So we’re into week four or five on kitchen remodeling. Removed the
breakfast ledge first, then Started taking the hanging cupboard down August
??. Anthony helped me get the big piece over the peninsula down, and
the next 3 door one.
The rest I was able to remove myself.
We’ve bought some small shelf units and move all the glassware and plates to those. First in the dining room, then out to the hallway. Cover the sink, stove, fridge with plastic.
Microwave gets moved several tiems. First to a TV tray in the dining room, then out to the living room.
Clean out the doghouse and move food stuffs in there and mount a shelf unit on the door to put lots of canned goods in that.
Have boxed up lots of things that people tell us we’ll never unpack. Put crackers and snacks in the peninsula and when that gets cleaned out to move we never find those things again… don’t know where they went but I really want chocolate chips!
Anyway…
The next week I remove most of the base cabinets. I cut around the sink so I can leave that, keep the peninsula base unit so we have something to work with. The last piece to come out, between the fridge and stove is a royal PITA! Can’t reach the screws, heads are stripped out… finally just RIP it off the wall/floor. Damage a section of drywall by the stove that will have to be replaced.
Then I start removing the soffits. (I had cut an end off one before to see how they were constructed and to make sure it wasn’t totally open to the insulation or anything) Borrowed the saws-all from the Hassler and I kinda cut them into sections, then cut in half lengthwise. The top 2 x 2 comes off fairly easy then.
Our ceiling is two layers of sheetrock with electric heat between the layers. However where the soffits were, there’s only one layer. So I buy sheetrock to fill in those holes. Get to home Depot and don’t know what thickness I’m supposed to by buying. Never thought about that… I get luck; it’s 5/8ths and that’s what I bought home. Except the patch in the wall…walls are only ½”.
I think I frustrate Sexton Drywall who we’ve hired to do the taping. I was always cutting another hole in the wall or patching something else. I thought they were going to fix the hole in the wall, they thought I was. And then on their third day there, when Kelly and I are removing EVERYTHING so they can respray the ceiling and we remove the kithen light fixture we see that sheetrock is damaged from the ceiling leaking so I cut ANOTHER hole in the sheetrock to patch… Somehow them make it work without getting any further behind.
It’s Sunday September ?? when we remove the sink, take the stove and dishwasher out to the garage, Jerry Casper comes out and helps me carry the peninsula to the truck (I take it to Plainview to become the new work table at the Hassler.)
Kelly scrapes the old sparkly stuff off the ceiling. I’m working on a show at ‘The Rep’ so don’t have time to help with that… She tapes paper on the walls then puts plastic on the floor to contain the mess.
Thursday the drywall people spray the ceiling. Kelly and I stay up very late painting because Chris Huhe will be installing cabinets Friday. So we paint the ceiling and one coat of the crimson red on the upper walls. Go to bed about 2:30 AM.
People who delivered the cabinets went to our neighbors house first. Chris went there first too…Betty doesn’t get up that early in the morning and a few days later when Fed. Ex. Delivers our faucet to their house with a note that say’s ‘OPEN AND INSPECT IMMEDIATELY’ (and after Rick delivers the box to us and when he askes me what’s in the box and I tell him a faucet he can hardly believe it. ‘Open and inspect immediately indeed…) Betty tells me the last guy looked a little surprised when she answered the door wrapped in an afgan…
So all the base cabinets and cupboards get installed on Friday with the exception of the cabinets over the pennensula. He comes back Saturday to finish them. But the ceiling’s not exactly level… and it’s tough to get things level… and looking nice… spends the whole day hanging 4 cupboards. And cut a shim 7’ long and tapers from 2” on one end to nothing on the other. Were the old ones his crooked?
I put a level on the old ones and they were off about ¾”; not 2”… Not really sure why this is happening. I can’t imagine what I could have done with the sheetrock to make it this far off but I don’t know what else it could be. The whole house isn’t that crooked.
So the top crown molding isn’t going to work here. Not exactly sure what were going to do. Nikki ordered more filler strip, I’m still trying to find longer (metric) screws for the handles on the drawer fronts, (got the handles from IKEA) and a couple doors that have to be replaced. And one cabinet that seems to have been dropped.
So now it’s October 5 and we haven’t put anything away yet. AFM Surfaces, the countertop people came in on Monday September 20 and did the template and last I heard they’re hoping to install on Monday October 11, which is Columbus Day.
I MISS HAVING A COUNTER TOP! Kelly misses the sink and yeah, that’d be cool too, but I need a place to read the paper!
I’ve put up my new Xenon light where I read the paper (got two more to replace the other old fluorescents), got a new pendant fixture over the sink, put outlets (with two separate circuits) for ropelight overhead and will have ropelight under the toekick. Put the microwave on it’s own circuit (and forgot to do that before install, had to cut a hole and fish a wire.)
Moved the telephone jack to the ledge on the peninsula and put three circuits on the ledge.
Kelly will be tiling between counters and cupboards. I’ll be putting hardwood flooring in to match the living room. Hardwood with a boarder.
When I asked about putting in a border the guys at the store kinda snickered and said, …..OK…. but you could tell they thought I was crazy.
I said, what, don’t you think amateurs can install in boarders but they said, no, I could do it, it’s just a little tricky.
It’ll look nice though.
And this week I’m in Plainview anyway; it’s tech week at JHT for ‘West Side Waltz’. Sally Childs directing so Clark is redoing the entire show and set…
Counter tops got installed on October 11 and look really, really nice! I got rope light installed above the cabinets; one outlet wouldn’t work and I made 4 trips into the unfinished attic checking wires and could not figure out why it wouldn’t work! It slowly dawned on me that if I had three outlets, plus a line up from the switch shouldn’t I have more than 4 wires? Then since I couldn’t remember exactly how I had wired this I had to pull the switches out and kinda track those wires down to the breaker box… finally realized I had never pulled the wire over from that box. And because the roof sloped down on that side couldn’t exactly reach it either. That’s why I had cut one of those extra holes in the wall that Sexton’s had to patch way back in September; so I could snake wires from below because I couldn’t reach them from above. Once I actually wired up the outlet it worked!
Getting the flooring installed; Kelly’s getting tired of getting splinters in her feet so I figured I’d better. It’s going to look really, really nice with the border! I spend a lot of time laying on the floor with strips of wood figuring out how, exactly, this is going to go and trying to thinking ahead. Bought and borrowed a few new tools. (Bought a ½ inch shank router bit to cut grooves in the flooring as needed, borrowed a ½ inch shank router, bought a new table saw; actually it’s on order from Home Depot because, of course, it was out of stock when I deciede to actually go purchase it!) But, Boy, once I get it I’ll get that window trim done in the living room that I’ve been saving for 15 or 20 months!!
Kelly’s got more wall paper peeled off with a little to go yet once I get all the flooring boxes moved. Still thinking about what tile and what color to paint.
We really, really like the brick we put on the wall at the top of the steps! It’s such a nice look.
And a hand rail for the stairs. I actually made a phone call about that today.
You gotta start somewhere, right?
 |
Write me: ben@farmerben.com |