Step Up the Updates

OK, fell off the job there a bit and neglected to bring the following developments to your attention. First off, steps have been built to the two exterior doors in the kitchen complex: the one from the parking area that comes into the back hallway outside the laundry room; and the "courtyard" door that's beside the fireplace at the eating nook. The pair from James Masonry knocked these out pretty quickly, so now there's no more leaping up into the house when I come home with groceries.




Tilework is mostly completed in all bath areas, which means that there are now three usable showers (although I've not gotten the shower doors yet). The tub/shower in one guest room is also workable, but there will be no waterworks in there till there's a shower door, for sure. The second hot water heater has not been installed yet, so the hot water is only temporarily routed to those upstairs showers. Eventually, they'll run only off the second hot water heater. Now, the dilemma with the upstairs showers is: either the showerheads are lowsy or the water pressure is. The spray just sort of trickles out, so that's very unsatisfactory. The vanity cabinets for the powder room and two back guest bathrooms came in last week, as well as the cabinets for the laundry room.

All is not completely rosy, though. The spring weather and rains have brought a deluge of ants, coming in beside the fireplace and tracking along the counter over to the kitchen sink area. I've gone aggressive in trying to get rid of them and am enjoying watching them feast on the poison peanut butter traps that (supposedly) they take back to their antholes and wipe out everybody. I hope so. The ant battalions are all the more surprising given that Wilson Pest Defense just came and treated the outside on Wednesday. I'm pretty sure their service is a huge waste of money.

Speaking of deluges, we've sure had a heavy downpour this afternoon, and it highlights a major shortcoming of the new retaining wall. For some reason, it was built to stop about 2 feet short of the existing retaining wall, so I had to jump out there in the downpour and lightning to quickly build a berm to stop the run-off from the neighboring parking lots from washing out the foundation on the north side of the house.



And speaking of water, there's some left standing in the master shower instead of properly draining away. Pete had his guys try to alleviate the pooling problem last week, but it is not resolved, and that's unfortunate.


I've started putting up towel rods and such, but I'm kind of slow at this. I've got to order the countertops for the three vanities that just came in. And I'm still completely paralytically overwhelmed by the cleaning that needs to be done. This has made me hesitant about taking full occupation of the kitchen yet, even though it's move-in ready...there's still just too much dust and grime and yuck settling everywhere.