Work continued at a steady pace in week 35 of the remodel, as the electricians began installing light fixtures, while toilets, faucets, trim, and other aspects of the house began to come together.

As we guessed last week, the missing kitchen window was finally installed, closing the door on that chapter at long last. The front door was re-hung, as well, having been taken down to be painted several weeks ago. And the locks and handlesets we picked out were mounted on that door and on the garage entry door, so we could, in theory, program them with numeric passcodes to let us get in and out without having to use the key Enzo has hidden in a lockbox.

The light fixtures Julie and our designer selected seem to be working out well; it’s hard to predict how something is going to look in your home based on tiny pictures on a screen, but we seem to have lucked out so far. Julie had some initial qualms about the island pendants—they reminded her of the Dark Helmet character from the movie Spaceballs!, which I’ve never seen—but eventually her friends convinced her that they would be OK.

The light in the dining area is a knockoff of much more expensive fixtures we have in the Airtime offices in Palo Alto. Our version looks very similar to the original, but came at essentially one fifth the cost. When it arrived, we took notice of its somewhat sketchy packaging and joked that we hoped it wouldn’t burn our house down. The electrician didn’t say anything derogatory about its quality when he installed it, however, so I’m trying to put that possibility out of my mind.

When Julie visited the house on Wednesday, Enzo and the electrician mentioned that they were hurrying to get things ready for an inspection the next day. The electrician also mentioned that we needed bulbs for all our fixtures, and those two statements became conflated—incorrectly, as it turns out—in our minds. That evening, we scrambled to do the research required to figure out what kinds of bulbs we needed for each fixture, and then we made a frantic trip to a couple different Home Depot locations in the area to pick them up. We dashed back to the house to drop them off, taking time to label each box in the rapidly fading daylight, before we headed home, arriving just in time to put William to bed. As this was all unfolding over the dinner hour and beyond, Julia made pizza rolls, so no one went to sleep hungry.

As it turns out, however, all that last-minute hustling around was probably unnecessary: the bulbs were still sitting on the kitchen island when we went by the house on Saturday, and power hasn’t even been connected to the house circuits, so there would have been nothing to prove by having them installed. On the other hand, we would have needed to track down the bulbs at some point anyway, so at least that’s one less thing we have to worry about.

This week, tradesmen also got to work on putting up the brick trim around the base of the house. They’re using a combination of brick salvaged from our chimney during demolition and materials that people were giving away through the local Buy Nothing group. Our hope is that we’ll be able to match the existing trim as closely as possible, and avoiding having to purchase all-new materials is an added bonus.

Another nice consequence of picking up recycled brick around the neighborhood was getting an opportunity to put the kids to work loading it into the van, unloading it at the house, and stacking it neatly in the front yard. I’m not sure they derived as much satisfaction from the activity as I did, but it made for a fun afternoon family project.

I’m very happy we were able to preserve this aspect of the design—it wasn’t in some of the early architectural drawings, and I was somewhat stubborn about restoring it. It provides a link to the house as it was before the remodel, and I’ve always liked the look of brick, anyway.

We expect that things will continue to move quickly next week, as well. Enzo told Julie that he’s planning to be finished by the middle of June, but walking around the site, it seems as though there’s a lot left to do in a relatively short period of time.

Gallery: Week 35: Fixtures