My God- It's Full Of Cabinets!

Apologies to Arthur C Clarke- but that's pretty much how I felt when I was this.

The pictures tend to exaggerate the variation in color on the cabinets (which are hickory), but this is very exciting!

Now I just have to visualize the countertops (black with hints of blue).

Starting At The Bottom

The Floor is (mostly) in!

The guy tells me he has about an hour's worth of work left, but it's going in very easily. The subfloor is really solid so it's not causing him any grief.

Yay.

I Can See Clearly Now

The Paint is ON!

Whew! 2 days and 4 coats later, we have achieved paint!

Well, the ceiling only took 2 coats, but the rest took 4.

A few musings about paint: One Coat Coverage is a BIG FAT LIE!

I already knew this, but this job really helped confirm it. We tinted the primer, we bought the good paint at Hirschfields, we got the right rollers and I very carefully did that "W" thing with the roller. But that green was not going down without a fight. 2 coats of tinted Bullseye primer, and 2 coats of the actual paint later, we finally beat it into submission.

For the record- we only painted the parts that will show after the cabinets are in, so that's why there is still green showing in some spots. Also, the soffit and the one face of the island are a more orange color, so they are supposed to look different than the walls- it's not your monitor.

Tomorrow morning, the floor arrives! I'm going to try and post something every night this week, as it should look noticibly different pretty much every night.

On a side note- those disposable paper paint buckets make excellent popcorn tubs. Just remember you can't use them for both- it's one or the other.

All In All...

WOW- just wow.

Quick detour from painting to catch up on another part of the job.

The mason finished the window on Thursday and did a FANTASTIC job.

We didn't need much, but the asthetics of that part of the project had an importance that's hard to overstate. It was so critical to Sherri that this not look like a patch job that she was ready to cancel the whole thing based on that issue alone.

Fortunately, John (our GC) scoured local brickyards and found the Perfect Brick.

And here you see the result. Wife approved and ready for action.

Primed and ready

First coat of primer down! We're going to re-coat the spots where the green paint is showing through, but that's not too much of it. Plus of course we don't have to re-coat where the cabinets will be. I just wanted primer over all the plaster to seal in any dust.

Yes, it's yellow. We had the primer on the walls tinted to help improve our paint coverage. It will be easier to cover the primer with regular paint if we aren't going over white primer. I also think it gives the finished product a richer color, but that's just me.

We should get this thing wrapped up by Sunday night!

Rollers- Ho!

Drywall is done! Time to paint!

Moving Right Along

The last few days have been great! The drywaller was able to start a day early, the mason is bricking up the window opening as I type this, and the pendant lights for the island arrived! I'm starting to believe that painting WILL get done this weekend, so more photos to come as that occurs.

Next week will be fast and furious. By the end of the week we should have flooring and most of the cabinets in! I'll try to keep up.

Turning The Corner. AKA Windows On Our World

Wow. Every project has milestones- points where you know you have moved from one leg of the journey to another. So it is with this project- we have left the arena of DEstruction and moved on to the CONstruction.

The holes in the wall are all made. The plumbing, electrical and HVAC rough-ins are done. The framing for the island support wall is in.

Big Step on Friday- the new window was installed! Our interval with OSB over the big hole in the wall was mercifully short, and we can see out again. As you can tell by the pictures, it's set to mimic the big windows on the front of the house. Sherri has stained the woodwork, and we should get at least one coat of polyurethane on before the drywaller starts on Wed. to keep dust out of the grain.

Not much action for the next couple of days, then we go into a marathon stretch of drywall, paint, flooring and cabinets. 3 weeks of breakneck progress (I hope).

Oddly enough, we are on schedule for completion on time- if not exactly on budget.

Know When To Say When

As some of you may know, we had great hopes to save some cash by doing a bit of the work ourselves. And while that worked out OK in the demolition phase, its just not going to go as well from here on out.

We already bailed on installing the floor ourselves, and the drywall was the latest casualty: there's too much to do and not enough time to do it! So we bit the bullet and had our GC bid that out. It's kind of a bummer, but the stress would have done us in.

Which puts us in an odd spot- and one we've only recently come to recognize: we aren't in control. Not in the way we're used to. Most of the time, every tiny little decision- where does the outlet go, how should I route that pipe, should I screw that in or nail it- no matter how small, we made them. Now- someone else is making them. I am not telling the electrician which circuit to use, Sherri is not deciding between lightweight joint compound and regular. We feel a bit disconnected from the project.

The up side is that I come home from work and discover wonderful things have happened- like the recessed lights have been installed, or the window was removed. Things like that. And that's nice.

Takes a bit of getting used to though.

It's Just Rock, People!

I have a new least favorite activity: shopping for granite countertops.

Yes, I know they're pretty and shiny. I know that it's like wandering through nature's art gallery.

I don't care- it sucks. And I'll tell you why: the human element.

Let me walk you through How To Pick Your Granite in 20 easy steps:

Step One: Wander around every home improvement store you can find looking at all the solid-surface, quartz- fail to get excited and decide you want granite.

Step Two: Tell your General Contractor so he can get the allowance in the budget.

Step Three: Wander around every home improvement and tile store you can find, discover that everyone carries the same 10 types of granite- none of which get you that excited. But it's an improvement.

Step Four: call your GC to find out where you can go to look at actual slabs you might want.

Step Five: Your GC calls you back with a list of the tile stores you just looked at. Clarify the question.

Step Six: Your GC calls and tells you to go to the fabricator your cabinet company uses- you need to set up an appointment.

Step Seven: take off from work in the middle of the day- drive to the fabricator (40 miles) where they tell you "we have about 10 standard types we carry in stock". They look awfully familiar.

Step Eight: Fabricator gives you names of 4 suppliers where you can go look at actual slabs of types that the stores don't carry. Finally!

Step nine: go to first supplier (20 mile drive): discover they have hundreds of slabs in a poorly-lit warehouse.

Step ten: Find 4 slabs you like- Give list to salesperson

Step Eleven: Salesperson tells you that your 4 options are a) all damaged and unusable, b) on backorder for at least 2 months, c) only one of that kind left, and you need 3.

Step Twelve: count to ten. Twice.

Step Thirteen: Go home angry. 25 mile drive.

Step Fourteen: Find another supplier on the list who is open until 8. Drive 20 miles to that one.

Step Fifteen: Find well-lit showroom with full slabs from each available lot (you don't want to mix lots!), each of which is clearly marked if there are 5 or fewer slabs in stock.

Step Sixteen: Finally enjoy the beauty of the stone, knowing that if you find one you want- you will know if you can get it immediatly.

Step Seventeen: kill 90 minutes just looking

Step Eighteen: Find The One

Step Ninteen: realize that you have no clue how much this will cost you because: the supplier sends their price to the fabricator, who sends their price to the cabinet people, who send their price to the GC, who tells you how much it actually costs.

Step Twenty: Decide you just don't care at this point because you're fed up- sign the forms and go to dinner. We'll deal with it tomorrow.

Much happening now on the jobsite, but I haven't had my home PC up in days (electrical work), but photos coming this weekend!

What's the buzz?

We had a busy weekend pulling staples from the floor (much less rewarding than mussles from a shell by the way), but it's not a real photogenic activity, so no new pictures today.

Also took down the ceiling in part of the basement. Why, you may ask? Because the plumber, electrician and HVAC people will need to access the underside of the kitchen, and this will make it a lot easier. My mantra here is: easier for them = cheaper for me! That went better than I thought it would. 40 years of dust isn't as much as I was afraid it would be.

Besides, the ceiling in the basement has some issues anyway so this is the opportunity to address that.

Angst of the moment: went sink shopping over the weekend and discovered that the sink we wanted required a 36" cabinet, but we only have a 33". Much consternation and heated debate followed with discussions about moving cabinets, sink specifications, etc. This morning our GC reassured us that we have more room than we think and it will all be fine. I have put him on the case using an example sink to find one that will work and meet our needs. Problem averted, at least for now.

Also did some granite shopping. Found what we think is the Right Answer, but we want to hit a yard first. Trying to set up an appointment through our cabinet guy for this week or next.

This morning, our electrician came in- so we had a very productive discussion about outlet/switch placement and such. Amazing how much you turn out to care about these things! I like him- he seems pretty easy to work with, and is willing to tell you what he thinks while making it clear it's your decision and he'll do what you say.

Eve of Destruction

As part of the New Plan- a portion of the soffet around the ceiling had to go. This was a decision that was a long time coming, and one we re-visited as recently as yesterday- but in the end- destruction won. And today was the day.

Thanks to judicious use of a circular saw and a reciprocating saw, not to mention respirators and enough safety gear to qualify for a haz-mat team, the deed is done. In these pictures it looks all nice and clean, but believe me- it was 6 hours of dust, noise and flying chunks of plaster. We're going to leave it as is for now- I figure the electrician is likely to cut through anything we put up, so why bother. We'll cover it all up in a couple of weeks when they've wired it all nice and purty.

By the way- reciprocating saws totally rock! They can do more damage in less time than anything short of High Explosives! I can't belive I waited this long to get one!

Oven Down!

First casualty: the door to the oven came off on one side while we were removing it. That was OK- I just slapped some tape on there to keep it steady while we slid it out. Of course, then I forgot about it, and sometime overnight the tape gave out, the door dropped, and this is the result.

As annoying (and expensive) as this is, if it's the worst thing that happens, I'll be pretty happy.

Dude- Where's my Kitchen?

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Thanks to the Interwebs (tm) and some dude named Craig who keeps lists, I found a wonderful family to adopt our old cabinets and countertops. Casey and Lisa are doing a bang-up job restoring their old home, and were very excited to get our gently used stuff. I'm just glad it's not going into a landfill: there was plenty of life in that old cabinetry- we just couldn't see it in our new setup.

Casey brought down a huge flatbed, and with help from my friends Nick and Perry,we got it all out on Saturday with a minimum of fuss. It's good to have friends.