Monica

considerations in remodeling

2021-07-11T18:54:44Z

When choosing a floor tile, it's important to consider contrasts with key components:

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kitchen changes part 1

2021-05-30T20:56:54Z

We replaced out beat-up laminate kitchen counters with quartz. When I mentioned plans to do this, someone said "pictures or it didn't happen", so...

( photos )

The result is very nice. The process of getting there started out ok but had some major aggravations in the middle, and I'm waiting to see how they resolve it before I file a review with the Better Business Bureau. The project was poorly managed, with key people not talking to each other at the right times and with some finger-pointing among the various folks involved, and it cost us extra money along with delays. Their ineptitude should not be our problem; this is why we hire a company and expect them to sort out the details. And I expected more transparency than we got; "they're on the way" seems to have really meant (multiple times) "we've sent them a text message that they might read eventually telling them to do your job next". Yeah, no.

Three of the five people who visited our house during installation (two installers and a plumber) did excellent jobs and went out of their way to clean up the mess caused by the first two installers and the inept managers.

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houses are complicated :-)

2021-05-13T01:09:38Z

We want to make some improvements in our kitchen. The immediate prompt is floor tiles that are coming loose and becoming trip hazards, and hey, I never liked that floor anyway. The (laminate? formica?) counters are also getting pretty beat up. And I want better lighting. In other words, the cabinets and appliances are fine and we want to replace the rest. That should be a one-stop job, right?

Yeah, no. We did get a bid for the whole thing from one contractor (who came recommended), but it was full of "install customer-supplied X" and we are not interested in getting caught between "this isn't the right thing" and "we bought the things you told us to buy" and meanwhile things are in limbo while you sort it out. Also, it's hard to estimate the full price that way. We wanted to hire someone, choose materials, get a real price, and have that contractor take care of it.

It ended up being three different jobs. The counters are supposed to be installed in two weeks (they came a couple weeks ago to do "templating", i.e. the detailed measurements). This will supposedly take a couple hours on the appointed day, which seems fast to me but they're the experts not me. Meanwhile, our flooring is on order and will supposedly be a one-day job once stuff comes in, maybe in a few weeks. We decided to get through this and then tackle the lighting (and then, finally, paint).

I'm looking forward to the changes, which will be revealed one at a time.

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power and privilege, of a sort

2018-11-16T16:50:51Z

We lost power around 1 or 2 AM. (Having a UPS means never having to oversleep your no-longer-powered alarm clock...) We've just gotten our first snow of the season -- only an inch or so, but it came with a lot of ice, I'm told, causing downed tree limbs affecting power lines. We powered down our computers, turned off the chirping UPSs, and went back to sleep, expecting to be awakened by a blinking clock before morning.

That didn't happen. This morning after a quick shower (the water heater is gas-powered, but the decider-to-cue-heat is apparently electrical) I checked the freezer -- surprisingly warm but the meat was all still frozen. (Why did we lose fridge effectiveness more quickly in November, when the environment should help, than in July when we lost power for about 10 hours?) Duquesne Light had no estimates for restoration; they said 30,000 customers lost power and that's obviously going to take some time. Whee.

So I put the crock pot of stew for Shabbat on the back porch where it'll stay cooler than in the fridge, packed up all the frozen meat and fish, and headed to work -- where we have a fridge, the freezer of which only holds ice cubes. I think I get some brownie points for thinking of that before caffeine. :-) I'm glad we have that fridge at work; never expected to use it this way.

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