more books, more furniture

In my last (content-providing) post, I mentioned the books in the new, upstairs bookshelves. Well, I'd hate to leave that undocumented, so here are three shots of the books in place (which are a portion of our fiction library):







Also, we've begun moving up some of our existing furniture: this dresser, which my dad gave to us when he moved to a condo (it was his second wife's before that), fits nicely in this space:

closets and shelves

Since our old bedroom was superseded by the new one, what happens to the old bedroom space (a/k/a "the green room")? Well, originally, it was going to be a room for Rose's sewing and beading projects - but she realized that, hey, the library (or "orange room") has a big window and way better light (she's photosynthetic; I'm part-vampire), so it'd make better sense to move the library into the green room (former bedroom) and make the orange room her sewing room.

We have finished the first phase of that: moving the library to the green room. Well, part of it: some of our books now live upstairs (fiction, in fact). And as you can tell, there's more room on these shelves; I'm going to go through the books exiled to the basement as less interesting and see which ones might be promoted to the green room's shelves.

Following are three shots of the room and the shelves. The new blue Ikea sleeper bed is, in fact, the very foldout bed that you yourself might sleep in should you ever be invited to spend the night here at our house.







(Here's the library in its former, oranger quarters.)

We also have reinstalled most of our clothing in our new walk-in closet upstairs. A lot of our clothes were stored in the basement; and since we didn't expect this project to last well into winter, cold-weather clothing was particularly well-hidden away. (Rose was getting tired of the same two or three sweaters in particular.)



More rearranging to come...

new bed assembled, plus some other new items

Aside from the usual holiday concerns, we ended up spending quite a bit of time securing the shelves - and, in particular, securing the corner piece we put on. (We probably should have planned simply to slide one shelf behind the other - but it's really surprising to me that Ikea doesn't sell a square cover and hardware to go over the resulting corners when people prefer not to lose half their shelving space by shoving the shelf into the corner behind the adjacent unit.) Unexciting photographs, however - wow, look, it's a carriage bolt, and a piece of tile!

Here's the new bed, from two angles:





We got this lamp as a gift - I'm not entirely sure this will be its final location, though:



And here's another shot of the bathroom, looking a bit more lived-in with towels and such (although really, so far, it's not...):

more furnishings

We assembled the new sofa...



...and installed the ceiling fan and light:



This was the replacement ceiling fan. The original order would not have worked: the lighting sales guy made a mistake and didn't realize that the low-ceiling adapter we needed was not compatible with the remote we also needed. The wiring was already in place assuming the adapter...so we couldn't use the fan at all, since without the low ceiling adapter it was too low to use, both by code and for our comfort. But it also proved too huge for the space - something we didn't realize when we'd ordered it. So when the mistakes gave us the opportunity to replace the ceiling fan with a unit that could use both a low-ceiling adapter and a remote, we went with this much smaller fan, which fits the space far better and is plenty efficient for our needs.

a date with Ikea

I've built the bookshelves and the little storage cabinets that go under the main bedroom window...

Cats just won't stay out of the photos:



I had to lie flat on my back to keep my own reflection out of this shot:

more doors, more floors

The end keeps getting nearer, as a lot of detail work continues. We've assembled the preliminary contractor's punchlist of all the outstanding items, most of which should be completed next week, the rest of which we'll walk through with the contractor shortly after that. What's left after that point is our own work: assembling and placing a lot of furniture (most of which we bought at Ikea), and rearranging the two downstairs "bedrooms" (currently a bedroom and a study: the bedroom will become the study, the study will become Rose's "crafts" room). That should be finished by Christmas, if we can find time to put everything together.

Here are some photos: the stairs were sanded and refinished, and they look like this (still some trim to be applied along the tops of the pieces on the wall):



The door hardware has been installed on the two pocket doors: the single one on the bathroom door -



- and the set for the closet:

avoiding all bad puns related to "plumbing"

Our plumbing fixtures are installed. Of course, I have photos...and since who doesn't love a photo of a toilet, that's what's first:



Originally, a failure of communication made it likely we wouldn't be able to get this toilet and would have to settle for your normal, everyday-looking toilet. Oh no: nothing but the finest for our posteriors...the plumbing crew came through and figured out how to make this one work. We thank them from the bottoms of our hearts.

Next, half of the pair of sinks:



The shower hardware, and the ceiling fan (which informs that "humidistatic" is too a word):



Finally, the bathtub and tub fillers:

What's not here yet is the glass shower enclosure, which will probably be the last thing to be installed of the entire project. We needed to wait for the tiling to be done for them to come out and field-measure the project, and then there's a couple of weeks' lead time until the actual glass is made and can be installed. (At least we hope it's the last item to be installed!)

the end is nigh!

No recent updates not for lack of work being done, but because there's been almost too much of it: the moment I go up to take a photo, the next day finds the next stage finished. Plus, between lots of work, leaving before it's full daylight and getting home after dark, and some friends as houseguests for the last week, I haven't had time to update.

Anycow: tile work is nearly complete, with the stone tiles sealed and grouted, with only a few minor details to be touched up. Painting is also nearly done, again with only a few minor touchups left to be done. The plumbers have returned, and they've nearly finished the hookups in our basement and plan to set up the toilet and sinks early next week.

Basically, what's left is the final plumbing and electrical work (including installation of lighting), final work on woodwork trim (including the installation of the handrail on the stairway), and refinishing and adding trim to the stairs themselves (that's nearly the last thing that'll be done. All that remains after that are a few minor details related to ways the job has impinged upon the rest of the house (there was a mishap involving our first-floor bathroom ceiling fan, which needed to be rerouted...and the hardware in our front-hall closet, removed due to using some of that space for HVAC runs installed in the back of the closet, to be reinstalled on the new back wall). There's also the bedroom door - that's a story in itself, which I'll relate once it's arrived and is in place - and the shower enclosure, which will in all likelihood be the very last item to be installed, even after we're otherwise moved in to the space.

So, photos:

The hardware in our new walk-in closet has been installed:



Shower hardware is in place:



And our accent paint is in place on the alcove at the front of the bedroom:



As you can probably see, there's still some detail and trimwork left to be done here (as I note above), but increasingly the room looks like it will when it's finished. Finished, but unfurnished: after all the contractor work is done, we have loads of new furniture to assemble and move into place...

a date with Ikea

Today was a shopping day. We rented a van and drove to the Ikea in Bolingbrook, Illinois to buy furniture, primarily for the new bedroom but including a few other pieces as well. We'd done pretty extensive preparation beforehand, in terms of visiting the store earlier to select the items, making sure they'd look good in our space, and so on. We assembled a list so we wouldn't forget anything.

Only thing we forgot to do was make sure we'd be able to get it all home. First, a note: Ikea does deliver, but their rates are very high: it's essentially a per-item cost (as if each item has its own truck...), and so picking up the stuff yourself is considerably less expensive (assuming you live within reasonable driving distance). The risk, though, is that you can't have them hold stuff beforehand: if it's in stock, and on the floor, great...but if it's not...you're SOL. (And we had a very unpleasant experience a year or so back: one of the items we needed was in the store...but on a high shelf where it supposedly could be reached only with a forklift...and they refused to get it down until the end of the day since doing so would be a safety hazard to other customers. Why couldn't they just shut down that aisle like Home Depot does, I asked? No good answer. I was very, very close to monkeying up onto the shelves and trying to muscle one of the boxes down, when fortunately we were informed that the Schaumburg store had one of what we needed.)

Back to our shopping list: Rose had a conference in Chicago a couple of months back, so she stopped by Ikea on the way back and picked up two bathroom cabinets, two sinks, a bathroom shelving unit, and a few miscellaneous items. Good thing she did - because if she hadn't, there's no way everything would have fit in our rented van. Here's a photo of the rented van and all the stuff piled next to it: packed in the van, there was maybe three inches of room above the stuff, and no room anywhere else in the vehicle (except where we sat):



And here's a view of the stuff from the other side:



What foiled us is that Ikea's vaunted "flat-pack" thing does not apply to some of its seating materials. As we were purchasing a love-seat and a sofa bed, this was a problem: both were simply huge boxes (the large unit on the left, and the enormous box on the right, flanking the pile of other stuff). We ended up packing and re-packing the van several times, with the assistance of one of the store's loading guys. We finally got it right, though, and home with no problems.

(An inventory: four short bookshelves, about 30 inches wide; four short bookshelves, about 15 inches wide; two doors for those shelves; a bed in three parts; a set of headboard shelves for that bed in two parts; a mattress; a bed frame; a metal bed brace; two small storage units designed for the foot of the bed (although that's not where they're going); one love-seat; one sofa bed; two bathroom mirrors.)