You know that old adage “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” ? Well it’s been 8 months since my last post and that’s about how long it has taken for me to cool off enough to blog about the events at Treehouse last winter, or rather to not blog about them haha. Let’s just say we had some major contractor trouble on this one, bringing in another old saying ” if you want it done right, sometimes you’ve just got to do it yourself.”
Long story short, we fired the guy and have been putting in the finishing touches ourselves. Luckily, the first floor had actually been finished (for the most part) so the unit left in disarray is the one I’m going to call home. I was working out of state for most of the summer so that wasn’t such a big deal until I was rendered basically homeless upon my return. I cancelled a planned vacation in August and we spent a week doing some concentrated work on the house. The goal was to finish enough so that I could live there. And by live there I mean sleep on a mattress in the corner…
Here’s the mess we were left with:
No working plumbing, no functioning kitchen appliances, no stairs to the deck, tons of siding to be repaired, a crapload of painting and trim work … and really one giant wreck!!
Here’s the progress of one week of Urbanspace slaving:
of utmost priority was the bathroom… my awesome dad installed all the plumbing and light fixtures
The other big goal for the week was to get the tile backsplash in the kitchen finished so that the stove and range hood could be installed. My rockstar neighbor Dave pitched in and busted this out in less than a day.
We also set about organizing the chaos and installing light fixtures so you can, you know… see.
I accidentally ordered these fixtures straight from China. Amazon makes it so hard to tell, those sneaky jerks! So they literally rode over on the “slow boat from China.” and arrived about 2 months after I placed the order. Each came packaged with the tiniest white gloves I have ever seen so you could install the fixtures without getting your fingerprints on them. That is, if you had child hands that actually fit in the gloves? Oh, China.
I also installed a closet system… it’s kind of a dream of mine to have one of those super organized walk in closets. This system came from Ikea and was a total bitch to install, but I had good help from my friends Rick (supplying actual help) and Christina (help in the liquid form of wine) and we managed to get the thing together. Not after 4 separate trips back to Ikea though, of course.
Not much happened in the bedroom except for a bunch of cleaning, but it looks way better than it did a week ago!
So… moving right along getting this place back on track so I have somewhere to live! Up next: paint, a functioning kitchen, finished deck, and… furniture!
urbanspace llc 