More finishing details

The floor is darkening in the sun... it looks beautiful (although a little bit dirty at this point). The workmen are very good about taking their shoes off before they walk on the floors, which is nice. It's sad that we have to put a railing on the descending stairs, as it looks really nice open, and the floor serves as a barrier for the upper part of the stairs where you might hurt yourself if you fell. But I guess we can't be trusted not to fall through the cracks.

Many of the lights are in, but not all. The Leucos Ony B lights have been installed in the upstairs entryway and in the family room downstairs. They look really nice, I think. We installed Blauet Mercurio lights in the library, but unfortunately, the fixture is visible because the ceiling there is so low. It's difficult to discern these details when you're picking from a picture. It's also difficult to find lighting stores that carry these lights, so it's not a surprise that one choice might not work so well. So I am planning to move the lights in the library to the laundry room (where I didn't realize we needed lights), and buy another two lights for downstairs (perhaps Leucos Bisquit, which I really like).

The outdoor lights are in, and they look really nice. All in all, I'm pretty happy with what's been installed so far. What's not been installed are: the Artemide Ventanas (aka "the lights from hell"), the Smedmarks undercabinet lights, and the Lightolier track lights. The Ventanas, which are becoming the lights we love to hate, had their ballasts installed smack dab in the middle of the fixture, obscuring the hole into which the wiring must go. The electrician and architect have figured out how to work around that problem. The Smedmarks look fabulous, but the light is designed such that it has to be taken apart to replace the bulb, which would be difficult to do if the lights are affixed to the bottom of the cabinet. OTOH, there really isn't much of a choice as far as undercabinet lights go. Seems like a really silly design. The track lights were spec'd as aluminum track with black end caps. Apparently the black end caps are quite long and it would be better to have them in black. Hopefully we'll get all of this resolved tomorrow so the electricians can finish the lighting install.

One other surprising thing.. the floor receptacles only come in brass. Nice looking brass, I might add, but we don't have a stick of brass in our house. So we're going to get them plated black later, so they'll disappear into the tile.

They rebuild the deck downstairs (where there used to be stairs) and did a lovely job at that. We have to figure out a way to connect the stairs adjacent to the garage to the lower deck, but that should be pretty straightforward. We'll have a big job of landscaping to do once this whole project is over.

Rather than continue this post, I'll start a new one with all the work that got done today. (Today was a very busy day in construction land.)