Our remodeling is coming along and on schedule. Han and Pon and their workers have now done the texuring on the walls, put in the crown molding, baseboards and casings. The new slides, doors and recessed lights are in. Soon they will start painting. Then the flooring will go in. The fabricator is due to come in to measure for the granite and the plumber will be putting in the bathtub.

Our contractor, Han and his partner Pon are amazing. They are hard workers and have done everything we ask. Been very helpful in helping us figure out what the next step is and finishing what they have started in a timely manner. I would highly recommend them.

Speaking of doors, Home Depot totally blew our order of doors. We had their people come out to measure our doors, (they charged us $50) and found out they all had to be custom made. We told our contractor, Han, he said that doesn't sound right and he remeasured, his measurements came out standard, not custom. We changed the order to standard. But someone at Home depot didn't put it in so it took 5 weeks to get our doors and they came in the original order which was the custom order. So Han's guys had to work much harder making all the door jams fit. It's really frustrating. Also the mirrored sliding closet doors came too short. And the other two reg sliding closet doors didn't even come in. I would not recommend Home Depot for your doors. Go to a small company, it cost more, but worth it.

The landscaping is almost finished and our landscaper, Robert, was very reasonable and nice to work with. Right now they are finishing up and putting the patio in which is a earth-tone slate. I really wanted to go with flagstone, but budget is tightening up. The slate will still look good.

The cabinets look beautiful, we need to get the hardware. I've been checking the internet for deals, but haven't found anything. We may have to order through Home Depot, God help us, they are the only ones that carry this particular hardware that I like byThomasville.

After taking out all the bushes and trees, it's really made a difference with the house. You can actually see the house now. The landscaping looks great, we're really happy.

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted. We are both very exhausted from all of the decision making. Can't wait for the house to get finished so we can have our life back. The workers have taken the old carpet out and the old horrible linoleum underneath it. It looked like a real pain getting the linoleum up, I felt sorry for the guys. They also have scraped the ceiling and demoed parts of the fireplace.

The house hopefully will be finished in a couple of months. The workers are now patching drywall. Next week the cabinets go in the kitchen and the new sliders in the livingroom, dining room and bedroom. Doors also will be going in. The new garage door is going in Friday. It will be exciting to see it starting to come together.



Right now we have to make a decision about the fireplace mantle. I've gotten some pics off the internet and magazines. We are going to buy the bathrooms and kitchen sinks tomorrow and of course the faucets. Our budget is dwindling fast and we still need to pick out our countertops for bathrooms and kitchen.

We have befriended an orange tabby that came with the house, our granddaughter named him Frederick. We go by there every night and feed him. He used to run away from us, but now comes up to us and loves to be petted. He's really starting to show a lot of personality. He's a sweet old cat.

James and I Bought a ranch style, fixer-upper built in the 60's. We are in the process of remodeling and hoping to have it finished before we go to China to pick up Lucy.

We met with several painters, drywallers, ceiling scrapers. They all sounded really good and most were recommended by our new neighbors. We decided to go with Han who does it all. It was the easiest thing to do to keep all the steps organized.


We are literally replacing everything inside the house except for the drywall. Beams are being removed, the cottage cheese on the ceiling is being scraped. New heater, ducts and vents. So there is a lot of decision making to what kind of doors, hardware, kitchen cabinets, molding, baseboards, switches, flooring, lighting, kitchen & bathroom fixtures, sinks, toilets, tile. We are the type of people that agonize over the littlest decision, so we've had to get over that quick. We just hope we are making the right ones.