Present Joys

The guys from Schrocks were here again today to finish up odds and ends. They brought the completed doors for my front parlor cabinets (which are beautiful and will be wildly time-consuming to stain and finish), installed the mirror backsplash in my dining room (photos of that soon), and completed the cornice on the foyer bookcases. The color weirdness shown here is due to some parts being more pre-finished than others. Now that these are in, I can thoroughly finish everything.

Reuben, one of the Schrocks installers, did a beautiful job carefully coping out the bookcase cornice pieces to fit around the head block that will go in as part of the window trim (at the very far left corner in this photo). I have some work to do before the window trim will go back in, but once it does, it should be a nice tight fit.

It took one full working day to get the foyer cabinets fit, but the guys did not fasten them in on Monday. They intended to fasten both of these big bookshelves to the wall, leaving only the cornice to finish later. The left shelf went in just fine. We ran into a hiccup with the right side. After poking around in the wall, we realized an electric box that needed to move a few inches (to work on the back of the bookshelf) had a lot of wires happening inside it. Electricity feeding our guest room and stair lights all passed through this receptacle, and there was not enough slack in the wires to move the box. This would need attention before we could cover up the wall. The installers propped up the bookshelf so I had room to access the wall and I told them I’d fix the problems after they left.

So they moved onto the dining room. It took almost all day to scribe and install the monumental piece that’s going in the dining room, beginning with the 36″ × 95″ × 20″ base cabinet and countertop, then the 60″ × 95″ × 12-1/2″ upper cabinet with brackets on each end. They said the upper cabinet was one of the largest single pieces they’ve ever handled. Once these went in, it immediately changed the feeling of the dining room. I’m anxious that the new base cabinet, although it only projects about 15″ into the room, will feel too crowded. I won’t know for sure until we have the furniture back in place. Besides that one concern, I’m so excited to see my dream start becoming reality.

After the guys left, I immediately set to work trying to find slack in the wires. I tore open the wall (thankfully, behind where the bookshelf would cover it) and found enough slack in one wire to work. I had to rerun another two wires from scratch. It went surprisingly quick considering

A lot of the large pieces are now either installed or ready to be installed, but a lot of small work remains. The dining room backsplash and crown still need to be installed, as does the built-up crown molding on the foyer. And they haven’t done anything with the front parlor yet. Theoretically this will all get done tomorrow. I’m excited to see if that’s what will happen!