Color of fall

Fall color

Good knob choice!

Nan's choice.

Hunging off ones legs

In some level of pain

For cartman, because we now stop giving him table food.

Cooking

Lamp

Week 2: problem and solution

One of our miscalculations include we bought this lamp for bathroom, and I also bought mirror cabinet. The downward lights basically will be blocked by the cabinet.


Solution?
Hmm... Why not install the lamp upside down?


No return, no new lamp-hunting needed.

Other problems: 1) the tiles got from Otto Marble was wrong ones 2) the kitchen sink is still half open. I soaked the cabinet while using the sink for the first time. 3) there is difference between flat and semi-gloss for paint. 4) the recess lights in kitchen are too few, but we cannot change it now. 5) bought too much kitchen tiles, but short one cabinet knob (mis-counted one). :((

Week 2: bathroom #2

A lot work done this week. The second bathroom is almost up. The tile 'hazelnut travertine' are on wall and on floor. The decoration belt is mosaic 1x1. I like how it looks like on the wall. But it does take more time to make the look. The mosaic belt along with two rows of tiles were up first, so, the work started from the middle. Our contractor said this way, it was easier to make tiles to align perfectly both from top and from bottom.

He used the wood to support the tiles for overnight dry.

Trim.

The tile wall.

Vessel sink, red!

And the big pantry.

Week 2: granite installed

"Golden Pesa". One of a few choices both of us agreed on. Also copied
from Ms Xie's, our muse.

Day 5 - cabinets installed

In the kitchen cabinets are installed and covered. Day 6,7 - weekends
no show. Ding said it might be too noisy to work in weekends.
Meanwhile he has a roof to install for his other client.

Day 4 - no show

Our contractor cannot come today. Of course we cannot assume he only works on our project. :((
His initial promise is to finish 1 kitchen and 2 and half bathrooms in three weeks. Now I don't think the promise would be kept. Hopefully we would finish the project before Xmas.

Day 3 - half cabinets are up

I have lost the ethumsiam to keep posting the status now. :) Our
progress has been slower. But I'm very happy with the cabinet choice I
made. They feel smooth and look very pretty, wait until all of them
properly installed, with countertop and back splash. Now my worry is
the choice of knobs, I now leaning to use silver in stead of black.
But that may cost $$ and shipping time. And of course more thinking
and swing. Ah, the road of remodeling.

Day 2 - color walnut

Day 2

Day 2 - ceiling closed

Part of cabinets arrived.

Sleeping

day 1

Cartman is doing fine too. He found the bare floor, the workers exciting, and he likes our packed living room. Everyone has to stay closer to him.

A remodeling project / 装修进行时 - day 1

Yes, Cartman, we are doing a remodeling right now.

The kitchen is in now in the living room. This reminded me somehow our early days in China, when a family had to be packed into one room. On the other hand, we actually still have wireless hub, and a tv. So we are all good. :D

Without a kitchen, yet, we are still cooking. Tonight's menu even includes the well-cooked pork (红烧肉）thanks to my mother-in-law's staying with us. Though we did blow the fuse for the first try out of the induction cooker. ;)

A remodeling project / 装修进行时 - day 1

Very good progress for day one. I was impressed by how many things got done. Our contractor 丁师傅 is quite efficient. He and his team arrived at our place at around 8:15am. Three workers in total. Just a few minutes when arrived to the scene during which I was at home, they covered all the floors, set up the curtain between kitchen and living room, pulling all the tools in. Basically they transformed our home immediately into a project field.

Then this was what I found after I came back from work today:

The kitchen was stripped out. All trashes had been thrown away.

The vent pipe for the cooking hood was redirected. We are changing the layout of the kitchen.

Bathroom #1 was gone.

The closet between bathroom #2 and #3 was removed, the wall for bathroom #2 was extended. So I will have a bigger bathroom!

phone trouble again

My new iphone lost service again. This morning we visited Genius bar in Apple store. I ended up getting a new iphone after my previous old was diagnosed as defective. It was disappointing to have a not-working phone, actually I think I knew why it broke. I restored my first 2G iphone which was jail-broken data to my first 3G phone. I think those jail-breaking stuff must make some mess. It's disappointing the system cannot be more robust. But, I was impressed how good the service was. I got a new iphone without any strings attached after they found they cannot fix my problem. Impressive. I guess I will still be an Apple user.

Shhh...

New bean bed

But to let him know this is a bed took me quite some effort. He
insisted it was a big toy he can drag around with teeth. Tonight he
finally accepted it after I shuffled him from his old bed to the new
one while he was sleeping like a stick. "Ahh, it's so comfy, I shall
not move an inch".

Comfy

Pillow

Being squeezed...