Went tile shopping at “Tile Source” today – looking for backsplash tiles. Great selection. No decisions yet….more later.
Archive for June, 2010
Received our pendant lights from Schoolhouse Electric today. We think they’ll look great! We also have developed a theory for running the wiring up through the attic space above the kitchen. It’s fully accesssable and should cause a minimum of problems with the plaster. When we had insulation put in in May, they cut a access “door” that we can use to get to the space.
Front porch after Habitat for Humanity picked up old cabinets
Today we met Big Mike the contractor and a rep from the cabinet company at the house to inspect several cabinet doors that either had been damaged in shipping or had defects in manufacturing. The rep approved everything that we asked for and replacement doors have been ordered. Big Mike said that he thought our other cabinets might be in – which is a surprise since we only ordered about two weeks ago.
Habitat for Humanity also came by today and picked up the old kitchen cabinets, sink and faucet that have been stored under a blue tarp on our front porch. We’re glad to have our porch back!
Brian came over tonight to start working on the floor. Had to patch one area of the floor where the old kitchen wall used to be and trim off the bottom edge of some trim & door casement for the flooring to slide under. Next step was to lay down underlayment with vapor barrier. This is a thin layer of padding with plastic on the side that faces up (blue in the photos). Since our floor is “floating” (i.e. not glued or nailed down) the padding helps keep the floor from making noise when you walk on it. It also smooths out minor imperections in the subfloor. Next step was to layout the the first row and start putting down the Marmoleum squares and clicking them into place. There is a good amount of trimming at the ends of the rows to fit around cabinets and pipes. We’re using three colors flooring carefully arranged into a random pattern (sounds like an oxymoron). The colors are Sahara (medium) , Van Gogh (lighter) and Shitaki (darker).
Finished covering everything with plastic, masked off the ceiling, finishing priming the kitchen, painted the door & trim by the door, painted the kitchen, painted the wall by the new basement door. Cats got in to help a few times! Now that we’re done we’re not 100% sure we like the colors we picked. But we’ll save that for another day.
Today we prepped the kitchen for painting. We went through 4 rolls of painters tape and about six 9×12 plastic drop cloths to cover everything up so we wouldn’t get paint on th new cabinets. Had to do a repair to the wall to the left of the ktichen windows. Spackled several other places to smooth them out. Primed the wall by the new basement door.
Took things into my own hands tonight to center the sink. After the contractor came back to center the sink base, it was still off-center by about 1.25 inches. They blamed it on the slope of the sagging kitchen floor. Here’s what I did:
- Used Dremel Mulimax to enlarge holes for plumbing – so the sink base could be shifted to the left without lifting it up & over the pipes
- Unscrewed the cabinet from the wall
- Shifted it to the left
- Used 4 ft. level to make sure it was level from left to right – and even with the other cabinets. Also checked for level from front to back.
- It was perfect from left to right on the first try
- Adjusted the shims underneath a little to make level from front to back
- This made it off-center again — so had to repeat the process
- Success
Sink base is exactly where we want it. It’s level and even with the other cabinets. It leaves just barely enough room to squeeze in the new 12″ cabinet that we ordered to go where the 15″ cabinet used to be.
Submitted a question to “Ask This Old House” today. Seeking help installing the pendant lights over the sink. Our contractor is being very squeamish about cutting into the ceiling to 
install the lights and wants us to buy surface mounted track lights instead (not going to happen!)
Rearraned the furniture in the dining room tonight – so we could “reclaim” the dining room table and start using it again. This also gives us a better feel for how the new kitchen will flow into the dining room.
Adventures in Remodeling 