Granite was installed yesterday and this morning the plumbers showed up bright and early to get all the stuff hooked up.

Our oven now has gas heat running to it, so, Seth, I’ll start on those brownies right away.

1. Dexter is squatting to pee now. This may sound like a small step, but it is a signal of greater muscle control in his hind legs. We’re seeing progress everyday, and its very exciting. He is still not able to walk, and cannot stand up from the squatted position, but its the first step.

2.  Our house should be pretty much done by the time we get home. We’ve been waiting on the electrical to be finished and had a snafoo with one of the sinks, so they couldn’t put the granite in last week. But both of those should be done today. They are also moving furniture back into place so we can put stuff away. Finally! A functional house!

Today we should see progress on the tile in the bathroom and I think the hood should be put up over the stove. Last week the contractor said we should be done by the end of this week, but I highly doubt that, seeing how Friday was the only day anyone worked last week.

We had Brinks come out to reinstall our alarm system (for which we’ve been paying during construction (they reimburse for 2 months, but that’s it)). Our first attempt to have them reinstall it went from bad to worse because apparently they don’t like to install them in the front wall of houses because of the likelihood of the flexible drill bit going through the exterior of the house.  The preferable location really is the front wall so the guy said, if he could drill a hole halfway down the wall (supposedly where the fireblock was), that he’d be able to get the wire down to the basement. Not only did the drill bit punch through our siding, twice, but he was also unable to get through the fireblock. We asked him to leave because we had our 80′s party to get to and he left with no progress and one significant hole in our new paint job.

Sooo, Saturday morning they sent out two installers, both of whom seemed more capable and creative than the first guy, to see if we couldn’t find another solution. Long story short, they ended up installing it on the hallway wall above our new light switch. The wires were run up (instead of down) into the attic, over to the closet, down through the closet into the crawlspace, and back to the power box. Granted, it wasn’t a simple solution, but should’ve been something that the first guy at least suggested. He didn’t even want to consider the attic when Jason brought it up the first time.  Anyway, our home is now resecured, which is good since all of our new stuff will soon be in place.

It looks great with the wood floor and I am very excited to cook on it. Of course, they have to turn on the outlet into which it is plugged, but then we can bake away if we want. It might be helpful to wait until our countertops arrive though:

The floor boards and shoe molding are two of the nice touches that really make it look pretty high class:

We’ve also added nickel doorknobs to all the interior doors. One of my coworkers summed up this process well when she said “Did you ever think you’d be excited about nickel doorknobs?”:

Yesterday they added the molding around the cabinets in the kitchen. It looks really nice:

Here are a few more. This one shows the detail of the design a lot better, but doesn’t really capture the true color. The little shelves on either side of the opening are for our spices. I like that!

Here’s looking at the main sink and window. The upper right cabinet, we guess, did not fit correctly, so its still sitting on the floor. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not really our problem:

The vent in the ceiling ran right into the drop ceiling, so they found a pretty classy solution for the crown molding (which looks great, by the way):

One last view looking through the pass-thru: