The Kitchen Project

Where we’ve been:

The week following the installation of the countertop and our first joyous cooked meals, loads of laundry, and washed dishes in the kitchen, we went to Cape Cod for a vacation. Even though we surely know all of our readers, I am too conservative to broadcast over the Internet that our house is going to be empty and free for the taking. Hence the silence.

The following week, our contractor took his vacation, as we waited for the tiles to come in from the West Coast. Michael, the electrician, stopped by to do some work, but we had nothing new and dramatic to report.

This should be the final week of the project, and everyone involved would like it to be so. This morning, the floor people appeared to apply the second and final finish. Our tiler should arrive tomorrow to put up the backsplash, a task of no small concern to me because glass tile can be difficult and there will be cutting of glass tiles and wood trim to make it work. Our outlets and switches need to be installed. Greg has to make a final decision about the cat 5 wire which now links our kitchen to the basement space immediately below it, and not to our cable.

And then that’s it.

Yesterday our electrician Michael came over and installed our ceiling fan and started working on outlets. The fridge is plugged in, so no longer on an extension cord. From upstairs, it didn’t look like he’d done too much, but the basement had a lot of new wires run around. The kitchen is going to add a pile of circuits to our system, since modern kitchens have to allow running the toaster and microwave at the same time. (In our old kitchen, this outlet was on the same circuit as the TV in the front room and an outlet in the dining room.)

Today, we hope for more progress! In the mean time, I leave you with our new fan. On a 90+ degree day, he’d be good to get that wired and running.

Okay, so the story we all know has that on day 1. Billy and John didn’t have the blank canvas to start with like the more famous version of that utterance, so we’ll give them a few days slack. I came home after the gym to find Mark typing away (see On the Surface, below) and was eager to poke around and look for progress. The exterior light was fading, but it was clear, the drain pipe in the center of the room was gone! I looked around for the switches controlling bare bulbs we’d had the previous days, and they were gone. I turned around and flipped a switch. We have LIGHTS!

Most of our cans (or hats, or recessed lights) have power and bulbs in them now. The room finally has a sense of some progress away from demolition and towards build. The pipe was indeed gone, and more outlets had been placed around the room, including one for the stove, the fridge, and our network cable. The plumbers had run the line for the fridge’s water supply, and again, that big pipe was gone.

Our basement door doesn’t close well. We have to latch it. So i had Mark hold the door shut while I peeked downstairs. It was a little reminiscent of the King Tut discovery, but I grew up on that story, so “What do you see?” “Marvelous things!” is one of my favorite exchanges. Mark came down to look at things, but Phoebe managed to get the door open a few times. (The photo was her fourth trip in, since I wanted to film it.)

The second post hole had been filled in, and two temporary beams were in place. They’re just 2×4s, one buckling slightly with the jack underneath it. (That was that contraption we’d seen before that looked like a brass megaphone) The real lally columns are on the ground and will be put in place when the concrete has cured.

The plumbers have finished hooking up our drains, and have moved a few lines around to accommodate the new beam and remove some old brass pipes. We did find an old closet under the stairs. It had always had stuff in front of it, so I have stayed away from it. It’s a rather sizable closet, so we’ll have to figure out what we can store there.

The exterior work is all done with replacement shingles up. We’ll still have to paint, naturally.

Tomorrow: probably electrical and plumbing inspections. Those are both big steps, and will mean we can start to move forward with some other significant things, like floors and walls. We do have to get the floor level first.

I think we’re going to see a lot of progress today. At least I hope so. The electrician is hoping to finish up his stuff, including putting in a network connection so I can hook my laptop up in the kitchen. [Okay, so I really want to do a flat-panel touch screen monitor connected to a mini computer so I can hook into the net and manage recipes, shopping lists, music, etc. Mark said "That's sound like a nice idea. Just like having a pony."] Billy said he’s hoping to get the electrical inspection done by Friday, so things are moving nice and quickly.

The plumber is in today to finish his vent work, and re-route Craig’s water supply lines and drain. Most of that work has been done, and we were lucky to find an old vent in Craig’s closet so we could tie right into that without having to create a new hole in the roof.

In the basement, the guys are digging through the barely 2″ of concrete to set new footings for the lally columns, and they’ll work to put the beam in after all that’s done. I was assured that we do have a foundation thicker than 2″, but the builders probably conserved on concrete (read: were cheap) where they didn’t need it. Who put things in their basements in 1905, anyway? It does keep our wine nice and cool.

According to Billy, we might have walls and floor next week, then we wait for the cabinets to arrive. We’ll take that time to paint, I imagine.

Today’s pictures include: shingles on the outside, the old door (in the dumpster), some electrical work.

My cold got the better of me today. Finding the nap room at work occupied at noon and my afternoon schedule free of meetings, I took half a sick day and headed for home at 1:30.

The electrician was still at work, and I told him not to mind me. As of the close of business, he had installed several cans in the ceiling and plenty of outlets along the walls.

While I’m glad for that, today’s high point has nothing to do with the electricity. Our new door to the back porch has been installed. The previous door was a thick, cranky metal contraption with a small window obscured with heavy-duty chicken wire. It didn’t do a great job of connecting the porch to the house. That makes sense, because when it was installed, the house’s back porch was a plywood lean-to with ripped plastic for windows. There was also a second door dividing the kitchen and the back hallway and so this door truly served as the back door to the house. Since a 2001-2002 teardown-and-rebuild the porch has been a real room with its own entrance and its integration into the house is long overdue.

So, one door removed, one heavy door replaced with a paneled glass door, an interior wall taken down, and unnecessary trim from around the hallway entrance to the kitchen removed, and the upshot is that from my foyer I can see straight through the house and the backporch to the japanese snowbell tree in the backyard. Unbelievable. Our central hallway previously felt like a dark cul-de-sac and our kitchen and backporch were disconnected from the flow of the house. Now our house has a central axis.

I was concerned, when we eliminated one window and shrunk the other two, we’d lose too much light. So far my fears have proven unjustified. Not only are we getting plenty of light from the smaller windows, but the back porch is now letting in light, as well. Also, poking through the photos of the old kitchen, I remembered that we usually kept the shades at least half-closed in the kitchen anyway for privacy and because that provided more than enough light.

This is only Day 2 of construction.

This morning’s 7:30am meeting was with Michael, the electrician. We talked about where to put the overhead lighting, the under cabinet lighting, and where the major appliances are going.

We’re going to put a pendant lamp over in the corner by the sink, and are planning to put a fan on the ceiling, to help with air flow. And lots and lots of outlets!