Moregruel.net

The handles finally arrived last week, so we are spending the Memorial Day weekend putting on doors and drawers. The end seems to be in sight. Of course, nothing is easy. After establishing a standard position for the pulls, and doing all the drawers, I discovered that using the same position on the 12″ wide doors resulting in one of the screwheads being *under* the hinge plate, which then didn’t sit flat against the door. Bugger. I ended up having to cut the corner off of 6 hinges. Thank you, Mr. Dremel.

Well, after another two weeks, we finally have water running again in the kitchen. Putting in cabinets is more difficult than it looks if there are no flat surfaces or 90 degree angles in the kitchen. But we’ve reached the point where we can use the kitchen, kind of, and that will keep us going until we do things like install shelves, doors, and drawers. Pics at the usual place.

Well, we got a lot done in the last three days. By “we”, I mean Erin, who put down an entire tile floor. That stuff is tough to cut. The electricians came back this evening to finish it out, installing all the receptacles and switches, and figuring how the proper way to wire the venthood, which is not the way I would have done it, which is why it’s good to hire people who know what they are doing. Tomorrow, cabinets!

Today we built all the wall cabinets. The drywall guys have been here three times to patch, let dry, patch, let dry, and are now applying the texture. Yea team! Now we need to go buy painting rollers and stuff for tomorrow.

With the sheetrock up, it’s starting to look like a real room again. It also looks smaller again. Rafael is coming back today (Sunday!) to texture it, and then I guess we’ll end up painting, since he can’t come back until next weekend.
[…later…] Except, of course, he’s not coming back today, due to “excessive partying” by his crew. He does claim they will come Monday, though.

The new subfloor is here! Now the kitchen floor is safe for dogs, which is of course the most important thing. We passed electrical today, and the drywall guys come tomorrow.

Yes, it looks very similar to the previous picture, but in fact it’s all new and improved: note the extensive new spans of PVC, and the bright yellow Romex. Plumbing inspection passed, but the electrical inspector didn’t show up today.

So two days of plumbing turned into six, but at this point we’re actually only a few days behind schedule. The new subfloor, which was supposed to be done today, should happen tomorrow, but since we can’t start sheetrocking until the electrical inspector shows, that’s okay. We did have some excitement yesterday when they were pressure testing the new drains: the little inflatable ball they used to block the washing machine drain blew out and ended up spraying about 5 gallons of water all about, but some towels and shop vac cleaned it up pretty quickly, and the plumber called in clean up company with fans to dry the floors and a dehumidifier for the closet, which was the worst place. It should be okay.

It is simply amazing how much dust you can create with a Sawsall. The plumbers came this morning, and cut a chunk out of the flooring. The tile/concrete layer is only a layer, and the flooring guy says it’s not too big a deal to chunk it out. We’ll (or rather they’ll) will end up pulling up the layer of 1×2s, fixing the areas that need fixing, and put down a new layer of sheathing to end up with a nice flat subfloor.

OTOH, the existing plumbing/venting system is nowhere near meeting code, so that’s going to be more expensive than we had hoped. It always is, of course…

Good progress today. Some surprises, which I’ll write about later - time for shower and dinner. Ook! (Now is later, or possibly later is now.) The surprises are a) there are a few rotten sections in the subfloor, b) some of the tile is set in concrete! I had known, but mostly forgotten, that when Erin bought the house, the back door was inset into the kitchen, leaving a small concrete stoop. During the remodeling, the back door pushed out flush with the back of the house, leaving the concrete stoop inside the kitchen. Apparently the remodeler just poured some portland cement onto the concrete to bring it up flush to the subfloor, and set the title directly onto it. Or something like that. Anyway, that tile is not coming out by any force I’m capable of applying — all a sledge hammer does is pulverize it, leaving a nonfunctional surface. I think the thing to do is turn it over to pro and have the whole subfloor replaced in order to get a nice flat floor.

It is begun. It’s amazing how much even a small kitchen can hold.