This came in the absolute nick of time because our "alternate arrangements" for delivering water were getting a bit tough on everyone, not to mention the bicycle:
Now that we have water flowing through the pipes inside the house, we finding all sorts of great ways to use it:
And when you combine water, electricity, and natural gas, you get something very special indeed:
Of course, as with all things in this house, what was a simple appliance delivery got complicated fairly quickly. There are two places in the house plumbed for a washer and dryer. The traditional laundry room in the garage (shown in the picture above) and what appears to be a closet in one of the bedrooms on the third floor:
After taking careful measurements of both locations, we ordered two sets of washers and dryers, a larger one for the laundry room in the garage and a smaller one for the upstairs laundry closet. Sears obligingly delivered both sets in an alarmingly large truck and unloaded them without a hitch:
So far, so good. However, as even occasional readers of this blog can predict, this is the point where things usually go terribly awry, and this was no exception.
Despite our careful, repeated, and absolutely accurate measurements, we discovered that household appliance dimensions are apparently governed by quantum mechanics rather than classic Euclidean geometry, and we had failed to account for the curvature of space around the washers and dryers when trying to figure out what would fit into the designated spaces.
When the tape measures were finally retracted, we found out that we could not fit the larger appliances in the garage laundry room without structural modifications to the house (that Fai, to his credit, was more than willing to do).
For the same reasons the smaller washer/dryer set would not fit in the upstairs laundry closet unless we could make a few nips and tucks to the very fabric of the universe itself. Fai was a bit less enthusiastic about this one, mostly because he was not sure we could get the permits in time. Ultimately when we found out that there is a 6-8 billion year wait for the space wormhole we would need to make it work, we decided to install the smaller appliances in the garage and go with a smaller set in the laundry closet. Frankly, I would have been shocked if it had turned out any other way.
So the bigger washer dryer stayed in their boxes and got right back on the truck and headed back to Sears and the smaller set ended up in the garage; problem solved!
The march towards civilization brought about the next bittersweet moment for the week when one of my favorite parts of the house, the elevator shaft, was taken over by, you guessed it, the elevator. Up to this point, the shaft was an empty abstract piece of negative art, and I don't think Jenn had completely abandoned hope in the possibility of installing a 4-story tall chandelier in the middle of the staircase.
All of that went by the wayside when the elevator contractor showed up this week and started filling the shaft and the adjoining space under the stairs with, well, elevator gear:
Even the elevator cab got assembled inside the shaft, like a ship in a bottle:
All of this is powered by an impressive electric-hydraulic pump:
And operating from a reservoir filled with a significant quantity of hydraulic fluid from those empty buckets in the background:
A few more days, and pressing this button would summon the cab to whisk me away to any of the upper floors I desire -- we hope.
In other parts of the house, the kitchen got a very cool back splash made from glass subway tiles.
Overall, the kitchen is really coming together well. All that fuss with the crane and the obsessively hand crafted cabinets and the ridiculously large faucet seems to have brought about something very close to the intended results.
At the very least, I am heartened that the two vital appliances are installed and operating: the microwave oven and the espresso machine.
The other major item on last week's agenda was the re-application of stucco. Now, your correspondent is no stucco expert, but it seems that after applying all of these coats of stucco, the steel beams and even the framing may be redundant. It seems that the correct number, whatever it is, has finally been reached, and (except for clean up and some patch and trim work) the stucco application has come to an end. The end result, at least at first examination, appears to be smooth and even with a very even tint. Let's hope there is no more scaffolding in our future.
Next week: more plumbing, glass, more elevator work, and some key inspections.
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