It's a New Day....

Come Monday:  The electrician has arrived and is trying to figure out the mess of wires and the kitchen plan.  There is not enough room to put a three switch box where it needs to go, so what to do.  The wall of cabinets and appliances fit between the studs on one end of the wall and all the way to end of the other wall with no room to spare.  The two new switches we need will go next to the garbage disposal switch.  That works.  Fritz can take out the plugs in the pantry because those will be covered up by new cabinets.  The television plug is being removed because I just don’t have the need to watch TV while cooking and we have never used it.   Eleven new cam lights are being installed in the ceiling, electrical for the hood vent, refrigerator, and plugs for the island.  New plugs for the microwave cabinet, and the door bell was wired into a light fixture which is not done to code so Fritz is fixing that also.  The wire that was nicked during the kitchen demo will be replaced and the new fan for the study and light fixture for the kitchen sitting area will be installed.  Fritz will come back to install the kitchen island fixture when we get the cabinets installed.

The plumber arrived and now that he can see the copper plumbing in the exposed ceiling we need to have some additional work done inside besides the work under the house.  Tony left to buy supplies will return later today to begin the needed repairs and again on Wednesday to complete the job.  Tony needs to move some of the copper plumbing so Fritz can install one of the cam lights in the pantry.  He will be moving the gas fitting for the cook top and installing a new shutoff valve in the kitchen, moving the plumbing so the sink is centered to the kitchen window, plumbing for the dishwasher, and a new water line for the icemaker in the refrigerator.  Bill will be here tomorrow so he can remove the old toilet and check to see how extensive the dry rot is, get it fixed and Tony can install the new toilet Wednesday.  Tony said the plumbing for the new bathroom sink should be okay with what we have picked out.  Good news…yeh!

Larry is off to a meeting for Communities In Schools so we will go out later today after the workers have gone to do our ordering and shopping.

The good news is the kitchen sink and faucet have shipped and the light fixture for the kitchen island should arrive tomorrow.  I love online tracking for shipping.    

There are just certain smells that remind me of my dad.  The plumber is drilling through old wood to install the new plumbing and the wood smell reminds me of all the times my dad would working on a project in the garage.

There are bits and pieces of electrical wire everywhere in the kitchen and Fritz is trying to figure out where all the new outlets and switches go, where some were removed and now need to be replaced.  Toolboxes, tools, ladders, wire, pipes, it really is a two person kitchen right now so I am staying in the study.

Change of plans…surprise…shopping will have to wait until Tuesday because it looks like we need a few more things and the plumber and electrician also need more supplies. 

Tuesday:  Tuesday I’m out of the house by 6:15 AM to attend a board meeting and the electrician is due to arrive by 7:30 AM, and Larry needs to leave by 9:00 AM.    By the time I arrive back home the guys have decided that if Larry is sitting my desk chair then he could make executive decisions.  A baseboard heater at in the entry by the stairs is coming out, a partial wall is coming out in the entry way, and the electrician discovered the heater in the living room has never been connected. 

Bill is going to build the wall hung vanity for the downstairs guest bath for us and the good news is we only have a small area of dry rot in the bathroom to remove and replace a small section of subfloor that had some water damage a few years ago. 

Bob is working on removing engineered wood floor in the entry way that is glued to the vinyl floor that is glued to the subfloor.  When the slate tiles were installed next to the fireplace they just used lots of motor to build up the base before laying the subfloor and tile and it is going to be a tough job to remove. Bill says he’ll rent a jackhammer to get ‘er done.

Fritz is working finishing up the electrical in the kitchen and as he was cutting out a grove in the overhead joist to hide the electrical wiring he discovered that some of the joists are not nailed in or at least not nailed in as securely as they should be.  Bill assured us he will make sure they are unmovable before we sheetrock.  I would really like to meet the carpenters who built our home but then again maybe for their safety I should never know who they are.  Not everyone is meant to be a carpenter even if they can swing a hammer and wear a tool belt.

The big green giant dumpster is almost full and the pile of debris is still growing.  Larry said he is thankful he ordered the largest size instead of ordering a smaller dumpster that he thought would hold it all.

The pressboard wall that was installed instead of sheetrock in the guest bath has been ripped out…literally once a small hole was punched in the wall almost all of it could be pulled out by hand except the portion where they used glue.  We now have one working sink in the house, the laundry sink in my studio.  Both toilets upstairs are working as are the bathtub and shower, but not the upstairs sinks. 

Deuce the dog is nervous to say the least, barking at the guys as they come and go like he had never seen them before when really they are just passing back and forth in front of him.  Fritz said maybe Deuce has a memory problem.

The end of the day and the crew will be back tomorrow.  Tony will be working in the bathroom and cutting a hole in the wall in the living room to refit a connection to the outside faucet bib to update it and keep it from freezing during the winter.  Fritz will be a little later as he is picking up a ceiling fan/vent for the guest bathroom.  Everyone talks about an open concept living area…well we are wide open right now.  You can see all the way across the house from the dining room to the studio.

The best thought out plans....

The best thought out plans can change quickly with one simple change.  I have always had my heart set on dark flooring.  We are removing the old oak flooring in the entryway, the ugly blue carpet in the living room, the old dining room which is now a sitting room off the kitchen, and the really ugly carpet that the previous owners installed in the kitchen. 

Cabinets…that is our biggest purchase.  About forty-two linear feet of bottom cabinets and twenty-three linear feet of upper cabinets.  I had my heart set on a off white cabinet with maybe a glaze to soften and warm up the cabinets.  Stainless steel appliances and we would have a transitional modern country kitchen.  At least that was the plan. 

You can buy anything you want and someone will sell it to you.  When several cabinet makers,  sales people, and our painter explained that even the expensive custom made cabinets can show cracks in the mitered joints of painted cabinets after several years I had to rethink what I really wanted and our investment in the remodel.  My father was a master carpenter and employers always put him on finish jobs when they discovered his attention to detail and craftsmanship.  I knew if my dad were here to advise us, he would tell me to find a new option.

The hard part is giving up the dream in your head, the one you can picture even when you are staring at old outdated cabinets with dingy carpet and nineteen seventy-six appliances.  It wasn’t just one change, it was changing everything because dark floors and wood cabinets stained a darker shade would look like a cave.

We still have two bids we are waiting on for cabinets but working with Troy yesterday on his bid and our options meant a mostly sleepless night of thinking, internet research, and staring at the kitchen trying to envision a color scheme.  Troy gave us some good ideas but said we should look for flooring before cabinet colors. 

We started our homework as soon as we left and continued our search yesterday with some help from our friend Bob who gave us a great tip.  First stop we found flooring that we both liked, the salesperson has it in his home and tells us it will hold up to the dog.  We made another stop just to look and the funny thing is the next store had the same flooring but under a different name and a higher price.

We took the sample to the cabinet shop to look at cabinet doors and colors.  Troy is working up his final bid and the savings in cabinets with an additional 10% from the cabinet company and a savings on the floor, he is pricing out granite for the counter tops which we did not think was in our budget.  It still might not be, but where we would have passed on a bid including granite prior to our changes, we can now consider looking at the cost.  The one we like is white with flecks of all the colors of cabinets and appliances we are considering.  We’ll have to wait and see.

The cabinets are now going to be a warm saddle/coffee color and the flooring is laminate called Bourbon Street Applewood.  The kitchen island will be the off white with a glaze and the moldings will blend the cabinet color and a dark almost black molding around the crown and the bottom of the upper cabinets.  Details…it’s all about the details.

We need to check on the kitchen cook top vent hood to see where it is in transit since it has been a week since we ordered it.  I will picked up the new garbage disposal today and we will order the sink, faucet, and trash can within the next couple of days.

Larry needs to choose a new fan for the study to install while the electrician is here working and we chose a new ceiling mounted light to replace the low hanging fan in the sitting area off the kitchen.  I found and pinned on Pinterest about a dozen light fixtures that I liked to hang over the kitchen island and then had Larry look at them and see if any of them appealed to him or start searching again.  He choose a five light hanging fixture that resembles vintage wire bulb cages that you might have found in industrial buildings or garages.  We were looking for something we liked but just a little different than what you typically find in a kitchen.  The choices ranged from wire, welded and hand-stamped steel, crystals, stainless and drum chandeliers.  This is what Larry would say is a “lagniappe”, a little something extra in the kitchen, the unexpected.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will be in the demo phase. 

Kitchen island doors

I hand painted the doors on the kitchen island when we did a mini make-over on the kitchen, until we were ready to gut it and start from scratch.  Well we are weeks away from the start of our renovation and the doors are about to be removed and Brenda would love to have them. She is going to have to use her best pouty lip because Larry thinks he is going to hang the doors in the breezeway between the garage and the sporting goods room which is also the covered dog run.
I am on Brenda's side and it would make her so happy.  I may be to supplement Brenda's pouty lip with my own and we will gang up on Larry.