Kitchen

Well, it’s almost over. The dishwasher is in and the contractor is finished. He is coming over tomorrow morning to settle up. We moved a bunch of stuff from our temp kitchen (the dining room) into the new kitchen tonight. It is slow going as we have to pick a spot to put the items in. A lot of the layout is similar to what we had, so we can put stuff back in the generally the same area, but we have new features that have to be worked into our routine.

All that is left to do is that I need to paint. We have picked out the colors, gloss white for the trim and yellow for what little wall shows. The old kitchen was yellow too, but very pale, this time we picked a few shades brighter.

I took several pictures tonight, but when the camera flash fires the colors in the resulting photo do not look anything like they do in real life. When hand holding the shot, the colors are more true to life, but everything is slightly blurry. This one was the best one of the bunch showing what the colors of everything are. After next week I’ll do another series of 5 photos of the new kitchen like I did of the original kitchen before we started this whole thing.

The counter top folks called Thursday afternoon to say that they were running behind and could they do the install on Saturday instead of Friday. We had no real problem with that, so we were penciled in for between 8 and noon on Saturday instead of Friday.

On Wednesday we had scheduled delivery of our new fridge for Saturday afternoon. So wouldn’t you know it, the counter top people were late and the Lowe’s delivery truck was early. They followed each other down Boardman Road to our driveway. I climbed on the running board of the Lowe’s truck and asked if they had another delivery to make and then they could come back later. Nope. I told them the counter top folks are using the garage entry, so they could use the front door.

Trouble is, that way in has the narrower door to go through to get to the kitchen. They tried once and could not get through. They tried another angle and had to back up again. For attempt number three they finally relented and took the doors off. Guess what? That didn’t work either. They got the top part through the door but had to stop when the plastic panel on the bottom that covers the coil intake hit the door frame. That time they only had to back up a bit so the fellow on this side of the door could pop off the panel.

If they had just come back mid-afternoon or arrived at the time they were supposed to, they could have spent 10 minutes tops delivering the fridge instead of spending 45 minutes monkeying around trying to fit a 30″ wide appliance through a 28-1/2″ wide door.

The contractor did some work at our place today. The (nearly) last of the handles went on cabinets, they sanded and smoothed out the sheet rock to old wall joints and the under cabinet lights went up.

Our counter top install is scheduled for this coming Friday morning. Last Friday they measured and yesterday they called to ask how many holes we needed for our faucet. The answer was one. After Donna and my afternoon walk I had a voice mail on my phone from the counter top people, “Please call me I think I may have given you the wrong invoice. We may have charged you for the wrong sink.”

Our first quote from them was for a Large Single Bowl, 30 1/4″ x 18 3/16″ x 10″. We decided that that size sink was big enough for bathing babies or medium sized dogs. As we have neither and all Donna really wanted was a sink big enough to soak an 18″ cookie tray, we asked them to quote a Medium Single Bowl, 16 Gauge, 23 1/4″ x 18″ x 9″ one. When I told the woman that we wanted the medium bowl and had an invoice to that effect, she said she had ordered a large sink.

My first thought was, which I voiced to her, “Have they started cutting the granite yet?” My second thought was, which I kept to myself, Donna is going to has a fit, we will be cancelling this order and we will just have some plywood counter tops with a 5 gallon bucket as a sink and the garden hose through the window for a faucet. She told me, “They’re still cutting Thursday’s job,” and that she would see if she could get a medium sink.

An hour passed, I still hadn’t heard back and with that second thought looking more likely, I called back. “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t think I needed to call you back. We get our sinks overnighted from Atlanta. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

Phewww!

There wasn’t much work done on Friday contractor-wise. They did get the bottom molding on the wall cabinets added. Donna and I are very pleased with the results, makes a nice little accent. Kind of tough to see in tonight’s new photo, but trust me, it’s a nice touch. They also made sure all the base cabinets were locked down for the counter top measurement that was scheduled for late that afternoon.

The fellow from the granite shop showed up at quarter after four and spent the next 45 minutes guiding a laser beam a 1/2 above the base cabinets with a tablet. And then when he was through with that high tech procedure, he broke out a tape measure to double check.

Today I hung up our ceiling fan. It was kind of tricky and I almost didn’t leave myself enough wire to hook it up. When I first hung it on the eye bolt I screwed into the joist, the finish piece I added to cover the electrical box in the ceiling didn’t fully cover the hole in the ceiling. What at first seemed like a problem was really a non-issue as the small cover looked out of balance in comparison to the large motor on the caged fan. The solution to both problems was to buy an eight dollar 10″ Bronze Ceiling Medallion.

We then held up our chosen pendant light over the sink and while both of us loved the light when we bought it, now seeing it in its natural habitat, it was too big. We took it back to Home Depot where we got it and went to look at their other pendant lights for possible replacements. We picked something out we liked, but didn’t buy it because we still had to go to Lowe’s for another thing so we wanted to see what they had.

At Lowe’s we eyed several options and final settled on a nice frosted cylinder for the glass. But we couldn’t find a matching wired or pole topper that fit the shade. Turns out we never would, the glass shade we picked was mis-shelved, it was the type that went with wall mounted fixtures. The same shaped glass in gloss white finish made an acceptable back up choice. Even though the pendant won’t be hanging very low, we didn’t put it up for fear of being in the way for the counter top install next Friday.

Recess lighting is in, all the cabinets are locked in and almost all the handles are on. Tomorrow’s agenda is the rest of the handles, finishing up installing the toe kick finish pieces and the light rail* molding needs put up. Plus running the plumbing line for the ice maker to the fridge’s new spot.

We have this really cool ceiling fan for the kitchen: allen + roth 20-in Valdosta Dark Oil Rubbed Bronze Outdoor Ceiling Fan. I wanted to mount it just like the photo shows except where the long power cord goes off into the distance, I wanted to put a plug near the fan end of the cord and plug it into a single outlet placed in the ceiling near the fan. I could see what I wanted in my mind’s eye, but what Donna saw in her mind’s eye was totally different. Tonight, she figured out what I saw and didn’t like it a bit. So we went to Lowe’s and then Home Depot until we could find a solution that the two of us could live with. Now to explain it to the contractor…

*or what ever they call that extra accent piece of molding that runs around the bottom of the upper cabinets is called.

They not only finished the upper cabinets, they also finished up the back wall. Tomorrow will be the lower cabinets and dishwasher. This means that the counter top people can come on Friday to do their whole laser measuring thing. The counter top folks will be able to install a week earlier than the previous April 5th date.

Between measure and counter top install the contractor can put up the ceiling fan, the recess lights in the ceiling and the under cabinet lights, so after the counter top there will just be the back splash tile and some mop up work. Maybe by Tax Day we’ll have a kitchen.