What's wrong with this picture?

Can you tell what's wrong with this picture? I can and it almost gave me a heart attack.
The instruction was to center each number in the plank between the grooves and to maintain alignment. I even mentioned that curved bottom has to sit slightly below the baseline to appear aligned. I didn't assume people knows about this, but yet I still didn't get what I ordered.

So I mentioned that this need to be fixed, and I will be there to give directions. Yet again no one pays any attention and decided to just "fix it" and here is the 2nd version:

It's almost right and of course now the siding requires repairment. But the 5 is still floating!!! And now it's not so easy to ease it lower by 1/8" or so. Do I have to live with this? How hard is it to follow a simple instruction of don't do anything until I'm there?

By the way, this is Avant Garde.

Not so little glass box

I absolutely hate shower curtain, it brushes against you, it needs to be replaced all the time, the rod if it's the tension rod won't stay put, basically the only virtue is the price, it is way more affordable than it's glass counterpart... Needless to say I'm very excited about getting glass in the shower and in the tub. I have been enduring shower curtains for the last 25 years. It's definitely about time.

My first preference was to have just glass and minimum hardware and no moving parts, so a fixed half closed glass partition will be ideal. Unfortunately that doesn't work very well in my bathroom... it's just way too small to have an opening without the consequence of having to mop the floor after every shower. So the next option was to have a door that opens into the shower area instead of out since the toilet is right next to it so there's not enough room. But opening in is not to code. The last option is to have a sliding door. Originally I was opposed to it as I remembered all those sliding doors in the 80s apartments and I don't like them either. They run on a rail and it's hard to clean, but the newer version is way more superior and also devoid of a lot of chrome. So the final version is 3/8" clear Starphire tempered glass frameless shower enclosure with Clarvista Coating. Starphire is the clear looking glass without a tint of green as in normal glass. Forgot to mention one thing, the sliding direction was suggested by Danny from Franciscan Glass to avoid water spilling out. Great tip.

As for the guest bath I stick with having just a glass partition. It's not for everyday use and I like the clean look better. Besides, it's cheaper ;-) Still I picked 3/8" Starphire tempered glass to maintain the "white" look.

Let there be more light

Finally the electrician installed the Glo Ball light. Remember the one that arrived all broken? I ordered it from Lumens.com and they handled the whole episode beautifully. They sent UPS to pick up the broken one and in less than 5 days sent me a replacement. Very courteous too. I do highly recommend dealing with them. So here is the light in it's full glory, it will be right above the dining table. This is definitely one of my very satisfied purchase. This is not a very good picture, I might replace this photo some day.

And the guest room gets some lights too. This is Philips, reasonably priced  and it fits the alignment of the window ;-)

The theme of the "ball" light extends to the back exterior. The picture is rather bad, but I guess you can see the shape.

6th Mensiversary

Happy New Year. I wish you all the best in 2013 and more so for this overly prolonged renovation.

I was hoping that the new year will bring some good luck to this seemingly ill fated project. Basically everything that could gone wrong indeed went terribly wrong. Ok, maybe not everything, but definitely way too many.

As the 6th month rolls around, we are dealing with details now. On this mensiversary day, there are quite a few activities:

Radiant Heat Boiler - Lipp Hydronics Inc.

The weather has been constantly below freezing these days so finally on Sunday 12/30 I was thinking that the heater should be turned to at least 55 to make sure that the pipe won't burst. Well, no actions from the old radiant heat boiler...dead silence. I called the reliable Lipp Hydronics Inc. for a check up, but of course everyone is having heating problem so Mr. Bill Lipp didn't show up until today 1/3. The first thing he did was pump up the temperature gauge to 90. And guess what, the boiler started cranking. He told me that half of the house calls he made had this problem. Homeowners shut down the system during the summer months and then to reactivate all you need is to crank it up high, basically disregard the temperature setting. He also checked the pressure and the valves. So to make sure all is well the temp needs to remain at 90 overnight to make sure the boiler keeps working. I'm just thankful that I don't need a new boiler and that the heating is working. So next time if your boiler seems to be on strike, turn the temperature to 90 and save yourself $145.

Liebherr Refrigerator

There has been a problem with the installation of the fridge for over a month now (I was just ignoring the issue). The strip of wood at the top of the opening is too low for the fridge to go in. There has been a few rounds of adjustment, apparently it still doesn't work. So finally Peter suggested to take the strip off, put the fridge in and then adjust the wood. That should be simple enough, but now after the fridge is plugged in it is making so much noise that I need to track down Liebherr to ask for a technician to come and look at it. Why can't the fridge just plug in and work? It's hard not to feel that bad luck is just following me around. Of course I spend more than an hour doing this and the technician won't contact me until next week to set up an appointment. 

The gap on the top where the wrongly dimensioned wood strip was.

Bosch Dishwasher

Same issue with the dishwasher. It won't go in. At least now that the wood is taken out and the dishwasher is in, I haven't gotten any complaints that it's not working, yet. Really, it's ok? I sure do hope so.

Again, the gap was wrongly calculated.

Baldwin Door Handles - PullsDirect.com

The door handles were ordered on 12/3. Finally on 1/3 they arrived. I ordered 2 entry handles (keyed), 1 left handle and 1 right handle. They have different model numbers.

Baldwin EN.TUB.R.CRR

Baldwin EN.TUB.L.CRR

I ordered 6 privacy handles with lock, 3 left handles and 3 right handles with different model numbers.

Baldwin PV.TUB.L.CRR

Baldwin PV.TUB.R.CRR

Well, they took a good month and then completely ignore the order and sent me all right handles. What's the model numbers for? So I called them and of course I need to send the wrong ones back before they send out the correct ones again. I still wasn't too unhappy yet, just cursing about my bad luck. But after talking to Miss Emily on the phone I finally received an replacement order email with 4 right handles, not left. Seriously, this is a very simple order. PullsDirect can get it wrong twice? So the order is to send back 4 right handles and then receive another 4 right handles? And they sell door hardware? Dealing with left and right shouldn't be this difficult, especially for a business that's center around shipping door handles. They all have left and right versions. Towards the end of today I still haven't gotten a straight answer yet and I was on the phone for 2 hours. Think again before you order anything from PullDirect.com!