Frank Sousa called me this morning and I described the wood garage door design we like. He said he'll be able to send us shop drawings on Monday.

In the afternoon we drove out to Jerong Products in Hayward to look at medallions for the front entry. We actually found a mosaic we liked, and purchased it. They also have hundreds pre-fabricated granite countertops for sale. These come in 8 to 9 foot lengths with 1-1/2" double bullnose edging on three sides. It's actually quite amazing -- they ship slabs to China, fabricate the edges there (for about $3 a foot), ship the finished slabs to here, and sell them for about $200 a piece.

Later, I stopped by the job site and saw Phil and his painting crew hard at work spraying on the primer coat. He said they'll be back tomorrow to paint the ceilings.

I stopped by Dana's office this morning and picked up a sample of stained wood for the kitchen color. He was able to take out some of the redness of the "rich mahogany" color by adding green to the stain.


Dana has been busy building the boxes for our kitchen cabinets. Here are some pictures of the work in progress.


For our weekly meeting with Brad today, we brought two samples of wood flooring and a sample of our kitchen cabinet stain color. Both woods (American walnut and cumaru) look great. We just have to make a decision.

We also held up a piece of cardboard, cut in the shape of a shutter, to help pick the best size for the shutters. We decided that a 16" wide shutter works well for the front windows.

Brad gave us the schedule for the next few days.

• Tomorrow - Phil will begin priming the interior. On Saturday he may start painting the ceilings, but he probably won't get to that until next week.
• Saturday - Frank will come out and install a temporary garage door.
• Monday - Dana will begin installing his cabinets, starting in the basement.
• Tuesday - Ernie will begin his tile work.

Brad also added an item to our "to do" list. We need to select the address number for our house. He needs to have one installed for the final inspection, and he wanted to let us know because it's easy, with everything else going on, to forget this one small, but important, item.

This morning I made a short list of things we need to do and decisions we need to finalize -- over the next couple of days and weeks. These are not in any particular order.

• Garage door - We received the garage door quote last night. We need to decide between a steel door or wooden door and work with the contractor to finalize the design.
• Wood floor - We are probably going with the 5" unfinished (sand & finish) cumaru.
• Interior doors - I need to check the finish on the door hinges (I didn't pay attention yesterday, but the picture I took seems to show oil-rubbed bronze hinges).
• Stain color - We need to finalize the stain color for the kitchen cabinets.
• Tile quote - We need a updated quote with the corrections.
• Appliances - We need to select the dishwasher model. Almost everything else has been decided.
• Exterior shutters - We need to order them soon.
• Granite slabs - Once we have the tile quote (with the slab quote) from Tile Plus, we need to decide whether we want to use Imperial Marble or just go with Lucia who contracts for Tile Plus.
• Faucets & accessories - We need to order the rest of our fixtures. And we might as well get the accessories too.
• Exterior paint color - We have a couple of color choices. We need to test them out on a sample of stucco and then select a color.
• Iron railings - We need to give Leonard the "okay" to start fabricating our lightwell and stair railings.
  

Yesterday the utility department came out and installed our gas line. Also yesterday we went to Cornelia's to look at towel bars to make sure we can find ones that will match the color of our fixtures.

Brad received quotes for the hardwood floors, the interior french door, and the lightwell and stair railings today. We're still waiting for the garage door quote as well as an updated tile quote.

Brad said Frank is going to put in a temporary garage door on Saturday while we wait for the real door to be manufactured.

Our interior doors have been delivered. Brad put them in the living room to keep them dry.


Alliance Drywall was finishing up their sanding and Aladdin Hauling was cleaning up the dust and debris inside the house.

At the job site I measured all the windows that will have shutters (and some additional ones that may have shutters). Tomorrow I'll make a cardboard mockup of a shutter so we can see what they will look like.

While I was at the job site I met Carlos who came to check out the location of the gas line. He will be doing some trenching for the lightwell drain lines and some grading.

I went to the house this morning to open some windows and fire up the portable heater. There was a considerable amount of condensation on most of the second floor windows and some of the basement windows, so I used a stack of napkins to wipe up as much moisture as I could.

The stucco contractors were already hard at work applying the finish coat when I arrived. They were working as a concentrated group on one section of the exterior wall. That seems to be the modus operandi because they continued to work that way throughout the day, doing one section of wall at a time.

This morning we met with Leonard, from JB Ornamental Iron, at the job site to go over our wrought iron needs. We sketched out railing designs for the light wells, the stairs leading down to the lower courtyard, the balcony and the interior stairs. We may also want him to fabricate a design for the double doors leading to the family room and kitchen. He's going to get back to us with pricing for the different pieces.

In the afternoon we drove down to The Wood Floor Company and talked to Matt White and Paul Kopacz (the owner). Their showroom is much better organized than Golden State Flooring and we were able to find a few different species of wood we liked, including American walnut, cumaru, and kempas. Matt urged us to use prefinished wood because it's much more durable, but we told him that Brad wants us to us to use unfinished wood. Paul is going to give us quotes for these in 4" planks.

Brad called later in the afternoon to tell us he had to push out all the contractors scheduled for next week. The mud is not drying quickly enough, so the drywall installers have not been able to finish their work. Brad asked me to go over to the job site the next two days to open up the windows in the morning and close them at night -- just to get some air circulation. Luckily this weekend is supposed to be warm with temperatures in the mid 60's to low 70's.

This morning I called The Wood Floor Company to try and arrange a time to meet with one of the contractors there named Matt White. Unfortunately he was not available today, so we'll go down there tomorrow afternoon.

Instead, we went to Terico and purchased some really cool looking silver grey slate for the balcony and maybe for the front porch.

We were also going to purchase the travertine for the back patio and lower courtyard from Terico, but we decided to buy it from Bedrosians instead and save a few hundred dollars for almost the exact same type and color of stone.

So I went back to Bedrosians and added an additional 550 sq feet of Mediterranean Beige Medium Standard travertine to our order.