A few issues surfaced today. First the fire alarm wiring had to be moved. It was installed on the outside of the wall in the kitchen and was in the way for the new cupboards. I had to organize through Siemens, the condo, Distinctive and their electrician. Siemens was able to send a tech on short notice and the electrician was great! There was a junction box in the kitchen that was going to have to go inside one of the cupboards. He re-wired from the junction before the kitchen directly to the sounding device leaving no more junction box to move (or look at). Second the Plumbing could not be moved as planned. It turns out there are limitations on what can be done in the condo. I could do anything to the plumbing outside the wall, but could not do anything inside the wall without arranging it with the condo to be done by their plumber. Even then, I was told I could not change the drain, so even the condo route was not an option. There was really a third issue as well, since the hot water shut-off valve was dripping. I'll come to that later. Again Distinctive was great. Their guy on site, Dean, and I spit balled on what to do and came up with the only option of shortening the drawers to the right of the sink to accomodate the plumbing. I also arranged with the condo to replace the leaking shut-off at a later date. It requires shutting off the hot water to units from the penthouse down to the 12th floor and notification to unit owners of the shut-off. It's a big production. Kudos again to Distinctive for Alain, the project manager and Renee, the designer (on her day off) were busy solving the problem as well and came up with the same solution. Even with the issues - still on track. Today wall frame removed, plumbing done, kitchen electrical done as well as running cable and a new circuit to the tv room for a later project. There was probably a bunch of other stuff done today, but I've written enough already. K20D8612

Imagine if you will for a second that there was a toilet (poorly installed-barley functioning-baby powdered blue-ill fitting white shell shaped toilet seat-rock and roll style toilet) on the left where you can still see the water coming up through the floor. Now on the right, you see the new hole underneath the handy paint pad waiting for us to put a toilet in. We spent the day, laying new peal, stick, and swear flooring down where the new toilet is going to go, and working on prepping the wall with white paint (covered in a previous rant). Now, we would have had new cold water pipe run up there today, but no -- it couldn't be that simple. The water would not quit dripping long enough (yes we shut it off) for the flux to seal up around the new copper pipe shut off valve. So dad went to the hardware store (thankgoodness for dad's who help out) and at round three with the valve tried the new fancy compression valve, snap click, 1-2-3 it was that easy.. and nothing is dripping and everything works just like it should now. Stay tuned.. the conclusion will be fast coming, because our house is still on the marketing during all of this so we are working quickly. Or has quickly as the home improvement gods will allow us to.