The annual biPlane Flyover over Fairfax, VA

Here are the 3 Dressers for the Wall system. I currently use them stacked in my bedroom – Teak exterior and birch interior …

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Earlier this year I got an older Danish Modern Wall System. Its a very neat series of cabinets, desk and shelves, with aluminum tracks meant to be bolted to the wall and brackets to you can hang everything with. The seller said she got it at SCAN years ago, had moved around with it for ages, and wanted something new. On the back of the cabinets it’s stamped HG – Furniture, Made in Denmark.
I brought it home, wiped it all down with orange oil, and stacked the 3 dressers in my bedroom for all my things. I put the glass-front display cabinets and extra pieces in the basement until summer was over. Now its time to have a deeper look at it.

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A friend gave us a small plastic pond, and this year I dug a hole for it, wrapped it with a rubber pond liner and formed an overflow into the creekbed, then stacked around it with rocks I found in our yard … I put a few plants around it and laid some square slate pieces around it for a surround. Don’t like the look of the slate, but it will do for now.

As usual, click the image to see a larger size version.

I’ve had an interest in Frank Lloyd Wright-design homes for years, but most are in Illinois or Wisconsin. Except one – the Wright home designed for Washington Star report Loren Pope. Originally built in Falls Church, VA, later scheduled for demolition to make way for Route 66 construction, it had been moved to the grounds of Woodlawn Plantation in the 60s. I’d been meaning to visit the home for years …
Well, today we did it!

Click to enlarge the view!

Grass is starting to grow around the far end of our yard, forsythias are blooming, and the Hostas are popping their shoots up out of the ground. Even the fish are more lively now that the days are warming up.

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(Notice how the manufacturer’s square hole for the pipes DOES line up once the legs
are properly installed – and how high and useless the hacked-up holes now are)

We were scheduled to meet “the owner” on Tuesday 12/20 at 3PM, but he’d emailed us late Monday – due to An Emergency he needed to reschedule from Tues Weds 3PM. He arrived at 3:40 …

He was eager to sort out the bathroom problems, to have his guys come in and make it right, but after the last two fiascos, Emma and I had vowed to his laborers wouldn’t work in our house ever again. We walked upstairs and looked at the bathroom, and pointed out some of our problems, all of which he tried to minimize or dismiss.

He said his main guy never did work like that, even as we sat in the living room with the the butchered vanity on display (see cat picture in previous post). He said that wasn’t a problem, because the back wouldn’t been seen once it was installed. We mentioned how his man even took a chop out of the back of the drawer, but he just wasn’t dealing with the shoddy worksmanship.

We had sent him email explaining that we wanted half of our money back ($3k of the over $6 we have paid so far) to resolve the contract, he offered to give us $1500 of our money back, and we settled on a refund ($2500) …

We agreed that the contract has ended and we want nothing more from him – and he left. Then I rushed off to cash the check immediately, just in case …

I guess I’m going to have to learn how to do all this work myself now … sigh …

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While installing a vanity yesterday, our man forgot to put the feet on it (even after Emma mentioned he’d need to screw on the legs before installing it). It was too low to lineup with the pipes – so he hacked it the back of the unit to MAKE IT work …
…what craftsmanship!! What a tool!

The next installment of the seemingly never-ending bathroom renovation job. The owner of our contracting firm called to say they had the next bunch of hardware and would be out Friday to “finish” the bathroom. This was good and scary at the same time – the last time someone promised to finish in a single day it was a royal mess of sloppy grout work, peeling paint and a broken vanity cabinet – not to mention using white fixtures when we had repeatedly specified off-white ONLY. Needless to say, that rush job was to be redone … but we hoped for better this time.

This project has gone so wrong I’ve built a webpage just for it – see

http://www.thewebgal.com/homework/bathroom.html

A few years back, Emma was in the half bath just behind the stove in the kitchen and she noticed a dark spot on the ceiling. When she reached up to touch it, her hand went right through the surface, into wet plaster! Thats how we found out we had a problem with the tile around the tub in the upstairs bathroom.
I pulled the old tile down and found another layer of tile under that – 2 rows deep! I’m a fan of HGTV and all the renovation shows, so I knew I could save some money if I did the initial demolition. Break out the googles and have at it! I stripped the wall down to the bare studs, then packed it full of Fiberglass insulation to keep the room comfy.

We spoke to various contractors and got bids, and finally signed a contract with one firm May 18, 2005. It was our first experience with contractors – and its been like all the home remodeling gone bad movies you ever saw …

They came in and did some initial work, but its been a comedy of errors (but …it ain’t funny!).
We wanted to get the fixtures (tub, toilet and sink) in an offwhite color – so when their estimator wrote up the the contract he said “offwhite, almond/biscuit – any color but white” .

So of course, when they brought the new tub, it was white. Fortunately, we noticed while it was still outside, before it was installed, so we reminded them of the contract and had them take it back and exchange it for an almond tub.