Progress Update: Week 6

Week 6 has been a busy one!  Although I'd like to report that we are further along, serious progress is evident.  There are days that I love my contractor, and then there are days that I think I'd like to wring his neck!  The most frustrating, I have figured out, is when I'm told that some task will be finished within a certain time frame, and then that time comes and goes and the task still isn't done!  

This week illustrates my frustration perfectly:  First, the dry-wallers were supposed to finish up work on Monday, but they didn't even show up to work on Monday!  Then, I was told that the new flooring would be installed on Thursday-Friday.  While I was pleasantly surprised that they started on Wednesday, it turns out they won't be finished until Sunday, June 14!  That's 5 days, not 2!  Then, with the floors promised to be finished on Friday, I was informed that our trim guy would be here on Saturday to install cabinets, but before we even got to Friday, the cabinet install was pushed to the following Monday.  

I really think my contractor should take the opposite approach.  He should just say, "Lizz, face it.  You're kitchen is never going to get done."  And then, when something actually gets accomplished, I'd be delighted!

Suffice it to say, the dry-wallers finished mudding and sanding by Tuesday afternoon, so Tuesday evening we started priming the walls.  We decided to do the painting ourselves as this was an easy way to save a few bucks.  Plus, being the perfectionist that I am, I've become a pretty meticulous painter, so I was confident that my painting would be just as good a job as hiring out the task. 

Even with just primer on the walls, the space is already feeling a bit more finished!

Seeing that the tilers were scheduled to lay the floor on Thursday/Friday, we didn't have much time to get the walls done.  We (mostly me) busted our butts to get four coats on the walls in 48 hours (two coats of primer, two coast of finish paint) but between the guys who were cutting new air ducts in the floor for the toe-kick vents, and the fact that the tilers showed up Wednesday (not Thursday!) to pour the self-leveling cement, we only got the primer and one finish coat on the walls.  

As Fortune would have it, the tilers decided not to install the tile immediately over the Ditra mat, but let the mortar over Thursday evening, giving us one extra night to get the final finish coat on the walls.  I am most thankful that I didn't have to throw down protective sheets over my new tile floor, or worse, climb over kitchen cabinets to do the last coat of paint, even though we'll probably have to touch up some spots after everything is installed.  

My hands were so red and sore from the paint rollers that I took a break to go buy hand cream! Now, if I could just get DH to rub my sore shoulders! 

But my sweat and tears were all worth it because I am thrilled with the wall color.  In fact, it looks even better than the sample quart color I threw up on the old walls just before demolition!  In the old kitchen photos, the swaths of sample paint looked rather "bluish gray" but the color really looks more like the virtual color on my Olio Board that I originally imagined!  Joy!

It's coming together: New tile floors (still needing to be wiped clean!) and finish paint color in the kitchen.

As of Saturday, the tile was completely laid and the kitchen was grouted.  The father & son tiling duo have promised to come back on Sunday morning to finish the grout and shine up the floors.  Bless their hearts for working the entire weekend for us!  I love, Love, LOVE my new tile floors!  I can't wait to see them all polished up for the final reveal!  The only teensy complaint I might have is their height.  Because of the self-leveling cement, backer board, ditra mat, and mortar, the new tile floors are about two inches taller (two!) than the original wood floors in the adjacent dining room and bed rooms!

Looking at the door jamb on the right, you can see how the wood floors go underneath the jamb, while the new tile butts up against it considerably higher.

Since we found out on Thursday that the cabinets weren't going to be installed on Saturday after all, we had a bit more time to spread out their assembly.  Nevertheless, I was worried that the base cabinets might take more time to put together, so I insisted that we start the construction process Friday night.  

I caught a tip on IkeaFans.com to install the drawer rails before assembling the cabinet boxes, so my first task was to go through 24 boxes of flat-packed drawers and pull out all the rails, European soft-close dampeners, and screws.  Freaking out about messing everything up, I labeled ever last drawer rail and baggie of screws, then laid them out by cabinet number in the living room.  I know I'm eventually going to love having drawers in my base cabinets instead of shelves, but Man! that makes for an awfully long assembly process!

That's a lot of drawer rails!  Oof!  I have my work cut out for me!

Also on Friday, my sample fabric of Kelly Werstler's "Imperial Trellis" in taupe arrived in the mail from SpoonFlower.com.  I know it's a trendy pattern and some say it's already past it's prime, but I really do love it's geometric pattern.  The taupe repeats the color of the backsplash tile and the cream plays well with the wall color.  I've decided to make custom upholstered cornice boards with this to hide the ugly blind boxes that jut out from the windows.

"Imperial Trellis" has flooded the design world recently, but I still like it!

While the tilers were laying the final tile and grouting the kitchen today, we were busy at work on the front porch (or in the living room during the two thunder storms) assembling base cabinets. Ironically, there are now cabinets in every room on the first floor of my home, except the kitchen!

Base cabinets taking up real estate in the music and living rooms!

I swear, the cabinet assembly has been the easiest thing so far in this entire kitchen renovation.  Cabinet assembly is a breeze!  As of Saturday evening we have all but 3 of the cabinets assembled.  The only ones that remain are: (1) the sink base cabinet (only for the fact that we didn't grab the sink brace before the tile was laid and we can't walk on the floor to get it for several more hours), (2) the blind corner cabinet, and (3) the 88" tall closet cabinet (a.k.a. "the behemoth").  These last two are heavy and bulky and I prefer to assemble them in the kitchen, so we don't have to move them very far. Plus, I swear the flat-packed box that the behemoth is in weighs as much as I do, and am thus convinced we will not be able to get it upright without the help of our cabinet installer!

Progress Update: Week 5

So there's good news and bad news.  The good news is that we passed all of our intermediate inspections at the beginning of week 5, so we got the green light to proceed with the project.  The bad news is that we're behind schedule and there's no making up time lost since everything creates a domino effect.

The dry-wall is up!  Even the unexpected soffit looks good.  Let's just hope it lines up with the cabinets and floating shelves!

At any rate, insulation was installed on the exterior walls and around the laundry area (for sound reduction).  Then, the drywall was hung (on July 4 of all days!  I'm sure the GC is paying a pretty penny to the sub-contractor for that to get done over the holiday!)  Actually, I can't believe how fast the drywall went up.  It took less than 4 hours to do everything: the kitchen, the hall, and the two closets.  That's the pace I'd like to see on everything!  The sub returned again Friday and Saturday to mud the seams.

Also in the category of good news: my vertigo and tinnitus are diminishing.  I'm starting to feel more up to doing work around the house, as was the original plan for my summer.  I started scraping paint off the original trim work, which was taken down during the demolition phase.  These beauties are going to get cleaned up and freshened with new paint before going back in!

Scraping and sanding the original trim work on the back deck.

Wall paper for the laundry hall.  What looks like lavender in this photo is actually a metallic silver.  The colors in this wallpaper coordinate with the "Alpaca" paint color that will go in the adjacent kitchen and powder room.

I also indulged myself and ordered the wall paper for the laundry hall.  I originally wanted the same pattern in the black/beige combination because of it's bold punch, but the beige colors in the wall paper were too yellow and clashed with the paint colors in every adjacent room, so I ended up going with the same pattern in a silver and cream combination that works with the paint we've already chosen for the other rooms.  I suppose it will still turn out okay, since the floors and shelves will all be black/brown.

Candice Olson's "Oval and Diamond" wall paper.  I love the "Wow!" factor that this bold geometric pattern brings!

Maybe the black in the wall paper would have been too much on top of the dark floors, but I still love it!

Stupid electrical panel!  Bane of my Kitchen Design!

Now I have a minor design dilemma.  The main electrical panel is located on the back kitchen wall and isn't concealed by any closet or cabinet.  My design to hide this was to install a chalkboard (which I've always wanted in my kitchen anyway) on piano hinges over the electrical panel.

Someone else came up with the same idea to hide the electrical panel!
Photo: http://thehouseisgoingtobegreat.blogspot.com/2012/10/diy-chalkboard-camoflauge.html

Thus, to get to the electrical panel, you would just swing open the chalk board!  However, with the old lath and plaster walls ripped out, the electrical panel is no longer flush with the wall, so the drywall was built out just a bit, creating what looks like an engaged column on the back wall.  This panel is only 19'' wide; not enough for my chalkboard.  I've come up with a plan to build out the panel and trim work, hiding the narrow electrical panel, but it still may not work.

Elevation plan for the wall that butts up next to the electrical panel.  As it turns out, the finished wall is only 117.5'' in length -- a little shorter than we expected.  This is going to be tight!

There's a 2'' filler piece intended for the cabinetry on the adjoining wall, which would help the 2+'' offset of the electrical panel, but the adjoining side wall is 117.5'' and the designed layout is 118.''   Thus, to cover the electrical panel and fit all the cabinets on the adjoining wall, the trade-off might be that the closet cabinet at the end will never open a full 90 degrees.  I could live with 87 degrees, I guess, but how annoying!

View from the kitchen into the back hall / laundry closet.  Both the closet door and door to the bedroom lack enough space on either side of the jamb to re-install the original 6''wide trim.

Also, on the "unexpected surprises" front, now that the dry wall has gone up in the hall we can see that there's not enough clearance on all the door jams to re-install the original trim.  We knew we'd have to get more trim from somewhere, just because we're adding a 5th door to the hall space, but we didn't foresee the original trim being wider than the wall space available on each side of the jamb.  It's not just a matter of door placement either; there isn't enough wall space period.  So now I have to decide:  Do I install some of the original trim where it fits and buy new trim for the rest of the doors?  Or do I reuse the original trim elsewhere and buy all new trim for the hall for the sake of uniformity?  Argh!  I cannot decide!  *Sigh* When will the compromises end?!

Looking forward, week 6 is going to be a jam-packed week for everybody, but this week is critical if we want to avoid re-scheduling the counters to be templated for a third time!  DH and I are going to have our hands full, too, as we are doing all the painting and building the cabinets ourselves.  At this point, the remaining schedule looks like this:

Week 6: Finish dry-wall, install floor, paint walls, build cabinetry
Week 7: Install cabinetry, template the countertops
Week 8: Start trim/crown, finish wood floor in closet, finish laundry, install lighting
Week 9:  Install counters, backsplash, finish trim work, pass final inspections...move back in and Enjoy!

This would still put us a week behind our original deadline.  Here's to hoping this kitchen gets done before the next school year starts!