Getting There

Well, the countertops were installed 2 weeks ago today. They look nice, I like the look of dark countertops with the light colored cabinets.

Another thing that got done 2 weeks ago was the installation of our floating shelves. Ed made us 2 beautiful shelves out of maple - it turns out maple looks the most like the European birch of our kitchen cabinets. They are lovely. The 2 Johns installed them - it was trickier than it looks. It's all done with threaded rods and aluminum tubes and washers and couplers. Getting the holes drilled in the right places in the ceiling was the nail-biter part. I think the wide-angled camera view makes the rods look a bit wonky here - but it all came out with everything parallel.

At first, we were not even planning on having those supports in the middle. Contractor John warned us about the wood sagging and we assured him we would not be loading up the shelves with anything heavy, like books. But, upon installing the shelves, they sagged merely under their own weight. So center supports had to be added.

You may notice in some of the other pictures that there is a bucket on the top shelf of the floating shelves. That's because the roof has a bit of a leak there - that is where the old vent hood and exhaust pipe were and we are waiting on the roofer to come work on spots such as these which tend to leak. Happy to report that there is no longer a leak from our chimney - yipee! It has rained and rained here the last week and this area is finally fixed.



The front of the bar here isn't finished yet, they will do that after the flooring gets installed.

Ed also made the mantle for the fireplace out of the maple, and he edged the melamine shelves in the pantry with it as well. Here's a shot of part of the pantry-

A week ago, Jack the electrician came over and hooked up a bunch of our outlets and light fixtures. It made a huge difference to have light. We haven't had more than a single floor lamp in there for light for 3 months. Having light again makes the place feel much more homey.

As you can see in the pic above, there is a big patch of concrete on the floor. That is something that got done last week as well. It turns out that there was a dip in the floor there, where the old wall used to be. So contractor John filled in the low spot there with a floor leveling product.

We were expecting our flooring (a Kahrs engineered cherry) to be here a week or two ago but it got held up. The tile for the backsplash was not in either so John and Ed packed up their stuff and left and went on to another job site. They'll be back as soon as the floor shows up. After the flooring is done, we can get the refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, and washer and dryer installed. So the main things left for them to do are the floor and the backsplash tile. Until then, John and I decided to help out with a lot of the little details that need to be done. So on Saturday, we took down all 5 old doors in our hallway and patched and sanded and repainted the doors and the trim. The hallway itself had been painted (and the 2 doors to the furnace area had been replaced and painted) and so repainting the old doors needed to be done before the floor went in. The doors were a real mess, original to the house I'm sure, and all had hooks or towel racks or some hardware on the back that had to be removed and the holes had to be patched. In addition, all of the hinges had paint on them so all the hinges got cleaned. They are all rehung now and today I will try and put the new handles/ locksets on them so they will all match.

Husband John has been installing and adjusting the cabinet doors, drawers, handles, and other hardware and he just finished that up this weekend. After that was done, I started moving stuff back into the kitchen! Everything over here has a good coating of dust on it so everything has had to be washed. I spent quite a bit if time this weekend washing and arranging and organizing. When they install the floor, there will be more sawing and dust-making but as long as they cover the cabinets with plastic, I think it'll be ok. Anyway, we moved our dining table, microwave, and electric tea kettle back into place yesterday - they will just have to be moved out again when the floor and tile are being done, but it's nice to have everything in one room again, at least for a little while.

Sorry I seem to have taken most of these pics with the lights off. It'd look a lot better if I had the lights on! I'll have better pics next time....