Lighting installation

Once we got all of our lights, it took another 2 weeks before they were installed.  First week of February - the electrician had a newborn son (dragon child!) so he took a week off understandably.  The second week of February we were down in the San Diego and Orange County area.  So finally, our schedules synced for the third week.

These lights took a really long time to install!  I felt badly for the electrician because he had to put on each individual bauble and crystal.  (Took him 3 solid days to put it all together.)  But here's the end result!

Family room

Bubble chandelier

Dining and living rooms

Aftermath of empty boxes

You know how nicer hotels like Marriot or Westin do not give you free wi-fi like the more affordable hotels like Days Inn or Travelodge?  It's the same with lighting!  The more affordable lights supply light bulbs whereas the pricier ones do not.  And the pricier ones don't include spare parts either.  The bubbles chandelier arrived with a cracked "bubble" and the living room flushmount arrived with 2 defective crystals.  I'm not waiting 3 more months for the replacements.  More likely than not, no one will notice the missing parts.  :p

Lighting: finally!

By the end of January, we finally got all of our lighting.  Yes, some of the lights really did take 3 months to get in.  (The lighting industry is ridiculous!)

Also, got our exterior locks re-keyed.  Our original key was something that could be easily picked by an amateur (i.e., my DH) with a set of lock picks.  So we asked the locksmith to create something a little more "fancy" to make it harder to pick.  [Our little girl was totally enamored with him.  She wanted to watch him work and would giggle to get his attention - such a flirt!]

Staycation ends

From the duration of my in-laws visit, DH and I were effectively on vacation.  We did very little if at all regarding the house.  My mother-in-law did a lot of cooking since my father-in-law is on a low sodium diet.  Grandparents would take our baby out to the park so that DH and I could have some down time sans kid.

It was so nice to be lazy.  :)

Christmas dinner was a bit hectic since it was a) the first time we were hosting a real dinner and b) the first time we were hosting Christmas dinner.  We had my family over as well.  Kind of cramped around our little dining table but it all worked out.  Got to use our wedding china - which has never been used until now.  Bought placemats and a tablecloth for the occasion.  Baby got a new play kitchen from my in-laws so she was super excited about that.  After dinner, she wanted to cook for both grandmas.  Then she had a lot of fun with the box the play kitchen came in.  :p

Loose ends

Ever since move-in day, we've been unpacking and getting the place ready for my in-laws to visit for Christmas.  DH took almost a whole week off of work to help out.  If he hadn't, I would not have been even close to ready for any visitors.  Even my parents pitched in and took our baby away for one Sunday so we could unpack without interruptions.

The week after we moved in, the crew was back to tie up loose ends.  We also had the alarm company for a day to install alarm components to the new part of the house.  The heating/cooling guy had to come by and fix the zones - the zone in the den was controlling the zone for all the other bedrooms.  The shower door guy came back to fix the shower door situation.  A more specialized electrician came to do wiring for cable, ethernet, and TV wiring.  (This guy has yet to finish the job.)

The carpet guy came by to take a look at what to do about the huge gap between the doors and the floor - he suggested using a reducer.  Of course, since he was already paid in full, he told me that the contractor should do it, not him.  *sigh*

I ended up fixing our toilet in the master bathroom.  The buttons were not correctly aligned and the flush was really weak.  Since the workers had never dealt with Inax nor were their English great, I called the company to get help on the situation.  They sent me diagrams and instructions to fix both problems.  Thankfully, it was easy to re-align the buttons.  And that actually solved the weak flush problem too!  yay!

As you live the house, there are things that you discover that need to be tweaked or fixed.  Here's a list of what we've found:

• leak underneath the prep sink



• locking mechanism for the sliding door needed to be installed



• draft underneath the exterior door of the master bedroom



• manufacturing label still on one skylight needed to be removed



• cold/hot water in the powder room were reversed



• remove any remaining tree protection




• bring back our green ladder that they thought was theirs



• move down the door that separates front and back of the house so that the door aligns better with the floor (huge gap underneath otherwise which prevents the door from being an effective sound barrier)



• install clothing rods and shelving for master closet



• swap light switches for the master bathroom to be more intuitive to use



• fix the broken latch on one window of the dining room



• fix the crooked drain step on the left sink of the master bathroom



• fix the original light switch for the patio exterior lights



• washing machine not working properly - ask the crew to check the water connections

Our to do's:

• buy house numbers to replace those that the workers threw away



• re-key exterior doors so they all use the same key

Still pending:

• doorbell ringer - thrown away and not replaced



• put up the side gate



• have interior door locks inspected by a locksmith



• install remaining lights - not all have come in yet




• get glass mirrors for ours and kids' bathrooms

Moving Day!

Note:  If your SO is in charge of hiring the movers, make sure that they confirm the date and time with the movers before the actual day of moving.

That morning, we waited around hoping that the movers had not forgotten about us.  Thankfully, they did show up.  Big sigh of relief!

The crew of three were pretty efficient using dollies and all around good techniques for moving heavy items.  About late lunch time, they were finished moving everything into their van.  We had gone out to lunch while they were finishing up the packing because our nanny was in the house.  When the movers went to lunch, we transported our fragile items to our new home.

We had planned for the baby to take her nap in the rental home and that I would come back to pick up the nanny and the baby after the baby woke up.  The baby was a bit scared of the moving process because she saw a lot of things being taken away.  In order to quell any anxiety, I kept reassuring her that we were all moving into our new home together.  Made it a point to get to the rental home before she woke up from her nap - it wouldn't be like the she went to sleep and her parents disappeared.

We hadn't completely set up her room that night in the new house so she and I ended up sleeping on the ol' futon together.  Not great for me - she rotated 180 degrees in her sleep which involved kicking me a few times.  *sigh*  But we're moving her into a big kid bed so we'll all sleep undisturbed in the future.

Countdown to move in day

Dec 6 (Tue):  A more specialized electrician came out to take care of our ethernet, tv, and cable wiring.  Also, the day our window shades got installed.

Dec 7 (Wed):  Our dismantled sleeper sofa was delivered and re-assembled in the afternoon.  Deep cleaning of our home begins in the late afternoon and continues until early evening.  We moved some of our fragile items such as wine glasses and vases into the house.

Dec 8 (Thurs):  Lots of packing!!  Thankfully, packing wasn't too bad this time around because a lot of our items were still packed up from the initial move into our rental home.  When you haven't seen something in 6 months, it makes you wonder whether you really needed to it.  Needless to say, did a bit of purging when packing this time.  Things of slight sentimental value were tossed.

Great news:  We passed the final inspection on the first try!  :)  I didn't think we'd pass until after we moved back into our home.  Yay!!!!!

Our GC said that it was the easiest final inspection he's ever been through.  He usually puts up a few obvious "mistakes" for the inspectors to catch but this guy didn't catch them.  The city obviously wants this house project to finish up quickly.  hehehe.  After the inspection, our GC went around and fixed up all the mistakes he purposely created.  haha!

Undercabinet lighting

So my undercabinet LEDs arrived.  Brought them over for the workers to install just to find out that they couldn't do it because of the voltage difference.  *sigh*

LEDs are low voltage and they had wired the undercabinet lighting for regular or fluorescent lights.  Apparently fluorescents are also low voltage but they have their own adapters.  The LED lights I bought also had their own adapter but they would take up an outlet and wouldn't be directly connected to the wiring (thus, less pretty).

Ended up going to Home Depot with the GC to pick up fluorescent lights.  That's what I was actually trying to avoid because I don't care for fluorescent lighting.  Good thing is that you can't see them in the kitchen.  yay!

Now I have two extra LED light bars...not sure what to do with them yet, but I'll find a place to use them.  I'd rather keep them than pay a restocking fee.

Shower door fiasco

Note:  Never leave a guy to install stuff by himself!  Always stay for the installation!!!!

So the guy who installed our shower doors is a different guy from the guy who took our order for the shower doors.  There were mistakes in 2 out of 3 bathrooms!!  The powder room door had a towel bar which we did not want.  And he had installed a very nice shower door in the kids bathroom when we specifically said nothing was to go in the kids bathroom!  There was even a shower curtain rod already installed.

The owner showed up later and prevented his installer from actually caulking the kids bathroom - we probably would have had to replace the tub and even more tiling if that had happened!  But there was already some scratching on the tub and cutting of tile.  So now our GC had to clean up the mess:  re-order tile, remove the tiles with holes in them, and redo the affected tiles.

DH was super pissed.  On the other hand, I was just glad I didn't need to run around to fix the mistake.  :p

Appointments at home

Thankfully I had to be at home for two appointments that would happen around the same time.  :)

First, I had our alarm company come by to take a look at what new equipment we had to get and what old equipment could be reused.  That took a little while since so much has improved and updated since we first moved into the house.  They have nifty little iPhone/iPad apps to control your alarm and even lighting.  Of course, it all cost extra.

Second, furniture delivery for our headboard and sleeper sofa!  Although, unfortunately, they could not get it through the doorway.  And in the process, they broke a door handle trying to get the sofa through.  *sigh*  So they had to take it back to the warehouse for disassembling and reschedule another date to deliver the sofa pieces.

Cyber Monday and misc

Thankfully the undercabinet LED lights I wanted were on sale during Cyber Monday!  :)

Other great news:  our carpet came in early!  On Monday, DH got a call that the carpet installation would be scheduled for Thurdsay.



For Tuesday and Wednesday, I went around shopping for curtains, picking up Macy's merchandise that we had pre-paid for, and getting miscellaneous home items.  We were finally replacing our broken mail slot.  I bet the mailman was pretty happy about that.  (We originally had a screw the mailman had to remove and replace each time to open the mail slot.)

Note:  if you like your house numbers, make sure to safekeep them when the workers take them down to paint the exterior!  I had to buy new house numbers even though I totally liked the old ones - grr.

Black Friday!

For Thanksgiving weekend, we decided to take a nice break from work related to the house.  The only thing we did for the home was buy lots of stuff on Black Friday!  :)

Went to Macy's and stocked up on guest towels and pots/pans (need new ones for our induction cooktop).  We scored a $40 king size down alternative comforter!  It would've come with two pillows if we had got the deal earlier in the day.  (Macy's opened at midnight but there was no way we were going to do that with a kid now.)

We also bought two more place settings and silverware sets for the upcoming Christmas dinner we're hosting.  We scored an awesome discount on both pieces due to an incredibly enthusiastic saleslady who works in the bridal department.  She gave us a discount earlier than usual.  hehe.

Walking around the mall, there was a guy handing out flyers for the Sony store.  We went to check it out.  There was a 40" TV going for $600, retailed at $1300.  After lunch and a stop by the house (for the scheduled chimney cleaning and inspection), we went back to the Sony store to buy the TV.  In the late morning, there were about 8-10 TVs but by afternoon around 3:30pm there were only 2 left.  We grabbed one, and while paying for it, the last one was sold.  The guys at the store said that there were no more at their warehouse either.  So lucky we got it!!

For our chimney cleaning, it unfortunately did not happen.  Maybe it was fortunate so that we could get back to the mall early enough to buy that TV.  Anyway, our chimney was damaged by the 1989 earthquake according to the chimney guy.  We would actually have to rebuild the damaged part of the chimney.  He would not clean it because it was damaged.  He had been previously burned by customers who used their fireplace with their clean but damaged chimney even though he warned them not to.  Then they would complain to him when something went wrong.  So he went away with the expectation of sending a quote for the chimney rebuild later.

Tile grout versus no grout

Here's the progress of our kitchen backsplash so far.  Notice on the left how there's grout.  The rest of the tiling has no grout.

Toilet Dilemma and Bathroom Counters

Yesterday night, we ordered a sofa for the family room from Ikea.  Delivery scheduled for this morning between 9am and 1pm.  Thankfully, the work crew could sign for the delivery so we did not have to physically be at the house waiting.

However, I needed to visit the house in the morning due to a toilet and warming floor issue.  Turns out that our toilet needs 4 holes drilled into the tile.  Our master bathroom has a warming floor.  We were supposed to receive two warming pads, one for the main area and one for the toilet area.  Well, turns out that there was an ordering mistake and we got one large warming pad to cover both areas.  As a result, we have the warming pad extended to the rear of the toilet (which I did not want).  So to drill the holes, the workers were afraid of damaging the warming pad.  If that were to happen, the flooring of the whole master bathroom would need to be redone because we would need to replace the entire warming pad.  *sigh*  I told them to go ahead and drill.  Otherwise, the toilet will not be properly installed.

After a long planing period, they went ahead...the workers did some very careful calculations and based on touch, they determined that there were no heating coils around the area they needed to drill.   With great caution, they proceeded...and succeeded!  :)

Note:  If you wanted a skirted toilet, let the GC know beforehand so they can position the piping properly.
Note:  Let the GC know what kind of toilets you're using (Japanese versus American) because the Japanese brands need the extra 4 holes drilled in the back.

After making that drilling decision, I had just started driving home for 3 minutes when my GC called and told me that the counter installers were at the house(!).  They were scheduled for 1pm but I guess they wanted to finish before lunch so they arrived around 11am.  I had to stay for the whole install and checked their grouting work.  For the master bathroom, we had bought larger sinks.  Apparently that was a minor issue because the sinks were too big for the cabinets - too wide.  The installers had to cut away on the sides of the cabinet to get the sink to fit properly.  The only damage you can see is if you look towards the sink when the bottom cabinet is open.  Most of the damage is hidden by the sink anyway.   Thankfully!!

Note:  Always know how large of a sink your cabinetry can accommodate before purchasing the sink!

Glue below the counter

Master counter top

Installed!

Carpet fiasco

Our GC could not find the contact information for his original carpet guy because it's been 10 years since he last had a client who wanted carpet.  :p
But our GC made the mistake of assuming that he was going to use Home Depot for the carpet installation.  After going to different stores, he decided that he didn't want to deal with the Home Depot guys for carpet.  Therefore, he proceeded to call around for carpet installers to come to our site.  Out of the four he reached, only one was willing to come out.  The rest were on or going on holiday or something.

My Nghe Carpet & Flooring in San Jose on Tully Road -- Chinese guy who does not shy away from work during the holidays.

We had a meeting with the carpet guy today.  Turns out that carpet comes from Georgia so we would need to wait 7-10 business days for the carpet to come out.  As a result, we moved back our original move-in date by almost 2 weeks.  After measuring the rooms, he took our carpet sample (from Home Depot) to his warehouse to see if there was anything similar.  If he had carpet in his warehouse, then he could install immediately.

While he went to his warehouse, I picked up DH and headed down to the carpet guy's office.  Peak traffic hours = long car ride.  He found two carpet samples that were similar in color and pile to our sample but they just were not plush enough to DH's liking.  Therefore, we selected new carpeting:  Shaw Silken Dreams II in the color 100 Pearl.

100 Pearl in the center

Tile fiasco

After the grout in the master shower dried, the stones had turned a shade of brown.  There is no brown in our shower!!  So I called the tile store to see if this was a defect of some sort, and they said that it was an installation error.

Turns out that if you use epoxy grout, it'll be absorbed by porous materials such as stones (which is what we have).  You need to pre-seal the material before applying the epoxy grout otherwise the material color may change.   And once the epoxy is sucked into the material, you cannot extract it.

Needless to say, we need to redo the master shower floor.  Booooooo...

Brown pebbles versus original grey pebbles

What our master floor should look like

Kitchen backsplash

They started laying out tile for the kitchen backsplash. In the first photo, you can see our new counters with the faucets installed.

Cooktop area

Granite installation

Today, workers came over to our house to install our granite!  :)

Installing island

Island with sink cutout

Using a jigsaw to cut out sink

Tools and cooktop cutout marked

For the tools, it's very nice to see that they have this gigantic level.  :)
The round clamp on the bottom left of the picture is used to hold up the granite while they apply their glue underneath.  I missed out on getting a video of this.

Note:  Get all kitchen faucets ready before the granite installation.  I had to run over to the plumbing store while they were installing to pick up our kitchen faucets.  They don't know where to drill the holes for the faucet otherwise.  (Unless you have a faucet that only requires one hole to be drilled.)

Also, for inspection reasons, we got an extra hole drilled near the prep sink on the island near the dishwasher.  It's the air gap for the dishwasher that is required.  Since our dishwasher (newer model) does not actually need an air gap, we will be using that hole for our water purifier faucet.

Pendants and blinds

Our pendants arrived today so I went to pick them up from the lighting store.  That took only 3 weeks.  woo!

Had an appointment for window shades.  We're going with Hunger Douglas because of their cool retractable cord option - very kid-friendly.  Picked a style and color.  Going with Duette Architella honeycomb shades in daisy white.  Black-out shades in most of the bedrooms.  From the time of ordering, it'll take about 2 weeks to arrive.

Last visits to the plumbing store

Over the weekend, I realized that I had neither ordered the drawer pulls for the bathrooms nor ordered the kitchen faucets.  oops!  My sales guy did not work over the weekend so I had to wait for Monday.

Yesterday (Monday), I ordered the drawer pulls over the phone.  They are from Pacific Modern and we ordered PMH-C-02 for the master (top most pull in the left column) and PMH-M-08 for the kids (bottom most pull in the right column).  Both in a stainless steel finish.

Today, I asked my mother to help babysit the little one while I ordered kitchen faucets.  I really really like the Perrin and Rowe bridge faucet.  Notice how it stands on two feet.

traditional kitchen faucets design by https://www.lightinguniverse.com

Well, ended up getting the Grohe Bridgeford bridge faucet.  It's got three feet but it's about $600 less than the Perrin & Rowe.  Money talks!


Also got the matching pull-out faucet for the prep sink.



My little one had a great time in the store playing with all the faucets within her reach at the Grohe display.  Right now she likes to both pretend and actually wash her hands.  Perfect rainy day place for her.  :p  After I was finished ordering the faucets, she had moved onto the more expensive Rohl display.  haha!

Restoration Hardware curtains

Since it was the last day of their friends and family sale where you get 30% off everything, we took a trip to Restoration Hardware to look at curtain options.  I had my eye on their Vintage Velvet collection because it looked like it could block out light.  This would be for our family room where the TV would reside so we would want to block out most of the light from the patio doors.

We were really lucky to get a designer to work with us.  Using her iPad, she pulled up the Ikea sofa color we wanted and matched curtain colors.  We ended up with the Basketweave Linen drapes in fog.  They're definitely heavy enough to block out light and the color matched better than the velvet colors.  She also helped us pick out matching curtain rods (Antique Silver with end caps), and she drew a nifty diagram as to how we should place the curtain rod over the door.  Very cool to have someone from corporate to help us.  :)  We were very lucky to have gotten her help.


Basketweave Linen drapes in Fog