The Kitchen Project

They’re here, installing the counter top. You can barely see the seam once it’s all installed. That’s the thing we like about his pattern. The plumber’s still working hard on getting the stove gassed up.

Mark is jealous of me today. (What’s new, right?) I’m working from home this morning because our countertops are being delivered. This will essentially make our kitchen usable. We can finish putting things away and start setting up. The plumber is coming this afternoon to finish the stove, put in the dishwasher, and hook up the sink. We can’t use the sink for 24 hours while we let the adhesive dry/cure, but it’s gonna be one yummy day of pictures, sports fans.

Update: the plumber is here to hook up the stove while waiting for the countertop delivery.

This is the week we’ve all been waiting for. All of us, even the cats. This week we get a working kitchen back. No more dishes in the bathtub, no more laundry in our tenant’s washer/dryer. No more hotplate cooking. Many many pictures to follow this week.

Wednesday: Countertops are installed in the morning.
Thursday: Sink installed. Dishwasher and Washing machine hooked up to water supply. Fridge water hooked up. Stove installed. Radiator installed.
Friday: All door handles & pulls finished. Glass shelves installed.

The tiles, alas, will not arrive for another week to week and a half, while either we or our contractor is on vacation. (I just called this morning, and they said a 3-3.5 week turn around)

Boston Fabrication of Norwood, Mass. promises that will be the day our countertop will arrive. It’s a Wednesday. Let’s see how much else can be done that day and the two following.

Our countertop template was done today, and I asked the guy when we’d be ready to put it in. “It usually takes about two weeks. Call us Monday or Tuesday and we’ll have an exact date.” TWO WEEKS? I had always heard one week. Our tiles have also been ordered, and those will be a two week wait. Plus, they’re so heavy, they’re coming by freight truck from somewhere in southern California or Mexico. Apparently, UPS “throws boxes” and we don’t want boxes of glass thrown around.

The countertop template is done with corrugated plastic strips, built out into grids with notes and measurements on them so they can cut the countertops easily from them.

In the mean time, Mark and I have been looking at cabinet hardware and anticipating the installation of our appliances. Billy had said the plumber and electrician would be back once the countertop was in, so everything could be done at once, but that’s a long way away, now. I guess my dreams of getting out of our makeshift kitchen and cooking on a real stove are dashed again.

The crown moldings and bottom rails on the cabinets have been installed. The baseboard molding and last bits of the wall crown molding have been put up. We need to paint the crown molding soon, which will be a challenge as some stretches are quite inaccessible above and behind the cabinets. All of these are visible in the photo below:

All of the appliances save the dryer have arrived. We’re hoping to see the electrician and plumber next week. The dryer should arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday, at which point they can cart away our old fridge.

The templater for the countertop pulled up to our house just as I was leaving for the busstop this morning. I’m looking forward to hearing from Greg how that went.

Today, I made pancakes in the electric frying pan. It’s basically my way of making sure Mark is going to be psyched for whatever the world throws at him. Something about chocolate chips, bananas, and maple syrup does the trick. I had also painted a big splotch of our winning color on the wall, and we decided to go for it. Then I called Billy, our contractor, to see what was up.

He’s coming Monday to install the cabinets. We could have the countertops measured Tuesday, and have the appliances come Wednesday. You mean…. I could cook something on Wednesday for dinner? And wash dishes? And clothes?? Far out! A quick call to Yale Appliance. They should have everything for us Wednesday, except maybe the dryer and fridge. Okay. I can live with that.

Then we were off. Up to North Reading to National Tile, where Karen, after securing an invitation to our eventual kitchen unveiling party, agreed to help us pick out tiles for our feature area, gave us more samples, and sent us on our way. Jenn called us and said their templaters could come Thursday. That works. We went to Benjamin Moore, got loads of Primer and Paint, and headed home to prime. Four to five hours later, the first coat is up on top of the primer, and we did a decent job. A few places we need to touch up, but it’s good. Another coat goes up tomorrow after breakfast (We’re going to Sound Bites, so I’m not cooking!) and then it’s off to get sink and faucet.

I located some photos of Cambria Windsor countertops to provide some context for our decision.

In this picture, the cabinets have a lightness comparable to honey spice, but aren’t the same tone. Honey spice has more gold. They have stainless appliances (yes), beige tiles (yes), and a hardwood floor (yes…) that is darker and redder than ours (no.) I don’t know what you’d call their choice of paint–dark mustard?–but it’s not quite what we’re looking for.

The Cambria website has a spectacular image of a much larger kitchen. Here, the cabinets are darker, but the hue is closer. The tiles are vaguely comparable to ours in shine and color. They downplayed the stainless steel by paneling their fridge, and their cabinet doors are more traditional than ours. Their paint is a very pale, neutral peach.

Hrm.

One of the most popular questions we get, after when the project will be done, is what we’ve chosen for a countertop material.

The answer is an engineered quartz by Cambria known as Windsor. Cambria quartz is similar to a product called Silestone which is sold at Home Depot and whose hygienic qualities make it the choice for both transactional surfaces in hospitals and the bathroom counters at my office. The tan and off-white tones of Windsor pick up brighter colors in the cabinets and add light, while the gray and charcoal bring a darker grounding to the surface and connect to the stainless steel. I didn’t like the sandier or reddish colors–too beachy–and the plainer charcoal we feared would be too dull in a big space.

I’ve broken with family tradition on this. My parents and sister in New Jersey have beautiful kitchens with granite countertops they chose and installed, and their choices suit their homes very well. Granite is a lovely material and you can’t argue with the results. It’s just not what we chose for our home, or for us, much as we chose a smaller home and a denser, less car-friendly neighborhood to put down our roots, and a more contemporary look for our kitchen overall.

Honestly, I didn’t want to deal with the granite process. I did not want to worry about picking out a slab of appropriate size and color, and also the sealing and the upkeep. Granite is certainly manageable, but quartz is very durable, easy to fit, simple to clean, and bless our hearts, we like the look, which I freely admit appears cheap if you view it is as an attempt to mimic granite’s unpredictable grain and rich colors and not as something of its own. One person made a comparison to a certain Soviet Bloc car of the mid-1980s, which I took a bit personally.

But if I believe in my decision, I should certainly be able to defend it, so here you are. Our decision may not yet be set in stone, as it were, but we are happy with our choice.