Yes, the remodel is ongoing. Really it is. One more piece to go and the kitchen's done: it's a short pony wall that separates the kitchen (which is wide open to the rest of the house exept where it backs up to external walls) that's going to be covered in the corrugated metal that skins half of the exterior of my modern house. Six weeks after ordering the piece, the guys came to install it on Tuesday and lo and behold, it was half an inch too short.
Also this week, the second set of new barstools arrived. The first were beautiful, LOVED them, but my counter is 43" and the stools, which were supposed to be 38" tall, "adjustable" and "industry standard height" for a 42" counter (also industry standard height for a true bar counter, though some eating counters are shorter) were in fact just 30" tall at their tallest, and when you sat on them two things happened. They adjustable stem sank an inch and a half AND the soft cushion pancaked 2". Result? You're sitting at 28" and the counter's at armpit level--and we're both normal sized people. I'm 5' 7". Many conversations with the manufacturer (Johnston Casuals--never buy from them!) ensued, which began with them saying "they're our biggest seller" and "we've never had any complaints before". So you can just guess how the rest of that went. Also, one was defective, crooked, and needed to be replaced at their cost. Well they magnimously agreed to do that--if I paid the freight to North Carolina. Think of all the ways you can say NO WAY and just imagine that I said all of them at least twice. Then they agreed to make special order make new stools that would be suitable for my 42" high counter, but they also insisted on charging me a 25% restocking fee for the three nondefective stools I was returning AND of course, there was all that freight. In the end, my stools, which had cost an exorbitant $800 each to begin with, were going to end up costing me about $1500 each. INSANITY. So dearly though I loved the hand-welded pewter look of them, they've been sent back, and I bought four pretty cool stools on Overstock.com for a total of $565 shipped--for all four!!--which were delivered on Thursday--six days after I ordered them. They're 31" tall, the seat is uncushioned (vinyl on molded wood), and you don't sink four inches when you sit on them. In a word, they're perfect.
And no special orders, no arguments required. As long as they don't fall apart in the next three years, I'm money ahead. WAY ahead. Here's what I bought:
http://www.overstock.com/search?keywords=rafe+bar+stools&SearchType=Header
In the last month all the wood moulding for the doors and the new stairway banisters arrived, also the stainless steel pipe rail that tops the stairway banister. But of course, since this is MY project on which nothing ever goes right (we've taken to referrring to this as the 100 year flood of kitchen remodels), so the elbow at which it descends in one place got made at 135 degrees instead of 144, so that's being redone and my finish carpenter doesn't get along with the pipe fabrictor he chose so this could be extra interesting. Also, the tile started going up in the powder bath last Friday and was completed on Tuesday. The new stainless steel skin for the fireplace rehab (the fireplace is a two-way in the center of the house next to the open kitchen) has been templated and will be installed any day now, and the up-lighting for a sculpture of sorts that I'm making myself to flank one side of the stairway has been ordered.
When all that's done, the downstairs is complete and I'll be able to post before/after shots. After that? Upstairs.
