Finished (sorta)!

Well, after a whirlwind of activity last week (Electrical, counter tops, sink, faucet, cabinet pulls....), we were able to move back into our kitchen on Sunday and Monday of Labor Day weekend.

Mostly everything was done Friday, but there was a delay in the flooring guy's schedule and he ended up coming in on Saturday to put the final finishing coat on the floor, and then, though tantalizing, we could not go into the kitchen until Saturday night!

But then all day Sunday and Monday we began moving our kitchen belongings back in. We have SO much space!! Take a look:

Now we're shopping for counter stools, possibly some floor mats, window coverings - and looking at having a window seat cushion made. (Please let me know if I have some very handy crafty friends out there).

We are so happy with how things turned out! Yet to come - Back splash, side splash (4 inches of the recycled glass along the sink wall), and of course the back-ordered tile back splash behind the range. But at this point, the anxiety is gone, because we have our kitchen back, and the final touches are just icing on the cake!

:)

Countdown!

Well, so......not everything got done last week as we expected. BUT - lots is happening this week and we expect to be able to move in to the kitchen over Labor Day weekend!

First, on Friday the lighting was put in. This, more than anything, has made the kitchen seem closer to finished. We searched long and hard for these pieces, so we're happy that they work so well together.

And in one of those "well if we change this, we have to change that" moments, we purchased a new chandelier for the dining room. This is one of those impulses that I'm sooo glad we indulged in!

Today, the painting began. I realized after I took these pictures that the color doesn't really show, but it's a grey-blue-greenish color ("Comfort Grey") that looks quite different depending on the light that hits it. More cabinets are done (supposedly going to finish tomorrow).

Below you can see the old finish (on the right) and the new cabinets (on the left) - not an exact match but we think it blends well! You can see the paint color a little better here.

The window seat is becoming more of a focal point now, with the arch over the top and the puck lighting from above.

The area behind the range will eventually be tiled, but for now, we were hoping it would be painted (it's not yet!). The vent is there, but hasn't been connected and installed yet. We are amazed at all the cabinet space we will soon have!

We kept our spice cabinet (formerly an ironing board cupboard) to keep it in the style of the home - and because it's super useful! We got an update for the shelving (from the cardboard-covered-with-shelving-paper shelves) which makes it even better. Oh, and here you can see our new dishwasher! It will be so nice to have a built in, as now we have a tiny portable dishwasher (which is now for sale, btw...). 

Wow, now that I look at this pic, the color is coming off as a minty green, which it really isn't!

And finally, the tiles to cover the old plumbing pieces in the bathroom shower turned out really well, I think (this pic from Scott's phone, giving me the thumbs up)! You can see we have other areas of black detail so it *almost* looks like it belongs. Very happy with how it turned out.

Next up this week - cabinets and painting finish up tomorrow, as does the rest of the HVAC. Wednesday not much happens but patching up the wall in our closet. Thursday plumbing gets finished. Friday - Counter tops! and finishing the floor! We have to wait to walk on the floor until Saturday and then it's move-in time!

Next up.....Everything!

Well, we're about 2 weeks away from the end of our project, and it looks like there will be a whirlwind of activity this week to complete almost everything:

• Monday - finish painting
• Tuesday - finish cabinets (put on drawers and doors, panels); Counter-top and sink get installed!
• Wednesday - HVAC completes its work, toe-kick heaters installed, range is hooked up
• Thursday - Plumbing completes work - finishes concrete floor and drain in basement, hooks up refrigerator, sink
• Friday - Electrical finish

The only potential problem we have in blowing this whole schedule up is once again, the problem child - the bathroom.

Apparently the old plumbing fixtures that needed to be replaced are embedded in the mudding of the tile, and may not be so easy to remove, much less do so without disturbing the 80 y.o. tile.

And there was some miscommunication about how much tile we would need - we understood the tub fill would go in the place of the lower, middle fixture below, but when the plumber was here last week, he said that was too high. So now we have to cover that 5th hole too, and we don't have tile for that. Oh, and we have to demo the inside of our guest room closet to be able to get to the fixtures - the access panel does not go high enough. Fun!

Hopefully we'll be able to find a good solution with relatively little cost/time.

LATE MONDAY UPDATE:
So, the counter-top scheduled for installation tomorrow had some faulty resin. They won't be in now until next Thursday. And due to the demo needed to get the plumbing fixtures out, the plumbers won't be in until...actually I don't know when they are going to come. But the painters are going to take the plumber's spot this week instead. And then the tile???? I give up. Despite the normally very slick Google calendar the builders share with us, we're just going to have to go with the flow this week and next!

CabiNETS!

We have drawers! and some cabinet panels! It's kinda looking like a kitchen!

Early on in our project, we had met with one of the project managers, that for some reason always referred to cabinets as cabiNETS with the emphasis on the last syllable. We never asked him why (I'm not aware of any dialect differences, I believe he's from MN) but it always stood out to us, so now I can't really say the word without thinking that in my head!

Above is the sink wall - the sink will go just underneath the window, and the dishwasher will be just to the right of it. The open upper area to the far right is where our microwave will go. 

Below is the range wall - the range will go in the middle of the 3 cabinets on the left. The refrigerator will be in the taller empty cabinet to the right.

Below is our window seat. It is flanked with cabiNETS that will have glass on the top (that's why the backs are finished) and doors on the bottom. The curved valance over the top is meant to reference the arch on the opposite wall, and will have puck lights in it shining down on the window seat.

In any case, we seem to be on the home stretch - just 2 and 1/2 weeks until our end date, and although both the cabinets and the painting are behind schedule, they both have plans to catch up.

Meanwhile, the lighting still has not been shipped, and although I'm nearly in daily contact with the company, I don't really have an ETA, just that the "factory is behind".

At this point it is a little surreal, seeing all the things we've been thinking about for so long, and seeing only on paper, finally coming to life!

The Bathroom

Bathroom, you say? Thought you were doing a kitchen remodel?

Yes, but as tends to happen in remodel, we had a bit of project creep and now we are extending some fixes into the bathroom.  We had always intended to replace all our galvanized piping in the basement as part of this remodel. Well, when the plumber was looking at the piping into the first floor shower/tub from the basement, we noticed a slow dripping from up above.....we only hadn't noticed it before because it happened to be dripping directly into our utility sink. A closer look at the shower/tub fixtures revealed a leak and an old part that needed to be replaced - but because of the age of our house and plumbing, we would not be able to replace it with a similar part and would have to bring it up to code.

Honestly, I don't remember exactly the whats & whys of what we had to do - just that we had to select a new tub/shower fixture AND figure out a way to cover the old fixture openings in the (nearly 80 yo) tile.

The PLAN: get an inexpensive fixture, as we don't use this tub and shower heavily, and do the simplest tile repair possible.

For the tile, we originally were just going to make a large black rectangle around the fixture holes, but the tile guy says the less the amount of old, fragile tile we remove or disturb, the better. Therefore, instead of a large rectangle, we're going to try 4 smaller decorative black diamonds to cover the holes. 3x3s would be best - but they are hard to find. In a stroke of luck (and generosity) our salesperson at Kate-lo tile, offered up some samples of some grey 3x3s that was discontinued for free. Then we asked about using 2x2, 4 at a time for a diamond shape instead, and again, she just handed over some samples of the glossy black porcelain tiles to cover all 4 holes - for free!

Still waiting to hear back from our project manager if the increased size is ok - but you can't beat the price!

Windows and Dressing

Some progress!

We've made lots of decisions over the last several weeks, over the finishes that will really contribute to the final look of the kitchen. Here's a composite of our choices:

We are going with a recycled glass counter-top. This picture below with the flash makes it look a little more flat, but shows a little more of the different colors - black, green, and clear - in the dark grey resin. We think it's really quite beautiful, and we're happy with our green choice.

The cabinet sample is birch, with our final choice of stain. It works really well with the trim that we are already keeping. The paint looks more green in this sample, but it's called 'Comfort Grey', and really is more of a blue grey.

The tile.......well, we fell in love with the tile and it's been a roller-coaster ride since. We love the deep colors and the fact that there is a lot of color to pull out of it, and it doesn't lock us into just one color scheme. :) It's almost double our allowance, which we can accept, since it's only a small area over the range that will be tiled. But then, we were told that we had to buy a full box of the special order tile, which about doubled our expense. :( So I called around, and found that in fact, we CAN buy just 10 square feet, keeping our expenses down. :)  BUT...............it's on back-order until October or November! :(

At this point our only other option to finish on time is to quickly find another tile that we like within 2-3 days - and that's just not possible, given the Wooldridge Brothers' world (ok, Wisconsin) tour that we leave for tomorrow. :) So at this point, we're planning on finishing everything else, and leaving the tile undone until it arrives. :(  I know, right? It's really disappointing, but there is not much to be done for now. Maybe we'll go hunting again in the meantime and see if we can find something that still ties into everything else we've chosen based on that tile.

And finally, today we have new windows! A new double-hung over the (soon to be) sink, and our old windows in the front have been refinished, refurbished and will finally be air-tight. You can also see some of the upper cabinets that were hung - a slight detour on those happened too, when I realized that they were the wrong length (too short) and hung at the wrong height (too high). As a woman who is just barely over 5 feet, it was important to me to have the upper cabinets only 15 inches above the counter-top, so I held my ground and now they are the right height and length.

It's hard to believe that we're (mostly) one month away from the end of this adventure!

Old and New

When we made the (difficult) decision to get rid of our vintage kitchen cabinets, I knew we wanted to try to sell them, as they are in good shape, beautiful wood, and still could be of great use to someone....just not us anymore. The main problems were that they didn't allow for much workable counter-top space since they came down so low and the lower cabinets were not deep enough to fit a dishwasher. 

So we asked the demo team to remove them carefully, and then they sat in our basement until we were able to list them on Craig's list. We had a buyer almost immediately, but that fell through when our vacation schedule did not match up with theirs. However, we had about 6-7 others that were interested and a contractor came and picked them up today, paying cash at our asking price! So glad they are going to be re-used!

And now......our kitchen is beginning to look like a kitchen again!
They started installing the cabinet 'boxes' today. Below you can see the sink wall cabinets and the peninsula coming out on the left. I believe the 2 narrow boxes by the front window (on the left) will go on either side of the range. (The big table in the middle is just their work bench.)

Our cabinets will be birch panels, shaker style, but the internal boxes are just the dark grey "TFL" that you see here.

And we have our cabinet staining sample. We think we're going to go with the next-to-last darkest, as it will match the existing wood the best. We are keeping the spice cabinet (re-purposed from an ironing board cupboard), the trim on the existing windows, and floor trim. Next step is to stain an entire panel for a larger sample, then make our final decision.

This is getting real....

We're Floored!

Wow!

Our new floor is in!We've been gone for about a week again, and were so excited to see this upon our return.  It has its first coat of poly on it and we can't walk on it yet, but we were happy to get a glimpse of it before it goes under protective wraps until the end of the process and the final couple coats are applied.

We think it matches quite well with the rest of the house! So gorgeous.

Next this week - the cabinet boxes start to go in, and we finalize some more decorative choices (counter-top, tile, cabinet pulls and lighting).

Oh and the new dishwasher and vent hood arrived today! :)

The Floor's Fatal Flaw

Well, this post *was* going to be called "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" but things didn't go as planned.....

It all seemed so perfect! We found Douglas Fir floors under our linoleum. Yes, it was quite thin. Yes, it had splintered in a few areas. And yes, there were a few areas of staining, or areas that needed to be patched due to previous walls. But our flooring guy and project manager thought it could be done and we were really excited to be able to salvage the flooring.

In a stroke of luck, I had come across a posting on the 'Nextdoor' site about a neighbor who was remodeling her kitchen as well - and was also deciding on whether or not to refinish her Douglas Fir floors. (Incidentally she also had birch cabinets to sell, just like us!) She ultimately decided to go with a new floor, which allowed us to use her douglas fir flooring to help patch. (Getting our contractors to coordinate was a bit more of a challenge, but it eventually all worked!) It all seemed to be falling into place perfectly. We were happy to be able to salvage the wood, be green and eco-friendly about it, and save some money in the process!

And then....the wood guy began to get the floors ready to patch. When pulling up the boards around the patching areas, the floor boards began to split and splinter, and our salvageable floor turned into a liability that the floor guy would no longer guarantee or recommend for longevity or sturdiness. I got a call in the middle of my work day to tell me salvaging was OUT - and asking what was IN?

We decided to go back to our original plan of natural red oak - this matches the rest of the first floor. Our timeline won't even be disrupted, as our flooring guy will be able to stagger the demo and installation between this week and next, which was our original timeline. So, though it was so sad to see it all torn out, at least we can feel comfortable that we'll have a lasting beautiful new floor! We'll have pictures of the new floor with the initial few coats of poly next week.

Here's Scott with our old floor all torn out (you can see the new flooring in the back of the truck).

Here is our floor as it currently stands, bare-naked and ready for new flooring. 

And here is our new flooring, ready to be installed after a period of acclimation in our house. 

Next week - windows finish up and the new flooring is installed. And - counter-top/cabinet news! :)