It’s finally time! Installing hardware is absolutely terrifying. But, once he figured out the swanky tool we bought, the first only took two hours. One of those hours was spent giving ourselves a pep talk. Beside the gorgeous eye candy that was installed, we FINALLY were able to remove the blue protective covering for our first glimpse of our cabinets. One down, 21 more to go

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.

Kitchen reno update:

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

Kitchen reno update:

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.

Day one, (real) construction started

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.

#kitchenremodel#kitchenrenovation