The Devil is in the details. That is what they say. In our case, I think that it is a bit of the Imp instead. Our builders are always leaving us with little surprises of details that they have done. For example, take a look at this.
That nicely done bit of decoration is in the downstairs bathroom baseboard molding, and it surrounds the water supply pipe for the toilet. I don’t think I have ever seen anything like this before. Once they get some paint on it, that will finish up real nice. It is an interesting little detail, don’t you think?
I am trying to figure out a polite way to point out this interesting detail to our guests when we entertain. Perhaps it would be wise to just let them discover it on their own.
The tile that you see in the photo above is the same tile that is now in the mud room.
That is a wicked cool floor. And speaking of floors, there was an issue with the tile in the upstairs bathrooms.
We are putting down fine, imported Italian tile. (Woot). That is because fine, imported Italian is what the tile store sells, not because of any special need for that kind of tile. Unfortunately, we got the news yesterday that the tile we chose for the upstairs bathrooms is out of stock and back ordered. It is, in fact, on a boat on its way from Italy right now, as we speak. The issue is that nobody seems to know where the boat is. I am puzzled how we can lose a whole boat full of fine, imported Italian tile, but apparently we have done that. Oops.
So, our options were:
- Wait an indeterminate amount of time until somebody finds the boat and rescues our tile.
- Start over and go choose a different tile that is currently in stock.
- Switch over to the same tile, but in a larger size, 18″ to be exact.
If you have never seen an 18″ tile, you are in for a surprise. They are huge! Our builder picked up a few and laid them out on the floor so we could see what they look like. We decided that we really like that particular tile, and approved the larger size, and here is what it looks like all glued down.
Waddaya think? Not bad for a compromise. (Are you kidding? We love that tile!) There is no grout in any of the tile yet, so the lines between the tiles stand out a bit. They will not be as obvious after the grout is in.
Other details we found today include the trim around the windows and the baseboard molding in the bedroom.
Here is another interesting detail in the basement.
Yikes! That will make you dizzy!
That is the fuel gauge on our oil tank in the basement. To be fair to our builders, this thing is a carryover from that other house. Our guys just put it back into the tank. It was not their design.
Our builders saw this indicator and thought that we were about to run out of oil….. because…. why?… just because the needle is pointing at “empty“? What kind of assumption is that? Fortunately, I can read this gauge, and was able to quell their fears.
This demented gauge is installed sideways. I guess that was done to get enough pull on the string (it works with a float on a string – high tech) to go the whole depth of the tank, which is extra deep because the tank is sitting on its end. Anyway, since I am familiar with this gauge from that other house, I was able to interpret this reading for the guys and state unequivocally that the tank is still about 80% full. You see, “Full” on this gauge is at about half way between 1/4 and 1/2 and “Empty” is at the paint mark on the left side made by hand by somebody, and in fact when the tank is really empty, the pointer goes quite a bit past the paint mark, which I know because one Winter the needle went all the way down to the “Empty” paint mark and far beyond, and when they topped it off (after my own panic attack) we still had about 50 gallons of oil in the tank.
So, “Empty” is really indicated more closely around the label marked … uh… “Full”. You see how that goes?
The fact that this all makes sense to me demonstrates that permanent mental damage was done to me by living all those years in that other house.