In week 32 of the remodel, Enzo and his team continued to make rapid progress on the house. The interior painting is very nearly done, including our bright, cheery, and very yellow laundry room, and the office, which we switched to blue at the last minute. The upstairs bathrooms haven’t been painted yet—we think they want to wrap up the tile there first—and we have a few questions about some trouble spots in the master bathroom, but otherwise the painters seem to be wrapping up inside.

Likewise, the countertops seem to be finished and installed just about everywhere. They’re largely covered up, presumably for protection, but you can see them peeking through here and there,

There’s a separate set of people dedicated to working on tile, and they’ve been chugging along, as well. Julia’s shower is mostly finished, other than the alcove for shampoo and soap, and they’re off to a good start in the boys’ bathtub. They haven’t started on the bathroom floors yet, but we’re looking forward to those being finished soon.

As smoothly as things are going, we did run into a bit of a hiccup regarding the tile color for Julia’s bathroom. Initially, we had picked out a green that we thought would play off the green color on her bedroom walls, but that shipment was unexpectedly delayed for reasons that are unclear; for all we know, we can attribute the holdup to recent problems in the Suez Canal. As a fallback, we decided to go with white tiles, but we encountered shipping delays for those, also. Finally, we settled on some tile we had initially conceived as a backup for the boys’ bathroom. Although they weren’t the strong green color that we had originally aimed for, we thought that they might read as a greenish blue in context. This may have been a bit optimistic: the bathroom isn’t finished yet, but to my untrained eye, they look pretty darn blue. They do look very nice, however.

Toward the end of the week, the crew began setting up to pour concrete for the driveway and patio. Happily, we were able to preserve the existing front porch and sidewalk, which will save us a bit of money, but the driveway and patio by themselves are fairly expensive items.

For the driveway, we’re keeping the current, narrow opening to the street, which saves the tree in our parkway that would otherwise be in the way. About twelve feet after the sidewalk, the driveway will gradually widen to line up with the full width of two-car garage, leaving enough room for us to park our cars side-by-side with sufficient clearance for either one of them to back out without having to move the other.

In the back yard, the new patio will have the same basic shape as the old one, but it will be much shallower, because the we’ve moved the back of the house much further out than it was before. The new patio’s size is a compromise aimed at preserving as much of the yard as we could, and it’s distinctly possible that it will feel a bit tight once we set up our table, chairs, and assorted plants. Happily, however, we were able to put in a request for brick trim around the border of the patio, which will make it look a little more finished and also provide a subtle callback to the look of the old patio.

By Saturday, the team had cleared out the areas to be paved and set up wooden braces and rebar to shape and support the concrete. The plan was to pour the concrete early the next week so it would be safe to walk on by the end of the week, if not to haul in heavy items on dollies and hand trucks: Enzo wants to make sure we given it sufficient time to harden before we do anything that might scratch it.

As you’ll see in the photos, one sticking point that we haven’t yet overcome is the window over the kitchen sink. Or, more accurately, the lack of a window over the kitchen sink. The salesman originally ordered the wrong size window for the space; he subsequently put in a new order for a window with the correct dimensions, but that order has since been delayed. In the meantime, our old living room curtains remain nailed up over the opening to keep the elements at bay—it’s fortunate that we have very predictable weather here—and various other aspects of the project remain on hold as a consequence of the missing glass, including: completion of the stucco; exterior painting; sections of the kitchen backsplash; interior paint in the kitchen; and the installation of exterior electrical fixtures. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there’s a clear resolution in sight, which is a source of frustration for us and for Enzo.

I wish I could say that this would be resolved by the end of next week, but I’m actually writing this at the end of next week, and at the risk of spoiling next week’s post, I can confidently say that it is not, in fact, resolved.

Gallery: Week 32: Countertops and Tile