Starting the buildout....

To start with, we need to repair the sins of the original builders by burying the wires and re-routing the pipe in the bulkhead - this took nearly half a day. No wonder they the builder let both dangle in the bulkhead!

Midway through I noticed the holes that were going to be used for the pendant lighting and it just didn't look right. Couldn't put my finger on it, but something was amiss. I told the contractors to work on something else while I spend a bit of time trying to figure out why I had a gut feeling that it wasn't right. After getting back to my real job, it came to me out of the blue while working on a budget spreadsheet - the cupboards wouldn't open without whacking the last light! So after conversing w/Cherie we decided on a staggered look like below...

      O
O          O ... as it looks if you look at the ceiling holes...

with the following pattern...

|   |   |
|   ^   |
^       ^ ... looking head on ...

done deal. For the remainder of the day the kneewall, buildout for the fridge, and the electrical for the peninsula was completed.

Many thanks to Cherie for reminding me that we still have to order counter stools, water purifier, and the pecan top for the family room/kitchen dividing cabinets. Got a quote for the pecan top from http://www.devoswoodworking.com that I need to roll with tomorrow. The water purifier has to be a Home Depot purchase (or quick internet delivery) at this point because we'll need it by next Wednesday. Counter stools are not on the time critical path and we'll get to Direct Buy sometime in the next week or so to get them ordered.

Here's a bit of advise if you work at home during this process... mind your mute button during meetings! At the tail end of a meeting today I forgot to press mute and the contractor walked in and asked if he could cut power. After a back and forth instructing him to selectively cut breakers for what they were working on so they wouldn't cut my DSL, I realized I wasn't on mute when the meeting went dead silent. The only thing I could say was "hmmm, I guess I'm not on mute, huh?".