Getting Warmer

Having not heard anything by the end of the day, I called the architect. He indicated that the project manager had gone by the house earlier today and met the builder to discuss the laundry plumbing issue. It sounded like the idea being tossed around as a solution is to move the pocket door out towards the kitchen to give us another 2-3". I'll claim partial responsibility for that one, as I asked both the builder and the PM if that was an option. Apparently, since the cabinet shop's pantry was 6" smaller than the plans originally showed, moving the pocket door out kinda brought the design back in line more with the original spacing. The architect wasn't sure if there was going to be cost involved in moving the door, though he hinted that it couldn't be nearly as expensive as they were talking about for moving the plumbing.

We also talked about the lighting a little more. The builder is going to continue to find a dimmable CFL solution that will work with the cans that they already installed. It was suggested that if they couldn't find a solution, they ought to be responsible for fixing it (which I assume would be to go back to the original design). Of course, if they find a dimmable CFL solution and we just don't like it (i.e., the quality of the light isn't good, or they don't dim all that well), then it may be more of a shared problem. Seems fair enough.

The other topic that we eased into was backsplash. He suggested avoiding having any type of accent tile. Much like the PM when we talked about it with him, the idea is to just have the backsplash fade into the background. The way it really started to make sense for me was when he pointed out that we would have nice natural woods (the cherry of the cabinets and the bamboo floors), and those should be the real feature.

About an hour after our discussion the architect called back to say that the builder will resolve the laundry room plumbing issue by moving the pocket door. And there will not be a cost impact! Great news, just wish it hadn't taken over a week to figure out.

Over the last week we pretty much settled on the counters and got a quote. Then I asked about adding an etched drainboard, and the counter guy said it would be a $500 adder. Talk about sticker shock! The different templates that he sent were a bit fancy, so I asked if he could just do 5 parallel lines and threw out a number. He was OK with it, and we'll go see a sample drainboard tomorrow.

After meeting him at the cabinet shop we plan to go look at tile again, this time with both of us in attendance and without a toddler. I'm hoping we can come to a conclusion, so that we can get the architect's buy-in, and then move on to the next decision.

I swear we're going to be picking things out until the last friggin' day of construction. We still have backsplash tile, paint, cabinet hardware, island material, and a sink faucet.