Okay, I should really change the description of this blog. It started as a day-to-day account of our home renovation, quickly turned into a week-to-week account and is starting to head toward a month-to-month account of what is happening. Officially I can refer to this as day 65 since our renovation is still not complete. At this stage I am beyond it. Really, does this always happen? It seems that finishing is the part where it starts to turn a little sour. I understand that I am a little pedantic or OCD (depending on your point of view) but here is the current situation.
The builder and his team have not been on site for about a week now. As far as they are concerned they are finished with the exception of the bathroom. We are cutting them a little slack here since we are having the vanity custom made. It is costing us alot more than we intended to spend but it is being done through a very reputable company. Or is it? The Ceasarstone tops and the basin should have been installed this morning so that the plumber could come in and complete the bathroom. An hour after the installation was scheduled I sent the company a polite but stern email stating that this was the second time that they had not arrived as scheduled and it was not acceptable. An hour after the email I received a call from the owner of the company to say that the representative we had been dealing with had been dismissed from the company and it would seem that there was a problem! Although our quotation specifies the custom vanity as discussed with the ceasarstone tops (even the color is stated) he is saying that their company has nothing to do with installation or the tops. Parden me? I am not too concerned as it is in writing and will be hard to dispute and my partner is a lawyer (smug grin). The bottom line though is that we have not had a functional bathroom for weeks now and we want to finalise the renovation so that we can start settling in. My gosh, is anyone out there even interested in all of this?
I am going to presume that someone is and continue anyway. This is what the bathroom looks like at this stage:
It is hard to photograph this room but I am very happy with the choices we made. When the vanity was installed on Saturday I had this panicked feeling that I had indeed made it too big but I think it is because we have been looking at an empty bathroom for weeks. I hope that it holds once the tops are on. They actually went straight through the wall into the kitchen when they put the bolts in the wall (something else to sort out).
The wooden blind was installed in the bathroom this morning but I have had to phone them already to come and look at the color and to adjust the bottom. As you can see it is catching at the bottom. We chose the same color as the existing wooden blinds in our living area and although we were warned that there would be a slight color variation I am not happy with the color at all. We chose Walnut and the blinds which went in this morning look like a deep Mahogany or Cherry wood.
I am hoping that the vanity drama will be sorted out today and that we can get this room finished off. Our little en-suite was not designed to be used by a family of 5.
