The latest (longest) laundry list

I don’t think I’m flavor of the month with the spouse right now after seeking a possibly unattainable move-in date. I’m getting itchy feet in our temporary home, and I want to enjoy the new place. What about December? Early December, so we’re more or less unpacked by the holidays. December 12 to be precise.

Here’s the stuff we’ve still got to do:

• Kitchen countertops. They are due on Monday. They damn well better look as good in real life as they did when I picked them out a million years ago.
• The trim is mostly done, but bits are missing, and everything needs one or two more coats of paint.
• They start refinishing our hardwood floors the following Monday. We’ve gone for the reddish brown on the right (it looks much less red in real life). But that will be a week when we really can’t do anything else because of sanding dust and drying stain. And then we have to paint the second floor staircase because it’s pine not hardwood. (I stumbled into a wonderful reno blog with cool advice on that one — and we’ll be looking for oil-based paint for that section. The catch: Toronto banned oil based paints this year, so we have to find a store with a stash of it. And we have to put our eco principles on hold as we paint.)
• The following week the built-in closets/Murphy bed unit arrive. They say it will take 3 days to fit them. Finish is white in the bedroom, and white with a creamy wood grain upstairs.
• There’s still a lot of electrical work as we put in the fixtures and untangle wires at the fuse box. Anyone know a good electrician with time on his hands?
• We also need to put in all the light fixtures and ceiling fans. (See above: electrician needed)
• Bathroom and powder room fixtures need to be taken out of the sunroom and into their designated space. Oh, and we have not actually bought the toilets yet.
• We haven’t bought the washing machine either, or installed the rubber flooring in the laundry area of the basement.
• The kitchen appliances are in the garage and not in the kitchen. I have no plans to cook in the garage, so that one won’t work.
• The vanity is in about 25 boxes in the garage. That isn’t sustainable in the long term either.
• The floor tiling is all done, but we left the backsplash until after the countertop arrived. Now it turns out that our tiler can’t work til December 20, so we may have to move in without a backsplash. (I can live with that one.) We also need to tile the area in front of the fireplace before the pellet stove insert goes in, and I wanted to tile the entry hall rather than finish the wood floor there. We decided yesterday not to bother with that. Will spouse be very upset with me if I change my mind again?
• Oh yes, we have to buy the pellet stove insert, line the chimney and install the pellet stove. That’s the spouse’s area of expertise. I think it might be a 2012 project.
• We’re building a mantlepiece for the fireplace. That takes time.
• We need to finish the rest of the doors and hang them. We need to fix the cracks in the front door, replace the ugly storm door and replace the evil frosted glass in the door to the entryway.
• We’ve ordered doors for the closet in the spouse’s office and for the linen closet. They will also need to be painted and hung.
• We need new locks for front and back doors. Ideally we want the same key for both doors.
• We need hardware for the interior doors. Door knobs and stuff like that.
• We’re building a half-wall to hide the toilet in the main bathroom. That needs to be framed, drywalled, mudded, painted and finished.
• The radiators need to be moved from the garage to their various places in the various rooms. Do you have any idea how heavy recycled cast-iron radiators are? But we have to finish the floors before we install the radiators. How will we get them to the right place without damaging the newly finished floors?
• We need blinds and/or curtains throughout. OK we don’t actually need blinds and curtains before a move-in date. Nice-to-have stuff will have to wait.
• We need a door to hide the HRV on the third floor. We need storage shelves in the basement and the garage.
• And there’s all the stuff I’ve forgotten.

Ouch. That’s a scarily long list. Can any of this work?