeplates that came with the door hardware. It's not a common finish, and it would have been difficult to find larger strikeplates that matched the hinges and knobs.

So, all of the doors had to be rehung flush. This meant that every hinge had to be moved about 1/2 inch on the door frames,

and every door casing had to be rebuilt. Now they are all flush.

But that's not the end of the door problems:

If you look closely you can see that the top screws don't go in all the way. Apparently we were sent the wrong faceplates. Or the wrong inside part. The top screw holes in the faceplates don't match up with the holes in the big metal part that goes inside the door. At first the company said that they would just send us shorter screws, but something weird is going on. We don't think we were sent what we ordered. We thought that these would be regular old indoor locking knobs, and we're pretty sure we're supposed to have the small faceplates that they sent us. Instead, they appear to be, possibly, entrance sets with big deadbolts (and faceplates that are too small).

If that's the case, then we have a problem, because a space has already been carved out of all of the second floor doors to hold the big metal mechanism, and if the ones we actually need are smaller, I'm not sure what we're going to do.

Not wanting to spend much of our budget at this point on something purely decorative, that would never be touched or used, we opted for a plain piece of frosted plexiglass.

I took the pic at night to show the opening in the roof in comparison with the plexiglass - it was placed flush with the rest of the ceiling, as opposed to whatever used to be there which had been much closer to the roof opening and much smaller. Here's one from daytime (hard to get a really sunny one this time of year):

Someday, way far in the future, it would be great if we could replace that with something more interesting. But for now it does the job, and looks pretty cool in its own way.

First, they build the frame around the door and mark off where the hinges will go.

To make space for the hinges on the doors and the frames, they use a tool that carves out about 1/8th of an inch to allow for the thickness of the hinge.

However, since the little spinny thing in the tool makes rounded corners,

they have to chisel out a squared corner for my squared hinges.

And voila, the doors have hinges.

PS for the people who inquired about the door hardware on the moving wall:

He had his guys open the wall and try to fix it. They tried sanding the studs, and taping them up at the places where they were rubbing, but nothing was helping.

So, Mr. Contractor had his guys open up the wall completely and re-hang the track that the door hangs from so that it was perfectly centered.

Now it glides open and closed, with no rubbing.

I was disappointed this morning that the RatZappers were empty. I really expected to catch one the first night. But when I checked them this morning, no red lights. A few minutes ago, though, I opened the door under the sink to get a garbage bag, and actually shrieked when I saw the light blinking. I continued to shriek while calling for my husband and looking for the camera.

I feel bad. Poor little guy didn't even get to eat any of the food, it was all still there.

Definitely a fan of the RatZapper. Mighty slid right out into the garbage can, no mess. I hope it was as quick and humane as the company claims.

We took the kids out of town while their bedrooms were painted. Seemed like we wouldn't miss anything much. I mean, pictures of people painting? Please. Nothing to see here.

However, while the guys were prepping the ceiling of the back bedroom, they discovered that it was mostly rotted out and would need to be replaced. I hate calls like that. Basically, all you can do is say "How much will that cost?" and then bend over, because it's not like you can skip it. "Yeah, you know what, why don't you just leave it the way it is. Yeah, I know that a child sleeps under that ceiling, but we'll take our chances." Of course you can't do that. So, the ceiling was removed and done over.

The other thing we missed (and this was a big bummer) was the stair railings and spindles being removed. Not only did we miss this happening, but we didn't even know that it was going to happen.

I guess I should start from the beginning. When we bid this job out to Mr. Contractor, everyone was running under the assumption that the original floors would be kept, sanded, stained, and polyurethaned. These items were included in the bid. When we decided to replace the floors, and Mr. Contractor was trying to come up with a price for that, he had to add the cost of the labor for laying the plywood sub floor and the new floors, and the cost of materials. We got a bit of a credit for the staining labor, since we chose a wood that we didn't want to have stained. The sanding and poly labor was a wash, since those had to be done no matter what.

The new floors were an unexpected cost, and we were trying to keep that cost down as much as we could, and that was how we were talked into not having the floors laid around the stair spindles. Mr. Architect said that this was something that was sometimes done when people didn't want to go through the hassle and cost of taking off the railing and spindles to lay the floors underneath. Instead, the new floor would end a few inches from the spindles, with some kind of decorative edge.

I didn't like this idea, but said OK anyway. The more I thought about it though, the more I hated it, and told Mr. Architect and Mr. Contractor that we had to find another solution. So, we decided that the new floor would be cut to go around each and every spindle. They thought that this would be easier and cheaper than taking off the railing and spindles and then having to trim the spindles to account for the new floor height.

When we got home, though, we could see that the floors had been laid completely underneath the spindles. It looked fabulous!

We asked what had happened, and were told that when it came time to cut the new floor around the spindles, the floor guy balked. Ms. Architect told him that it was his choice, cut around or remove the spindles, but that the price couldn't go up. Luckily for us, he chose to remove the spindles. When it was time to put them back, he cut each one at the top to account for the new floor height, so that the railing would be at the correct height to match up with the railing all the way down, since the stair tread heights aren't changing, and the parlor floor probably will not be replaced (fingers crossed!).