Busy Sub Contractors

We came home to a house full of dust and debris, which is expected when remodeling. The dust came from the sanding of the old ceiling in the den, and debris was from the granite work. The first item off the check list is the back door got stained. It looks a little darker than the rest of the stained items, but who cares, it looks great.
Second, and likely the best part, is that they have the ceiling in the den textured and painted. It looks like it needs to have a second coat and to be cut-in arounf the beams, but wow what a difference.
And last, with the exception of clean up of the granite, the counter tops are installed as is the sink. 

No more ugly wall paper!

Okay, perhaps it was really "ceiling" paper. The removal started this morning before we left for California. They had already scraped and sanded two of the four sections of the den ceiling by 10:30 a.m. By now there's probably a white painted ceiling. ;-)

We won't know what all they were able to accomplish until we get back home Saturday afternoon.

I saved a few peices of the old, yellowed, brittle paper for the special bonfire after it's all done. I also have the ugly yellow ruffled curtains. 

Granite half way done

Here are some pictures of what transpired between 3:00 and 8:00 today. They did not get done, but did install and cut the range surround and the bartop is in place, but not glued. Both major slabs for the counter are in place and the sink is cut.
This may be a problem as it appears to line up with the edge of the counter, but is over into the wall of the cabinet box. They may have to cut or shave off some wood to make it fit.
We love the color with the brick and with the stained wood. Some times you get it right.
Compare this last shot to the original picture back in the august archives. http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7216/1805/640/IMG_3843.jpg 

First stone is cast

Well, it is at least laid. It almost looks too pretty to cut out for the stove. It was almost comical and sad when the contractor arrived and the granite guys were explaing about cutting out the square for the cooktop. I heard and saw him pantemime "Slide-in stove".

It was not until the boys said they were ready for the cooktop and the looked for it in the garage that it dawned on them what we have been saying for weeks. Oh well, that is under way. There are more problems being solved with the sink at this this time. My comments that I made to the contractor and the granite guy are comming back to haunt them. It appears that with the sink being set on top of the base cabinets rather than behind them, it will raise the granite in that spot about 1/16 of an inch and the seams will not meet.

I looked at the contractor and he remembers me saying that and that the granite guy at the time said no problem. Now they are headed towards my solution of using a router to create a 1/16 recess in the wood inside of which the sink can lay--letting the granite site on the level cabinets.

To top it off, the granite folks had a no show this morning and they could not come start this job until 3:00. So they will be here late tonight and back in the morning. 

Kitchen Wall Colors

Two pictures of the color for the walls of the kitchen. The first is a little a truer picture, but I shot a second with out the flash and it is a bit darker. The color is called "Wonderous Blue".

They wanted to paint the window, paint the wall, and texture and paint the ceiling before they set the granite counter tops. Which by the way will occur at some point over the next 6-7 hours.

Temporary Laundry Closet Floor

Here I am installing the cheap, adhesive, wood-look flooring in the new laundry closet on Sunday evening beginning week 7. We plan to refinish the Pine hardwood floors throughout the house at a later date, and at that time, we'll re-do this floor. But since we're not ready to do that yet, we decided to put in a temporary fix. Kirk was studying, so I attacked it solo. There really wasn't room for two people anyway.
So now, as soon as they paint the walls and ceiling, I can have the new stacked washer and dryer delivered and installed. Yee haw! I think we're going to go with the Whirlpool Duet Sport models. 

Doors stained to match

And today (Thursday) the painters spent most of the day prepping and staining all the doors and drawer fronts. Looking good!

This is our new set of extra wide drawers between the fridge and dishwasher! Way cool. 

Cabinet Doors

Wednesday, I came home to a pleasant surprise: the doors were all installed. Now we're getting somewhere.

 

Hole in the wall

No, unfortunately, I'm not talking about a great little, hidden restaurant. This is a hole roughly the size of a golf ball, that they just filled with a gob of mud--not even taped over, and it's in a prominent, visible place in the room, which will only be covered with paint. 

Mud & Tape

And on Tuesday (week 6 btw) they applied mud & tape to the sheet rock seams -- some seams look better than others.
 

Sealing the cabinets

On Monday, they sealed the stained finish on the cabinets. 

The old kitchen has left the premises

GOOOOGLLLLE....er uhhh....YAHOOOO! The dumpster bin is gone! A pudgy white guy arrived with the empty truck to load up the dumpster that had sat on our driveway for 6 weeks. He looked at the narrow drive, narrow gate, and position of the bin and was about to say something about the difficulty.
I mentioned first that when Migeal dropped off the bin he backed up the driveway and quickly and expertly even though it was harder too see and dropped the bin perfectly.
White dude, then hopped in and tried to impress. He ended up driving slowly and making it in one try.

Bye Bye....

Two Inches

Vilfredo Pareto's observations, or at least the proportions, still hold true. He said in the late 1800's that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people. The part of that which modern man has grabbed onto was the disproportionate nature of the two numbers, not the exact numbers. It applies to many things. 80% of the news is in 20% of the paper--the rest is all advertisements. 20% of the roads carry 80% of the traffic.

And in my case, 20% of the features in our new kitchen, are 80% of the results for us. The contractor has done wonderful with one exception, and that one exception makes a great deal of difference in comparing what we wanted and what we will have. First, what he has done wonderfully:

1. He suggested closing off an awkward closet in the kitchen and opening a new door to it from the living room. I was somewhat against it aesthetically, but finally agreed with Leslie that it will make a huge difference in our lives. It will allow us to put our washer and dryer in a single place, give us a space for all out cleaning tools and supplies, and most importantly give us back space in our office/bedroom closet where the dryer currently is.
2. Suggested hardwood floors in the kitchen. We like that idea, and while they are not refinished yet, they look wonderful!
3. Recommended that we use custom cabinets that his crew would build to our plan. I think in the end the quality of cabinetry we will get will far exceed the additional cost of quasi custom from Home Depot or Lowes. Part of which was making our upper cabinets go to the full height of the kitchen rather than my plan of a 6 inch top where we could put accent lighting, this was supposed to gain us an extra 12 inches in the uppers.
   

This is where things go south and where the crux of our problems are. Cabinets are built off site and then installed, sans doors and drawers. The Doors are ordered and the drawers are built and installed in the boxes.

Leslie arrived home to find that while she had stressed twice that she did not want the final counter top higher, as she is 5'3", and while I had stressed that the new lowers should match the existing brick endcap, they were built taller. Then the upper cabinets were build and installed 18 inches from the new lowers and they are 4 inches higher and because of that have only adds 8 inches rather than 12 inches. Another major component was that the sink was to be mounted as close as possible to the front of the counter edge.

We stopped construction at this point and called the contractor. He seemed taken back that we had a problem, as they cabinets were "Standard Height". He later added that they had to be that way because the dishwasher would be too tall and we would have to cut out the floor to place it lower to fit. We conceded, the contractor now thinks that we are nit pickers and is clearing every item with us--a bit too the extreme in some cases.

Since that time, the cabinet boxes have been trimmed out, pretreated, stained twice, and were about to be sanded and sealed. The Granite guy had made his template, we picked out the 2cm counter top we wanted and made all the design decisions. One worry was a strip of granite in front of the sink would be 2.75 inches across and there was concern that it would be too narrow. We again conceded to make it 3 inches so that it would be stronger.

The the lightening bolt struck. The contractor called and recommended that we move up to 3cm granite, taking the finished height from just over 36 inches to almost 36.5 inches. That is 2 inches higher than we planned. This caused Leslie to pull out the contract, drawings, and dishwasher manual.

The contract stated "custom cabinets to homeowners plans", the carpenter's drawing shows the cabinets being level with the brick wall not above it by 2 inches, and the dish washer manual state will fit "34-35 inch cabinets". Top top it all off, the quasi custom cabinets from lowes are built to 34.5 inches.

To me and Leslie this means:

1. Whether or not the contractor knew, the carpenter knew, based on his drawings, that the cabinets were to match the brick element's height. Therefore he screwed up, but the contractor is the one liable for that mistake.
2. The contractor should have know that "Standard" was 35 inches and not 36 and that hardwood floors did not raise the level of the kitchen and therefore the dishwasher, which fit in the original cabinets and would therefore fit if the cabinets were built to fit the brick. In fact as it stands now, the dishwasher will either have to be shimmed up or have a piece of trim added to cover the gap.

Simple statement, the cabinets are of a high quality material and build in an exceptional fashion and will look fabulous. However, they will not be what we wanted functionally nor will they fit in the space and architecture of the existing brick.

There are only two options, with several variations of who pays, that exist:

1. The excellently build cabinets and the resulting work to sand and stain them, can be ripped out and then rebuilt from scratch to meet the original plan. This one important risk, the new box is glued (liquid nails) to the brick and likely can not be removed with out damaging or destroying the brick wall.
2. Leave the cabinets, use only the 2cm granite slab, and accept a excellently crafted kitchen that was not built to our Functional Design.

Reality check:

While ripping out and rebuilding is the only what to meet our functional design, it will take too long to accomplish, will cost either the contractor or us too much money ($9600, was the carpentry estimate), and seems like a waste of good materials and sadly, good craftsmanship.

Keeping what is currently there remains the only reasonable choice. So that leaves too decisions:

1. go with the suggested 3cm granite (+$500)to add strength to the narrow sink area or stay with the 2CM to keep the height down (-2/5 of an inch).
2. And who pays for the mistake? A) we pay full price as contracted, B) we get credited the full cost of the cabinet portions of the job, C) some point in between

Currently, we are considering the 2cm granite and asking the contractor to discount us 1/2 of his profits for the entire job or 1/2 of the labor and profit for the cabinetry only.

Just to state it more clearly, we like the work that has been done, we like the subcontractors that he uses (except the plumber, but that is another story), and we appreciate how hard he makes his subs work. We just have an issue with the height of the cabinets and his refusal, up to this point, to assume any of the blame.

Gigi posing with her new door

 

Now a cased opening

We changed the doorway to the living room, to a cased opening, and moved the louvered door to the new laundry closet. And after much thinking and discussing, decided to stain the casing to match the kitchen cabinets. The trim around the opening on the living room side will be painted white. 

Lovely stain match!

I'm pretty impressed with their color matching. We asked for the same color tone, but a shade lighter. I think that's exactly what we got.

And they stained the inside of the microwave cubby. 

It opens so nice and smooth now

Another picture of the beautiful, new, sliding glass door.