More cabinets filling in around the sink, plus the frame around the eventual refrigerator. Jim did most of the work today, as I joined in as (mutter-mutter-go-live-mutter-mutter) work demands dragged me away.
Very pleased with the progress, and look, so far.
Some visible progress — some additional lower cabinets later in the day — but a lot of today was putting in crown molding in a lot of the installed uppers, and then the cabinet doors reinstalled.
Looks great, if I do say so myself.
Tomorrow starts the work week. I'm working from home, with a goal of mostly helping Jim on the cabinet stuff, in between monitoring my email and getting on a few phone calls and overseeing a frelling go-live for a major project at work. But I'm feeling good at the pace we're attaining and with what we've accomplished so far.
Home Depot Visit Tally: 2
Today we finished installing one of the new corner cabinets, which have lovely lazy susans within them, but which came with the worst chintzy plastic feet for holding the cabinet up (with the graphically displayed message "DO NOT SLIDE THIS ON FLOOR" — which is kind of a challenge, given that you can only hold the cabinet on side. I figured out a different setup that let us discard all but two of the plastic feet. Yay, me. Corner cabinet in place, duplicate on other side will be a piece of cake.
After that, we tackled the piece that has been giving me the most nightmares (yes, one can have nightmares over cabinetry). We are installing a fabulous quartz countertop, and we decided to have the sink and bay window be flush, which meant that the sink cabinet had to be PERFECTLY ALIGNED with the new bay window.
Which it now is.
The sink cabinet was also a challenge in terms of the number of pipes and outlets and ducts and other pipes coming into/out of it. We did the artistically minimal number of cuts necessary, in a time-consuming, but very satisfactory fashion.
Finally, we got an additional cabinet up, but this one was the first we did with the crown molding, which added time, but looks very nice.
So, a very long day, but a satisfying one. Tackled two of the hardest pieces in the cabinet install, and are ready to move onto further victories tomorrow.
Have found the extra Makita batteries THERE WILL BE NO-ONE TO STOP US THIS TIME! #kitchenproject
… cabinets into the studs, as this photo of our kitchen before drywalling demonstrates. Hitting in the wrong place could cause … problems.
Curses! Stymied by dead Makita batteries MAKITAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! #kitchenproject
Home Depot Trip Tally: 2 #cabinetapalooza
Got a number of cabinets mounted on the east wall today. Ran into a few difficulties, but by and large it went very well. Started working on a corner cabinet (which was constructed very … oddly), but didn't get that done.
Good first-day progress. If we keep this up, we should be in pretty good shape.l
Yesterday, I had a cavernous new, empty kitchen.
Today, I have a kitchen (and dining room) full of boxes.
Said boxes are our cabinets, which have been down in a warehouse in Colorado Springs for some months. They were delivered today, and Jim (the father-in-law) not only crossed off each one as they were brought in, but ordered, Tetris-like, where each one should go.
(Also kudos to him persuading the delivery guys, kudos to whom also, that they should be brought into the house, not just dropped off in the garage. Because (a) that's going to make our lives hugely easier, and (b) there's not nearly enough room in the garage.)
So the stuff in the kitchen is the earliest stuff we will be installing, starting tomorrow. The stuff in the dining room is the second set of stuff to be installed.
It's a daunting task — a lot of items, and some of them are freaking heavy.
As part of this process, the plastic sheeting cutting off the dining room from the rest of the house (with a big zipper opening) came down. Which immediately makes the rest of the downstairs seem a lot more roomy, and also let the kitties more freely explore the new maze that is all that cabinetry.
Painting wrapped up (for the nonce) upstairs, but continues downstairs.
Took first trip to Home Depot (to get screws, plywood for under the cabinets, and some work gloves). There will be more such trips.
Tomorrow things get … heavy.
My father-in-law is playing Tetris with kitchen cabinet boxes being brought in, finding space in the kitchen and dining room.
Over the past few days the drywall has been finished, texture applied, and the first coats of paint put on. The kitchen is beginning to look like an honest-to-gosh (if kind of empty) room.
That starts to change tomorrow. Jim, the father-in-law, arrived today. He's going to be here through the end of the month. Tomorrow morning, the new cabinets arrive. They're going to be here for many years — once Jim and I start installing them. That's going to be an interesting tale. (Especially since I need to split my time with overseeing two different go-lives on a major IT project I've been managing the past several months. Timing is everything.)
Still, seeing where we are — I'm actually feeling pretty good.
Also, we've wrapped up close to the last of the non-contracting purchases: we've bought our faucets, we've bought the beverage fridge, and we know what we're buying for flooring (we just need to decide on the installer). So that's now largely over with, aside from paying it all off.
So, yes, the most noteworthy thing today was that the Giant Dumpster got hauled away. Thus showing the disaster the front lawn and garden still are.
I actually need to get out there with my tub-o-Round-Up and wipe out the rest of that grass. We're definitely moving to an un-grassed front yard, I think.
It was also 80°F today, so I need to start thinking about (manually) watering trees and other plants that may be thinking about coming back.
One bright side to the dumpster moving was that it revealed some crocuses coming up. Huzzah.
Inside, it was mostly more coats of drywall goop, which isn't much more interesting than it sounds. I did get a chance to have a long chat with the contractor about all the stuff that had my in a tizzy yesterday in contemplation, and things are now under control. Also discussed what painting can be done before Cabinetapalooza begins at the end of the week.
Also, ordered faucets for the main sink and the island sink, Delta Trinsic's. Also got estimates on the flooring, and am looking at different installer options (someone other than me, though I can actually do it).
The picture below not only shows the Lack of Dumpster, but also what the kitchen / basement extension is looking like from the outside, balanced against the living room in front. I think the design complements quite nicely.
So, overall, a good day on the project.
Maybe I've been doing too much decorator work lately, but I think it would be awesome to invert these, turn them into pendant lights, and position them around the house at appropriate relative intervals.
So a cluster of the inner planets above the dining room table, Jupiter off in the kitchen, Saturn in the family room, Uranus and Neptune somewhere upstairs, Pluto out by the back fence (perhaps with a solar light) …
Originally shared by +Peter Bromberg:
h/t to the private poster! Pluto is Back!
http://goo.gl/syZzOA
Not much new to report in terms of actual progress on the Great Kitchen Expansion and Remodel. More drywall work, mostly mudding this and that.
No, this weekend was spent doing … stuff. And not quite doing … stuff. And worrying about … stuff.
So we figured out our replacement normal backsplash (since what we'd scoped out at the tile store back in September is now out of production). Trigger is mostly pulled on that.
And we figured out the accept backsplash behind the range. That's coming from the same place as the other.
Which is also supplying out quartz countertop, which we did pull the trigger on with a four-figure deposit check. Committed now.
We figured out what floor we were going with and supplied by whom. Not sure who we are going to have installing it, yet, and there are some oddities about the height of the tile at the dining room door vs at the breakfast room that will determine what sort of joint connections or other such things we need to do.
Narrowed down the faucets we are getting. I was supposed to finalize that today, but … fretfulness got in the way.
For whatever reason, today was the day that I got hit by Project Nerves. Suddenly, I was worried about each measurement, each thing that looked a bit off, how everything was going to fit together (or, worse, was not going to fit together). I shot off a half-dozen emails to the contractor, which I'm sure he will love to read in the morning. And a couple to the father-in-law / designer, which probably didn't fil him with confidence.
The main bits and bobs were about cabinet height — which is a factor of both the cabinet (which I discovered was mis-estimated by the archictect) and the flooring thickness (since we have to shim / platform the cabinets the same height) and the countertop thickness (which also varies from what the architect defined). This gets a little weird in looking at how things are going to go over by the double-windows on the south-east end of the kitchen, but becomes mind-blowingly critical by the sink and its window since we are extending the countertop into the bay window, which means the cabinets have to be exactly the same height as the window as installed, and _the countertop needs to fit into the space between the base of the bay windows and the cranks for the windows.
Long story short, it all actually lines up, but I didn't determine that definitively until I'd run the numbers multiple times with a miscalculation in them that made it look like things were going to be somewhere between "an embarrassing design flaw" and "lots of money to fix."
The fact I had computer in one corner of the ground floor, floor plans in another, and the actual space to be looking at in a third meant a lot of walking about.
Part of my nervousness is because later this coming week, (a) the cabinets arrive and (b) my father-in-law arrives to help install them. Which is the one part of the kitchen thang we're doing rather than a contractor, which I think is doable but is also going to be a lot of work and is the first part where the burden of precision and speed and proper execution is on my shoulders (literally, as well as figuratively).
Throw in some sudden nagging questions about what is and isn't done in the drywall, what preliminary painting will be accomplished between now and then, what I actually have to do for under-cabinet vents with toe-kick registers, and the aforementioned Numbers That Won't Add Up (exacerbated by America's continued use of (a) inches and feet and (b) fractions rather than decimals), and … it was not a Day of Rest by any means.
"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well," said Juliana of Norwich, but she obviously never remodeled her kitchen.
(Yes, I know I'm being silly about a lot of this. But, as I've said about so much of this project, "It is what it is.")
Have purchased our kitchen counter top, which is evidently made of diamonds and unicorn tears #chching
So yesterday they started installing the drywall / sheetrock / gypsum board, and just a day's worth of work has made a tremendous difference …
… in the amount of mess one can track around the house after checking out what was done.
But it is finally beginning to form "real" walls, especially in the soffit / light well in the kitchen extension.
Plus, we now have a door in the basement to the outside. Inconceivable!
Drywall work should continue through Saturday; painting (first coat at least) should start probably on Tuesday. Jim-the-Father-in-Law arrives on Thursday, and the cabinets arrive on Friday, and then nobody will see me for a week while we race around to get the cabinetry installed.
So as far as Things Actually Happening, today was Insulation Day — batting installed in ceilings (mostly), with blow-in installed in the exterior walls, which almost looks like drywall.
Almost more interesting is the various decision points +Margie Kleerup and I are working through …
– Tracking down what paint things should be painted — keeping the previous color scheme (I think), but also looking at sheens (eggshell? satin? semi-gloss?).
– Looking at different cork flooring sources, since we're suddenly leary of Lumber Liquidators (gee, thanks, 60 Minutes, for harshing our flooring mellow).
– Looking at backsplash material, both as the accent behind the stove, and (now that our previous choice turns out to be discontinued) for the rest.
– Considering sink hardware. (Not Cheap.)
– Considering cabinet hardware. (Very Not Cheap.)
No dull moments arond here.
We were all ready to go and buy the flooring for our kitchen project, when I ran across http://www.cbsnews.com/news/lumber-liquidators-linked-to-health-and-safety-violations/ and http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-on-tests-used-to-investigate-lumber-liquidators/ .
And, of course, we'd been about to get some laminate cork flooring from Lumber Liquidators. Sigh.
Lumber Liquidators linked to health and safety violations
60 Minutes found that Lumber Liquidators’ Chinese-made laminate flooring contains amounts of toxic formaldehyde that may not meet health and safety standards
I and @MargieKleerup are having far too much fun re kitchen decor badinage about drawers, pulls, and knobs.
