Surprises in Store

Ok, where were we? I seem to have gotten a bit sidetracked over the weekend, and I missed a few updates. Let's first back track to Friday, March 16th:

I arrived to the house to see that not much had happened that day, other than some new framing around the sliding glass door to the back yard. Otherwise, I didn't see much change. I was bummed. I was tired. It was the end of a long week and I felt a bit disappointed that more work hadn't happened. Rome wasn't built in a day, and Camelot certainly wasn't going to be either.

My mom stopped by Saturday afternoon to meet up with her friend and take her to Camelot (I just love saying 'Take me to Camelot'... I may have to get me a white horse and a suit of armor. Anyone up for a good joust?). Mom mentioned that she had stopped at Camelot before coming to my house and that the workers had taken downthe last of the wall between the kitchen and dining room. This included 2 narrow fresh air return ducts and the 2x4 framing around them. I told her that as of Friday at 5:30 when I stopped by, they were still up. She and her friend went over to Camelot and called me from there, saying they were most definitely gone.

YES! I love surprises! The guys must have either come over Friday night or Saturday morning.

Dave stopped by the house Monday morning and the guys were working on tearing out the master shower. It seems that some of the tiles near the bottom of the shower had cracked, allowing water to seep behind the wall and rot out a couple of the 2x4's. Dave had initially thought about doing this himself, but thought the better of it and added it to the contractor's task list. So now, when you walk into the front door, you can see straight into the master bathroom. *That's* an open floorplan!

Looks like the guys got all of the dreaded wallpaper out of the 3rd bedroom and guest bathroom. I don't envy them that job, as it had to be horridly tedious work. I'd say 3/4 of the kitchen wallpaper is gone too. The funny part about the kitchen wallpaper is that it was this swirly blue pattern and the people before us had actually covered up the switch plate covers, therefore making the light switch nearly impossible to find. Who said this was a good idea!? Camo wall covering. No, I don't think so.

Lastly, the bookshelves in the living room are gone. I believe that's the major bulk, if not all, of the demo that was to be completed. Now it's time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

What else? We've started the fun task of picking cabinets and counter tops. We did Corian for the counters in the Lake Howell house when we did the remodel in '09, and have regretted it since. Sadly, the Corian scratches easily and when the sun shines in, you can see all of these fine streaks and scratches. *facepalm*. We won't be making that mistake again, and we'll be doing granite for the counters. The funny part is that we can't stop going back to the same color and style of cabinets that we have in our current house. No matter how much each of us tries to like something different, we keep coming back to shaker style cabinets. Creatures of habit, I guess.

We made a stop at Lowe's tonight to get a cabinet quote. We didn't get the chance to do that, but we did manage to pick up one of our first pieces of 'equipment' for the new house: a shower faucet. I believe I heard the associates proclaim 'Welcome back, Johnsons' as we walked in. They are going to love us a lot in the next couple of months.