Today the laminate floor was almost finished in the living/dining area. We could have finished, but it got a little too late to be using the table saw, so there are about 3 rows left for me to wrap up tomorrow. Should only take about a half hour. We also finished with the installation of the new toilets. They are Toto Drake toilets, with the “G-Max” flush system. My goal is to be able to not own a plunger. We’ll see. So far, the toilet shutoff valves have been the only ones to not leak. Last night, when my dad and I installed the first toilet, however, the valve started spraying water out of the handle all over the place when it was turned on all the way. We went to Home Depot and bought more shutoff valves. We were able to get the quarter-turn style, which are pretty fancy since they’re really easy to turn on and off. I’m not sure if the second toilet valve was leaking, but I figured if they were using crap parts, it probably would be soon. Both of those shutoff valves installed pretty easily and didn’t leak. Score. So, really all thats left now before I can move in is the carpet and the bathroom vanities. There is a little touchup work left on the moldings in the rooms that are getting carpet, so that needs to be done before I bring in the carpet installers. I took some pictures, but I forgot my camera at the condo, so I’ll post them tomorrow hopefully.

Last night I went to Costco with my parents and bought all of my laminate flooring. I bought 35 boxes total, plus 4 installation kits. The flatbed cart I loaded up was hard to even get moving. We started installation this morning. It was slow to start because we had a crazy triangle at the beginning, which I refer to as the Bermuda Triangle, but we got quite a bit of the living room done. I am really tired and sore now, but hopefully we can at least wrap up the main living+dining area tomorrow. Here are some pics:

A bunch of boxes of flooring (this is probably less than half of it):

The Bermuda Triangle:

The tile in the kitchen:

Yesterday, the tile was finished. The tile installers seem to have done a pretty good job and it looks nice. My new countertop for the bar came in as well, and I picked it up from Home Depot. I removed the old one, which was really hard to get off. It was attached with four big spots of glue between the two sections, and a couple nails stick up through the studs and pierce through the bottom. I used a giant crowbar which came in handy. By the time that was off, it was probably about 8:30, and I didn’t want to piss off the neighbors too much, so I held off on cutting the new countertop. I picked out a carpet sample and gave it to the tile people, who said they can do carpet as well, so we’ll see about that. I’m trying to track down some cork underlayment for the laminate so that I can start it this weekend, but I think I might need to order online, which will take about a week and a half to deliver. I’ll try to get some pictures posted of the tile job soon.

I got an estimate on the rest of the tile today and everything is lined up for installation. They are waiting on me to get some more tile for the kitchen. I stopped by the tile place and bought it, so I plan on picking it up tomorrow then maybe they’ll start installing on Monday. They also do carpet and said if I picked up some samples I liked, they’d match it and beat the price, so that’s cool. So perhaps next week the floors will be almost done.

Today, Mike and I picked up tile. We bought about 150 square feet of 20 inch porcelain tile, four 50 lb bags of mortar, one 25 lb bag of grout, and some spacers. The place is almost out of this tile, but they are supposed to get more in 2 weeks. Normally, you wouldn’t want to have tile from two different batches, but none of the areas to be tiled this weekend will touch other tiled areas, so minor color differences won’t be noticeable. I was gonna buy a cheap tile saw, but listening to other people, it sounded like the little cheap ones are a big pain. We went to Home Depot and they had them to rent for $54/day, which could cut up to 24 inches and has the blade on a rail. The saw they have is probably worth about $1000, so it should cut very well, and I figure we can get all of the cutting done in 3 days of rental, so about $180 (which is barely more than buying one of the crap saws). The kid working the rental shop said it would take about 8 seconds to rip a 20 inch tile, but I have a lot of trouble believing that. In any case, it should be very nice compared to smaller saws.

After Home Depot we dropped off the tile and took a look at the master bath. We started scraping the vinyl glue off, which is a huge pain. I think we may end up just leaving a lot of it on and tiling over it. We also removed the vanity in the master bath, so aside from the glue, it is ready to roll. Tomorrow I think I’ll give it another scraping and maybe use some soap and water, then give up.

Today after work, I stopped by the place and did some measurements on the bathrooms to get the final design for the vanities checked. Everything looks good, so I went to Home Depot to order. It took me about an hour and a half to get everything ordered. I even ordered the countertop for the bar part of the kitchen, since Ikea’s don’t fit there. I went up to the checkout to pay and gave them my credit card and it was rejected. So, I pulled out the backup card. Rejected again. Anyway, I ended up being unable to pay so they had to “suspend” my order. I went home and called up the credit card and found out it was over my limit. They ended up increasing it for me, and I got everything paid for. I’m still not sure why the other card didn’t work. Oh well, at least this ball is rolling now. I could’ve gotten granite counters for a little over twice as much, but I really can’t be spending out of control now. I was tempted though.

The kitchen is, aside from a few little fiddly things, done. I think it came out quite nicely. Tomorrow I’m going to go into massive cleanup mode and try to work out some details of the flooring and other stuff that needs to get done. Here are some pics of the kitchen:

Installing one of the last doors:

The sink area prior to handles being installed:

The stove area with handles installed. As you can see, the alignment of the doors needs a little work because there are gaps. Also, I’m planning on replacing that oven still.

Tomorrow the kitchen will be done, I’m feeling it. I’m starting to get pretty nervous about the impending tile project, and the suitability of the subfloor of the place. As of now, I’ve almost convinced myself to switch the plan. The new plan is to tile only the kitchen and bathrooms and use laminate flooring from Costco in the living/dining room. That would bring my entire project into budget including professional install on the tile. The laminate flooring is a pretty small investment as well, so it could be replaced with something fancier later if needs be. The only problem is if I want to tile more later, it will probably be pretty much impossible to match the pre-existing tile. I dunno, the idea of not having to install tile and being under budget is pretty appealing.

My goal for today was to get the sink in the kitchen installed. The shutoff valves in there were crap and didn’t work well at all, so it was a mess having the faucet/dishwasher off for so long. I went to Home Depot during lunch to peruse the shutoff valve selection, and didn’t really know what I was doing. The guy told me they didn’t have what I needed and I’d have to go to some special plumbing store. I stopped by the condo after work and cut the cabinets up some more so the sink would fit. I couldn’t get ahold of Mike, so I didn’t have anyone to help me lift the sink into position, so I cut some toekicks, then inspected the shutoff valves. I made another trip to Home Depot knowing the sizes I needed. They said they were out of stock of what I needed for the dishwasher hookup, but I bought one valve for the cold water. I went to the other Home Depot in Tempe, and they had a terrible limited selection. I went to Lowes, and their selection was crap. Sitting in Lowes lamenting over the inability to buy the parts I needed, I finally stumbled upon a T connector that would get everything to work if I went back to Home Depot and got another shutoff valve. So, I made a total of 5 visits to home improvement stores and I had what I needed. Exciting! I went back and hooked everything up, and it was leaky. Finally, we resorted to getting my dad to come over and take a look. We fiddled around and replaced compression rings and teflon taped and tightened, and the leaks are minimal. It does still seem to be leaking a bit. We’ll see how it is after a day. Anyway, my conclusion is, plumbing is something that is far from perfected despite how long it has been developed. Keeping water under pressure from leaking is really a pretty tall order.

So, Saturday was a lost day as expected, but this is a long weekend. Mike and I spent a lot of time on Sunday working on the cabinets, and were there until about 3am. We got them all installed except for the sink cabinet. Right where it needed to be fastened to the wall, there was some sort of steel plate in the wall, so we couldn’t drill in and put an expansion bolt. So, today our first challenge was that. We ghetto-rigged on a piece of wood and two bolts to go into the wall nearby. There’s a photo in the gallery. Anyway, we got that done, then cut all the counters and set them on top. We just need to find screws and attach them, then install the sink.

Me doing some important supervision work:

One of the many cabinets that are perfectly level:

And here’s what the cabinets look like with the countertop. We will be cutting a hole in the left hand one and putting in the sink. The corner cut there was pretty tricky, but it’s pretty close.