When it finally starts, it goes fast! Not all cheering, because as soon as they come and measure for the counters on Thursday, we have one week to paint the entire ceiling. I don’t know why we agreed to do that. I hate painting ceilings. My hair hates painting ceilings.
Then the counters come in one week before the Christmas holiday and then the contractor returns to connect all the appliances and our plumbing.
Then we do the tile and we do the open shelving. And build out the pantry wall and cabinets. And caulk, so much caulk. And wall painting. And all of the trim work and baseboards. And over sink lighting.
Our punch list is long and growing. But we’ll have running water, so that’s something to look forward to…in 10 days.
Today we received our first glimpse of what the space will look like IRL. It has been SO hard to imagine it based on a taped floor diagram or a computer screen.
Will the passageways be wide enough? Most are 52″ so the answer to that is a resounding YES!
Will the small galley between sink and island actually work? It will, though more snug than we would have liked (at 48″).
Will there be enough room for people to walk behind those seated at the island or will they have to do the scootch? Right now, we think we have 41″ but that is because we are determined to have a luxurious 15″ overhang on the island. So, somewhere between a scootch and walk unless we reduce the island overhang to 13″ or 14″.
Standing around scratching our heads while trying to imagine bright green painter’s tape coming to life in the form of a giant “L” shaped island got old, so today’s progress came in the nick of time. This isn’t our first construction rodeo, so we are confident our marriage can stand the test of a(nother) kitchen renovation, but the 14th tape-laying exercise at midnight last night seemed to be spitting in the face of fate.
Thankfully, while we were obsessing over tape, other things were happening — lighting went up, floors went down. A mini-meltdown on Friday bubbled up when the crew opened up the hardwood boxes (that were the exact same make/model/color) as our old, but for some reason were distinctly different which meant feathering them in was going to be a challenge.
The next not-so-mini meltdown came two hours later when they realized they weren’t going to have enough to finish the floors. The wood had been back-ordered for months before reno started, so the news hit like a bowling ball to the stomach.
Instead of our Friday martini, we ended up spending the afternoon calling every lumber store on the east coast. We unbelievably found two lone boxes that I would have fought my grandmother for.
We also found the most awesome/gorgeous/comfy stools on FB Marketplace from a guy who was unexpectedly moving after having just renovated his kitchen. Brand-new, still in boxes, and at a third of the cost of what I had just been about to pay a company! Now that they are here, I’m having second thoughts about the color, so they may end up back on Marketplace for someone else to googly-eye over them. Womp, womp.
Here are some progress shots. It is SO real now! Our contractor, Eddy, angel that he is, built the entire wall for us, and didn’t bolt it down so that we could move it around to find just the right spacing on all sides. He practically made us sign away our first born unless we swore an oath not to change anything else. Then he went to town bolting the thing in place before we could change our minds. He may not be as enamored of us as we of him as our final landing spot required him to rewire several bits…
Tomorrow comes drywall and cabinet installation. We are finally cooking with oil now
The past three days worth of work has all been behind the scenes (or, more accurately, above the ceiling and below the floor!)
Electrical rewiring in these two spaces has been a time consuming challenge for the crew. We added so many more switches, outlets, recessed lights, and commercial grade appliances so the grid had to be gussied up to handle it all. We are still waiting on special electrical wire to come in tomorrow for the wall oven.
One of the crew has been drywalling the significant number of holes they had to make in the ceiling to thread wire as well as repairing all of the drywall that had to be cut off the walls to remove the previous tile. Tomorrow is sanding day and we plan to zip ourselves out until the dust has literally settled (we have several construction zipper thingies that act as a barrier to the rest of the house.)
We’ve made two significant game time changes in the design. One is that instead of going with a full slab as a backsplash, which I desperately wanted, we are instead going with a handmade tile with lots of color variation. Lots of reasons for the change, but it came down mostly to all the seaming that would have needed to be done to extend the slab all the way up to the ceiling. I really can’t stand seams and will barely be able to tolerate the one that we must have in the island.
So, today we picked the tile out and now we are trying to settle on a matching Schluter because the tile does not come with a finished edge or a bull nose. And the grout, so many choices. Too many choices.
The second change we made is to eliminate all of our upper cabinets. My spouse is not thrilled that I made the decision after we put together all the upper cabinets, but better late than never. We will likely go with a 3-in thick walnut run on either side of the window.
There is a small, very remote chance the new floors will be laid in Friday. Fingers crossed.
Like most older homes, our electrical is one big spaghetti bowl of tangled noodles. The first full day of construction focused solely on electrical as well as removing the dreaded post.
Spoiler alert! It (obviously) was not load bearing as we suspected, but just not sure until today. Relief!
We purposely did not immediately replace the floor when we dropped the raised floor so that they could cut directly into the subfloor to lay the significant electrical for the oversized cooktop and dual oven. One unexpected decision happened within the first hour of construction this morning and that was having to decide where our recessed lights were going.
We had taped the layout to the floor so that the contractors knew exactly where everything was to be placed, but that layout came in big time handy when we had to figure out where those recessed lights would live.
Another day of electrical tomorrow so not much to see and then we get to the fun stuff.
It is a milestone day for us! After three months of work, the raised floor is down, the wall completely demoed, as well as the tile, and the electrical all secured and labeled, today marks the end of our part of the construction (for now). The contractor is due here early tomorrow morning to start their end of things.
Once they are done building the knee walls for the massive island, installing upgraded electrical, and installing the lower cabinets, JohnR, Andrew, and I will take over again to install all of the open shelving, all of the tile work, and the pantry cabinets, as well as painting the cabinetry on the pantry wall, the ceiling, and all of the touch-up work. Fun times to come, but for now, our work here is done. Yay!!!
I now completely understand why contractors don’t like removing cabinets intact. It takes for-flipping-ever. We had to be extra careful because they were going off to another home.
From the onset, we thought removing the granite was going to be our biggest headache.
Our contractor told us to give the granite a rap with a small sized sledgehammer, which we did. And, just like he said, it cracked easily without damaging the cabinets below. We had the most incompetent counter installer for our last renovation, but we sent them a silent thanks for not properly gluing the countertops down, which made for unexpectedly easier removal.
The large pieces were easy to smash into manageable bits to haul away, although we still have three modest sized pieces we’d love to give away if anyone is interested.
The thing that gave us fits was the 96-in tall pantry cabinet, which not only weighed a ton, but had to be lowered on its side in order to get it through the front door. Even the young one will be popping Advil tonight.
The folks that purchased the cabinets were at our house bright and early this morning, we helped them load up their two trucks, and off our old cabinets went to their new home in Baltimore. The couple was gracious enough to allow us to keep our oven through the Thanksgiving holiday before they come to pick that up as well as a few other appliances.
With that, we are done until the day after Thanksgiving when we finish taking down the partition wall to get ready for the pros to come in. (We are currently without running water in our kitchen, which is exactly as bad as it sounds. We are hopeful a temporary sink will be delivered by the end of the week.)
Welp, womp womp. Kitchen construction is now delayed until after TG holiday.
Damn it all. This time, due to an illness in our contractor’s family, so understandable, but still disappointing.
We have lived in a construction zone for the better part of three months, and with the holidays, we will likely still be sweeping up dry wall bits well into the new year. We definitely won’t have the counters installed before then, that is now certain.
Worse yet, our old cabinets are on their way out this weekend, which means by Sunday afternoon, Operation Campsite will commence when we lose our kitchen sink and move full time to our temporary set-up. We are going to have the contractor swing by with a sink cabinet and hook the plumbing back up to get us through. I mean, it is better than washing dishes in the powder room sink for two months, but still.
Some major updates from the self-styled demo team, though:
1) The upper cabinets are down! The lowers will be removed this weekend. Contractor thinks we are going to have a major problem with the weight of the granite. We don’t disagree.
We got a very nice text from our GC saying that we do such good work, he’d like to hire us (he was joking), and continued, “the work doesn’t pay much, but the job satisfaction is up there.” JohnR told him we’d be happy to be paid in Advil at this point
2) The load-bearing/not load-bearing wall dilemma. Five days, three holes, two professionals, and one husband have now had a turn at sticking their heads into our ceiling to see what they can see. There was some creative connecting of the partition wall to the joists above by the original builder, to be sure, but the word this morning is: go for it!
Nobody has a Plan B (or, rather, the contractor doesn’t want to say what Plan B is out loud to me for fear of a full-on grown up melt down), but I’m pretty sure it begins with “support” and ends with “post.” Before anyone changes their minds, we are going to start chopping on Sunday. If you are a church-goer, throw a prayer or two our way.
3) We finally, FINALLY, made a decision on the range hood fiasco. We SO wanted to go with an in-ceiling flush mount ceiling hood, but in the end, venting it outside would have required pulling a permit AND, because of the long struggle to understand a puzzled-together overhead joist system, our contractor was VERY reluctant to cut through any. Budget-wise, we could either hire a structural engineer or have pretty things. I’m going with the latter.
Luckily, we had our heads turned by this stunner! The company, Futuro Futuro, is one of few that do pendant range hoods with 960 whopping CFM. We are goo-goo eyed over the 36″ Balance model and it should be here in time for Thanksgiving. Not that anyone here will be cooking any damn thing on Thanksgiving, but we can gather ’round the swanky range-hood and give thanks.
The device will act as a pendant light as well as function as a powerful range hood, so a win-win in our books. And, the charcoal filter doesn’t need changed for five years. Not exactly what we thought we wanted, but something tells me this is going to be one of our favorite purchases.
One side done! Still not sure if this is a load-bearing wall. All evidence points to it not being one — we even poked our heads in the ceiling to reassure ourselves. Still, we want the all-clear from the contractor before the actual wall comes down. Neither of us is eager to take a stud down and watch our offices above crash into our former dining room
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, who knew taking down cabinets would be such a bitch?! The problem, as probably everyone else knew except us, is that a lot of hidden finishing nails go into cabinet crannies to keep them nice and tight and together. Trying to pry those loose without damaging the cabinets is a fool’s errand and we are not enjoying it.
Save some money and do the demo yourselves, they said. Ha.
Day 3 of the “drop-the-raised-floor” phase of the project. VERY slow progress. Three days in and here we are. JRL is doing the work, I’m just the photographer. Quickly rethinking whether saving this stupid wood is worth it as each piece has to be gently nudged free…
Day 7 of the “drop-the-raised-floor” phase of the project. You’ll remember the initial plan was to save all of the wood floor so that we didn’t have to repurchase new floor that would be primarily located under cabinetry and island. After a week and only 20% done, we have called in the calvary for reinforcement labor. We are also reevaluating the plan. To speed things up, we are going to be moving much more quickly, spending less time saving every single piece of wood, salvaging what we can, and flipping purchasing what we destroy in the process.
Slow going as we handle the prep work ourselves. Between the kitchen and the dining room is a partition wall, which we will be taking down ourselves (or, so we hope), but before that, we have to remove the raised floor on which our dining room now sits. It’s about an 8-in rise/step up that apparently was all the rage in the late ’80s but has only served to contribute to falls, trips, and what seems to be a very low ceiling.
Our hope was that we could save the hardwoods currently in the dining room to replace once the flooring was dropped to be level with the rest of the main floor.
Four hours in, we only have two pieces off, and it looks like much of it has been glued down, along with a massive amount of stapling, each of which has to be individually removed. We are hoping the glue was only for these edging pieces and the rest will be simply stapled, but even that maybe too time intensive. And, honestly, we haven’t saved even one piece that has the tongue and groove intact.
It may just be that we have to scrap the plan to reuse and order brand new. Sucks from both a savings standpoint and a landfill standpoint.
Christine Anne Scott 