A Fish out of Water

We're all creatures of habit for the most part, aren't we?

I know I am. When I get in the kitchen, I expect things to be in a certain location and when they are not, it throws my game off.

Off my game is how I felt the first time trying to cook in our new kitchen, a fish out of water.

A simple case in point: in our last two kitchens, the knives lived in a knife block on the counter next to the cutting board, easily within reach when needed. Trying to declutter our new island, I purchased an in-drawer knife block that lives in the righthand island drawer. After years of reaching for knives on top of the counter, now they're hidden away in a drawer, neither good nor bad, just different, a confounding of muscle memory.

And so it went while cooking in the new kitchen for the first time last week. Things were not where my body thought they ought to be based on muscle memory, despite when designing the kitchen, my visualizing the new location of the items that we most often use. Visualization is part and parcel of my being: every night at the restaurant, when I was actively cooking as opposed to expediting, I would cook (my part of) each dish in my head while standing at my station, ensuring that each tool and ingredient was exactly where I expected it. Efficiency is, after all, born of familiarity and organization.

Despite all the time that I spent visualizing where things would go in the new kitchen, that did not mean that I had considered everything, or that everything would fit where I thought it should go, or even that my body would automatically reach for something where it was hiding. Cooking the first meal in this kitchen reminded me of cooking as a guest chef in somebody else's restaurant. I would always feel a bit helpless in not knowing where anything was. I'm sure if you've ever cooked at somebody else's house, you can relate.

Though it was awkward reaching for the salt, a tasting spoon, or a towel and not finding it right away, it was still a blast to finally cook a meal after a month and a half with no kitchen, even if I had no clue how to work the stove controls. It won't take long to build new habits and muscle memory in our new kitchen and I am looking forward to no longer feeling like a fish on dry land.

Arugula, Tomatoes, Goat Cheese, and Marcona Almonds
with Tomato-Hazelnut Vinaigrette

Pasta with Chicken Confit and Sugar Snaps in Garlic-Thyme Cream;
Crispy Chicken Skin

Brebirousse d'Argental Cheese with Persimmons,
Chipotle-Tangerine Marmalade, and Rosemary Caramel

A New Kitchen for Our New House

We moved from McMinnville across the Cascades into our new house in Bend in mid-February. While no house is entirely perfect and the purchase of any house is a compromise, our new house was ideal for us in almost every way except for the kitchen. We bought on location and value for our dollar despite the sub-optimal kitchen, knowing that kitchens can be replaced.

The primary issue was that our kitchen was "designed" for looks by an interior designer of sorts and not by anyone with kitchen design expertise. I have to admit that in the professional photos below, the old kitchen looks good. Unfortunately, it did not function well as cooking kitchen. Ann and I set about correcting that just two weeks after we moved in.

Existing Kitchen, Looking at Pantry Corner

Existing Kitchen, Three-Level Island

Our issues centered on two primary kitchen requirements: adequate ventilation and adequate prep space. The existing kitchen as you see in the MLS photos above had neither.

We started with the design in March: Ann handled all the styling and décor decisions while I did the drawings for the new layout. Working with a "designer" at the local big box store, we ordered cabinets in April. Then over the summer, we collected most of the things we would need to fit out the new kitchen, from sink to stools.

After a lengthy battle over delivery dates during the summer, the cabinets arrived a month late in mid-September and we started construction September 19. We finished on November 1st. To minimize the time we were without a kitchen, I did about 80% of the work myself, including the carpentry, drywall, painting, half the electrical, and all the small stuff. We contracted the general labor for demolition, help setting base cabinets, half the electrical, the tile and grout, and all the plumbing. Ann did 100% of the décor.

Following is the saga of gutting the existing kitchen and building out a new one, a long tale that is broken into several chapters. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever been party to a construction job that we had twists and turns along the way. In the end, the renovation took a week longer than we desired, after a start date that was delayed by a month, a far better experience than many people have endured.

New Kitchen: Design Comes First

New Kitchen: A Summer to Remember

New Kitchen: Getting Ready for Construction

New Kitchen: Construction Diary

New Kitchen: Coping with Construction

New Kitchen: Before and After

New Kitchen, Looking at Pantry Corner

New Kitchen, Single-Level Island

New Kitchen: Design Comes First

This post is part one of the series "A New Kitchen for our New House," outlining the issues with our new kitchen and the initial process in creating a new, highly functional, and beautiful kitchen.

February: Coping with Subpar Existing Kitchen

In spite of the crazy 2021 housing market and thanks mainly to our timing at the holidays, we were fortunate to purchase our new house both below market and below our budget. After relocating in mid-February, we decided to use the leftover budget to redo the kitchen which was comfortably roomy but was also clumsily designed and therefore decidedly dysfunctional for a retired professional chef who cooks nearly daily.

The primary problem was lack of prep space and the crux of this problem was the island, shown in the photo below. The island surface was broken into three levels, with the range top and downdraft fan on the lowest level. Unfortunately, that left no useful counter-height space to either side of the burners.

The secondary problem was that the downdraft fan provided insufficient ventilation for any kind of cooking, let alone the high heat cooking that chefs love to employ. Downdraft exhausts are largely useless: most of the fumes still go upward, setting off the smoke detectors, and worse, the fan really and truly only serves to suck the heat off the burners.

Behind the stove rose an oddly curved two-person breakfast bar, elevated to bar-height a few inches above the cooking surface. And on the far right, a most useless granite-topped sliver of a half wall rose above both other surfaces for no good reason that I can fathom. In sum, the island had no prep space and lousy ventilation, an almost perfect exemplar of how not to design a kitchen workspace.

Existing Three-Level Island: No Ventilation and No Prep Space

After coming from a house with a wonderfully useful kitchen, we faced a bit of culture shock. During four weeks of unpacking and coping with this new kitchen, I started thinking about a new design centered on a single-level large prep island with seating for 5 people. Additionally, we walked away from the bar and wine storage that I had built in the house in McMinnville, and so I started thinking about wine storage as part and parcel of the new kitchen design. We are quite tired of living with cases of wine stacked against the family room wall, as you can see in the photo above.

March and April: Designing a New Kitchen

In mid-March, I measured the space and started sketching designs. I have designed several kitchens in the past, including consulting on a couple of restaurant kitchen designs, so this is not alien territory for me. Ann and I talked over what we wanted in a new kitchen and the design we came up with is not what we would have wanted had we been starting from a blank canvas, but it is a good compromise. The new design balances maximum utility with minimum expense in a minimal timeframe, working within the constraints of an existing footprint. By carefully managing the cost of the renovation, it will be an expense that we can recoup on sale of the house.

The design would have been very different had we the budget for new electrical, plumbing, ventilation, and relocating windows. Or the luxury of four months of construction time, four months of living in a house without a kitchen. Or the luxury of space in which to build a walk-in pantry.

During the design process, we started looking for a supplier for cabinets to flesh out the design. In fairly short order and without choosing a specific supplier, Ann selected a simple door style and came up with a general idea for finishes. At the same time, we also got a contractor on board to help with the renovation. While I can do all the work by myself, I am retired and would prefer to have someone else to handle the bulk of the labor and subcontractor wrangling. [In hind sight, I ended up doing about 80 percent of the work myself to keep us on a reasonable schedule.]

By the first of April, Ann and I had settled on a design that saw a long bar along the bare south wall of the combined open-concept kitchen and family room, perpendicular to the flow of the kitchen. In the center of the kitchen, the three-level island morphed into ninety inches of flat granite, four feet deep, seating three at the back of the island and one person along each end, for a total of five guests. Ann's island seating idea is perfect for us because our dining room table seats six, the average size of our dinners, meaning there will be five people besides the cook in the kitchen for appetizers and during final dinner prep.

The other major change was to relocate the cooktop to the exterior wall and to put in a hood with a decent exhaust fan. Good exhaust is necessary for any kitchen, especially for anyone who does sauté-heavy cooking. We chose a new range with a 22,000 BTU primary burner that will need a great exhaust fan.

There are some touches in the new design from kitchens I have designed in the past, especially the roll out drawers on the back of the island. These drawers have no doors. Trying to open doors at the prep station with messy hands has always been a losing proposition, so I eliminated the doors. And, although I have specified pull-out trashcans before in a past kitchen, I put them next to the dishwasher. The lesson learned: the prep station needs a trash can. In this new kitchen design, we had room to build twin trashcans (one trash, one recycling) right into the island where we will be working.

Kitchen Plan: Bar Left, Large Island Center

Design fleshed out and in concert with our contractor, we engaged a cabinet designer at a local big box store, after having visited and come away unimpressed by a couple of so-called cabinet specialists and their year-long delivery schedules. After an initial consultation in which we reviewed our design and requirements for cabinets, it was about a month of back and forth before we had full specifications that could go to the cabinet manufacturer.

That month was fairly frustrating in that the designer promised us schematics quickly, schematics which did not come until one of Ann, I, or the contractor rattled the designer's cage. This despite me giving him full measured drawings of the kitchen and new design. His job was basically one of transferring my design to his system and selecting the appropriate cabinets, fill strips, and mouldings from the manufacturer's catalog. We should have taken this frustration as a portentous omen.

Rendering from Family Room, Bar on Left

Cooktop Relocated to Outside Wall, Large Flat Island

Without using a custom cabinet builder, we could not get the details that we wanted for the seating side of the island, which you can see in the photo as a slab of granite cantilevered out into space. So that will become a carpentry project for me, the contractor, or the both of us. Also, Ann decided that she wanted floating open shelves on the wall to the left of the oven and refrigerator, the big bare space in the rendering above. I love doing finish carpentry so I may take on both these projects.

And that's kind of the way it works at our house. While Ann had input on the design, I handled the bulk of the kitchen logistics. And while I had some input on the finishes, it was mainly up to her as it is one of her great strengths. She could have been a great interior designer in another life and I'm excited to see her vision come to life in a few months.

For this kitchen, she has chosen a sleek contemporary look of blacks, greys, whites, brushed nickel, and brushed stainless steel. In her vision, the cabinets around the perimeter of the kitchen will be black-stained maple with white stone countertops. The island cabinetry will be grey with a black stone top. The bar cabinets will be grey with white marble-like stone and the wall cabinets will be fronted with frosted glass. The appliances and sink will be either brushed or black stainless steel. The hardware and lighting will be brushed nickel.

Finalizing the cabinet design meant that we had to choose a sink, cooktop, and hood so that we could ensure that they would fit in the cabinets. It also meant that I had to pull the face frames off the existing wall oven and microwave, which we are reusing, to measure the openings required to fit them. We'd love to get new double wall ovens, a new refrigerator, a new dishwasher, and a new microwave, but that would add a minimum of $10,000 to an already large project.

At long last, we wrote a big check and submitted the cabinet order at the end of April. Later that week, we ordered the cooktop and hood. Little did we know, this was only the beginning of a lot of drama, covered in the next post.

New Kitchen: A Summer to Remember

This post is part of the series "A New Kitchen for our New House," and outlines a summer that we will never forget as we dealt with one problem after another, mostly to do with the cabinets that we ordered in April.

May and June: Ordering the Bits and Pieces

When we placed the cabinet order at the first of April, the initial estimate for the delivery was the 15th of August and so we started working the rest of the schedule to that. During May, we purchased stools for the island, lighting for the island, hardware for all the cabinets, and a new high-arch faucet for the new sink to ensure that we can clean our largest stock pot in the new deep single-bay sink. I also got a quote from the local glass company for the two shelves that will float on the wall above the new bar, between the twin frosted glass-fronted wall cabinets.

In mid-June, we started working with a countertop company to select the two different stone colors for the kitchen and tile for the backsplash. We ended up with an off-white marble looking manufactured quartz product for the bar top and kitchen counters. And even though we originally planned to put quartz on the island, serendipity intervened. Out behind the showroom, we spotted a decidedly unique granite slab for the island top. It is largely black granite with a fair amount of white quartz veining along with hundreds of small red garnets all over. It is a show piece fitting of being the kitchen focal point. We bought it on sight.

The New Island Slab

Close-Up of Garnet Inclusions

Quartz Pattern for Bar and Kitchen Counters

Over the course of a week, we selected the edge finishes that we wanted and decided where to cut out the island top from the slab. The slab was big enough that we would have enough granite leftover to top the double vanity in our bathroom. While that was our initial idea, Ann subsequently came up with the brilliant idea to top a cocktail table in the adjoining family room with the leftover granite.

At the same time, Ann selected an off-white subway tile for the backsplashes. Our rep at the countertop company told us that because of their schedule and general labor shortages that they would not be able to install the backsplash tile in our time frame. Not really a problem: either I or the contractor will install the tile.

In early July, I designed the cocktail table base using square steel tubing and hired a local craftsman at a steel shop to fabricate it for us. In designing the cocktail table, I also fleshed out the design for the seating area of the island so that I could get the steel shop to cut some flat steel to support the granite in the seating area where there are no cabinet bases to support the stone. That side of the island is a bit tricky in that an open 7-foot span has to be engineered to support its share of a potentially 800-pound slab of granite.

By mid-July, I had a pretty good idea of the finish carpentry for the island (though I would refine it a couple of times during some sleepless nights) and a definite plan for building the floating shelves to the left of the oven. I placed the steel order right away, not knowing what the backlog would be. We were promised product in a week to ten days, a date that would slip, but not badly.

Although Ann selected a new sink back in April, we finally got around to ordering it in mid-July, not really wanting to store a sink for the summer. But with all the supply chain interruptions these days and given that our sink cabinet was ordered to fit a particular sink model, it seemed smarter to store it than to depend on just-in-time delivery. It arrived at the house within a week of our ordering it. Finally, something in our schedule went without a hitch.

Ann had very specific desires for sink style and color: apron-front, single bay, and dark colored. I just wanted a sink in which to wash dishes efficiently, that is, a sink big and deep enough for large pots. Style and color, I left to Ann as that is her bailiwick and forte.

July: Cabinet Snafu Threatens Entire Schedule

At the first of July, the cabinet company moved our original delivery date back by three weeks, amusing no one, with the new delivery set for early September. They told us that availability of rail cars and/or shipping containers was the primary issue. We moved the contractor dates and countertop templating and installation dates accordingly.

But then two weeks later in mid-July, we started getting more texts from the cabinet company, the gist of which was that our order (but a different order number) would be delivered just before Christmas. WTF!!?!!?

Several phone calls to the cabinet company assured me that our order was still set for delivery in early September, but there was another order just submitted which would not be completed until December. After several more phone calls, I discovered that our order from the big box store was divided into two orders for the cabinet company, one for each of the two differing stains and the second order, the one for the gray island and bar cabinets, was just submitted.

After a lot of "it's not my job" responses, I finally got to someone at the cabinet company that could expedite our second order and got it into manufacturing in 48 hours. Really, that was a fantastic response on the part of the cabinet company! Then we started the wild goose chase to see when we could get it delivered (and secondarily, why in the name of all that is reasonable we ended up in this situation).

After going around and around and around, we finally discovered that we needed to get the cabinet manufacturer's sales rep for our box store and the designer at the box store involved to expedite shipping. After the manufacturer's sales rep failed to call us back, we went to the box store to confront the designer and speed things up. He was out ill. We got another designer involved and also escalated to the special order manager at the store, who was ultimately responsible for our order.

After all this time chasing things down, we were at the end of the first week of August and our second order was due out of manufacturing on the 16th. To expedite shipping to us, we needed the cabinet manufacturer to not load our order onto a container for the slow moving train and ship it by LTL freight carrier. The manufacturer would not do this without an exorbitant payment from us, because "we changed the order."

Going further around and around and having the big box manager get involved with the manufacturer led us to discover that our cabinet order was indeed two separate orders for the two different stain colors. The manager also told us that, indeed, someone had changed the order for the bar and island cabinets. At this point all Ann or I knew for certain it was neither of us who changed the order.

The box store manager looked into the issue and days later finally concluded that the designer made a mistake in the initial order, specifying the wrong door style for the bar and island cabinets. He caught the mistake (thankfully) and submitted the change, but failed to let us know so that we could adjust our schedule. Mistakes happen; we all make them. And better to catch a mistake before manufacturing. But, not keeping the customer in the loop: that's a no-no.

After all the wrangling and unresponsiveness of the big box retailer (and the time it took for the manager to discover that it was indeed his company's error), the long and short of it is that our order was loaded on the slow train to nowhere headed unhurriedly west and there was little we could do to influence the delivery date. 

The manager offered to help us understand the train schedule so that potentially we could pick up the order at the train depot in Washington State and haul it back ourselves to eliminate several days of transportation delay. And he offered us some unspecified monetary compensation once we received the cabinets.

Despite his promise to keep us updated every second business day, by Labor Day, we heard nothing from either the cabinet company or the retailer, despite follow-up calls and emails to both of them. We were pretty much ill-disposed towards the big box retailer at this point.

August: Other Big Parts Arrive

The first of July when we had not heard back from the appliance company, I asked for an ETA on our cooktop and hood, the only new appliances we purchased for this job. Our sales rep told us mid-July for the hood and end of July for the cooktop. Later in the month, he reached out to let us know that the hood was in hand, but that the cooktop would come in on August 12. It actually arrived about the 18th and we went to fetch both pieces in our truck the week following. The delay did not impact our schedule at all, given the ordeal with the cabinets.

The state of the world now is such that there are long lead times for many manufactured goods. A case in point is that it took three and a half months to get our cooktop. I did not order the brand of cooktop that I wanted, or even my second choice, because the manufacturers were quoting deliveries a year out. I guess I am happy that we got ours in such a "short" time.

As for not getting the cooktop that I wanted, I am a retired professional chef and as long as I have a heat source, I can cook. In my career, I have cooked on every kind of heat source imaginable, including a can of Sterno, charcoal hibachi, butane canister stove, microwave, open wood fire, wood stove, electric range, propane camping grill, 1950s natural gas range, and electric induction. The old saw, "It's not the arrow; it's the archer" applies: any decent natural gas cooktop will serve me just fine, and I managed to select one with a pair of 22,000 BTU burners, which is a lot for residential cooking.

The cooktop was bolted to a custom pallet that just barely fit into the bed of my standard pickup. Having worked in a wine warehouse for four years, I have to say that this was the finest constructed pallet that I have ever seen! To minimize storage space in the house, I took the cooktop off the pallet and we carried the cooktop and several small boxes of grates and burner caps into the dining room where we are staging a lot of parts for the upcoming construction.

The Range and Hood Arrived

The steel order that I placed for island supports and the cocktail table base slipped out from the third week of July to mid-August with my consent. Apparently, our small job got pushed out by a large commercial order with a fixed deadline. With lots of slop in the schedule thanks to the cabinet situation, the delay cost us nothing and I agreed to it. We drove out into the county to pick up the table base about the 10th of August.

Cocktail Table Base

August: Resetting the Schedule, Again

In late August, despite assurances from the big box store manager to assist us in expediting the shipping of the second cabinet order, we heard nothing despite repeated voicemails and emails to the manager and cabinet designer. I tried to reach out to the area sales rep for the cabinet company, but he was on vacation.

I finally gave up on dealing with them and gave up any expectations for expedited delivery. Out of desperation, I called the shipping department at the cabinet manufacturer to find out when our second order would normally arrive to get a firm date on which to base our schedule. They told me September 21.

In the absence of any better information, I set about re-doing our schedule. Meanwhile, I got a text from the shipping company moving up our delivery date on the first set of cabinets to September 7th from the 9th. We will have to pull one of the vehicles out of the garage to stage the cabinets and other construction materials for a couple of weeks before we can begin demolition.

Given the September 21 delivery date, first up was a conversation with our contractor who was very understanding through the entire process. Because most of his work is smaller renovations and repair work for realtors, he has a bit more flexibility in his schedule than some contractors. We briefly discussed doing the kitchen in two parts, once when the first set of cabinets arrived and then again when the second set arrived, but that just made no sense to either of us. We quickly discarded that idea, deciding to wait for all the cabinets to arrive on September 21 and then get after it.

The next step was to push out the countertops, yet again. I emailed our sales rep with the countertop company to push back the schedule, but got no response. After several days I called to find out that she "left the company" since our last communication. We all know what "left the company" means. We moved the templating date to October 5 and the installation date to the 14th. That meant that we could not realistically get started with the tiling until Monday the 17th. This collided with a planned trip to Portland for a couple days on the 18th and would ultimately push the completion date out an entire week.

Late August: Ordering the Final Bits

In late August, I ordered the glass shelving for the bar from a local glass shop, the one which back in March replaced four of our windows whose thermal panes had failed. The unit cost on the shelves had nearly doubled since my quote from April!

In speaking with the supplier of the wine refrigerators, I discovered that each so-called 48" double-door unit is really two separate 24" units. That's all well and good in terms of storing the units during construction and moving them into place after the base cabinet is assembled, but there's a catch. Four units means four electrical cords to plug into the wall. We only have a single two-plug outlet in the area of the new bar. Given four units with four compressors, we may have to run a second circuit from the breaker panel to split the load, an expense that we had not budgeted. In fact, we budgeted zero electrician dollars for the bar.

In preparation for building the floating shelves for the kitchen, we went to a local lighting store to look at the various styles of under-counter lighting and how each would impact the design of the shelves. My vision for the three 5-foot long floating shelves to the left of the wall oven/microwave stack was to have lighting under each of the three shelves as well as on the top of the upper shelf.

My vision slammed headfirst into financial reality at the lighting showroom. Most lighting styles such as puck lights and LED strip lights are low voltage, meaning that we would have to stash one or more AC/DC transformers somewhere. Where would that somewhere be with floating shelves? The other option is a mini fluorescent-style (though the bulbs may actually be LED) that runs on AC, exactly what we have under and over the current cabinets, though for some unknown reason, our upper lights do not light.

The transformer issue pretty much ruled out the low-voltage lighting, so we looked at the AC lights and found them to be priced just over $70 a linear foot. Holy crap! $1500 for lights for shelves? That pretty much pushed us to recycling and reusing the fairly ugly fixtures that we already have, even if that means we need to change out a bunch of fluorescent tubes for LED ones.

Because these fixtures are not among the most stylish that you will ever see, we decided not to put them under the top two shelves where they would be easily visible, opting instead to run them on top of the upper shelf, under the bottom shelf, and above the ovens and refrigerator, just as our current lighting is run. To do otherwise would involve a good bit more electrical work and wall repair in running wiring in a finished wall. We are trying to keep the job as cost- and time-efficient as possible. 

Time-efficiency is key for us: going without a kitchen for an extended period is a non-starter. In a former life, I was without a kitchen for about 7 months, feeding two little girls using a tiny microwave and a crockpot and washing dishes in the bathtub. Joy, O rapturous joy that was! Never again!

Given the 3-week ship time quoted by the wine refrigerator supplier, I ordered the wine refrigerators on the last day of August and they shipped on the second of September. The rest of the month of September was given over to getting prepared for construction, covered in the next post.

New Kitchen: Getting Ready for Construction

This post is a part of the series "A New Kitchen for our New House," documenting the semi-frantic couple of weeks leading up to construction.

I started the month of September in the garage reorganizing a few things and clearing up some clutter in preparation for storing the cabinets when they arrive. This also freed up space on my workbench which I will need when I start on the finish carpentry for the new kitchen.

Moving Out of the Kitchen. During August, we started collecting boxes in which to pack the kitchen contents. In the final week of the month, I started moving our wine from the kitchen/family room to the dining room. Since February when we moved in, we have stacked our wine in boxes along the wall where the new bar will go. Early in September, I started moving the kitchen contents little-by-little to the dining room, starting with decorative items and things that we were not likely to need in the three weeks leading up to the start of construction.

Living with Chaos: Dining Room Overtaken for Storage

Ordering Tile and Grout. On the Friday before Labor Day, we got a call from the tile company while we were out running errands. It seems that in the transition from our original sales rep to the new one that our choice of backsplash tile had been lost. Or rather, that two different selections had been recorded, neither of which seemed to make sense to the new sales rep who was tasked with ordering them on our behalf.

Rather than try to decipher the tile situation over the phone, a fool's errand for certain, we dropped by the showroom. Revisiting the showroom was on already on my to-do list, because we also needed to order grout for the tile. Tile choice sorted, Ann selected a medium gray grout to go with the off-white 3x12 subway tiles. We also decided on thickness of grout line, an eighth inch, and this along with a known size of tile let me figure out how we can install backsplash tile below the shelving without having to cut any tiles horizontally. The fewer tiles we need to cut, the faster the job will go.

The visit to the showroom also gave us another chance to look at the granite slab for the island and to remind the new rep where on the slab we wanted to cut the pieces for the island and for the cocktail table. We also went over the edge finishes again with her so that nothing is left up in the air. As a final precaution, when the guys come to measure the new base cabinets for their tops, I will make sure to go over it once again with them.

Floating Shelves. Labor Day weekend, I saw on TV a kitchen with floating shelves in it. For some reason, that prompted me to consider the build-versus-buy equation for the shelving. That is, did it it make sense to purchase floating shelves instead of making them, given the exorbitant cost of and difficulty locating good lumber these days? It proved that we could purchase shelves (including shipping) for less than double my estimated cost of materials. Moreover, buying prebuilt shelving would save me a day in labor and probably two days in finishing.

Considering these factors, Ann and I decided to contract out the shelves, ordering them from a shop in Texas, to be delivered around the 21st of September. I will be able to mount these maple shelves in under an hour and get right to installing the lighting on them. This eliminated about half of the finish carpentry, leaving me only custom building the back side of the island. Still to be determined is if we will leave the shelves natural (just clear coating them), stain them, or paint them.

On Friday the 16th, the end of the week before construction was to start, Ann got an update saying that the shelves would arrive between the 21st and 28th. She got further clarification that they would ship on the 19th. Their arrival time was not critical; they are one of the last things to be installed.

Locating the Island. Ann and I also spent some time in the existing kitchen Labor Day weekend with a tape measure, discussing exactly where to place the new island after we rip out the old one. We determined within a couple of inches in each direction where the island will go. Once we complete demolition, I will make an island template from cardboard and we will move it around the floor until we are happy with it. [Yeah, that never happened!] Factors that will go into the decision of final location are clearance on all four sides, proximity of the primary workstation on the island to the cooktop, keeping repairs to the hardwood floors to a minimum, and location of the pendant lighting above the island.

Glass Shelving. One of the finishing touches for this renovation is the glass shelving above the bar. Because the bar is so massive, 9 and a half feet long, and occupies such a focal spot in our house, I wanted to keep the design feeling as light as possible. So I specified two glass-fronted wall cabinets above the bar, one at either end of the bar, with two floating glass shelves running in between the cabinets. The glass should lighten the visual feel of the bar versus solid cabinet doors and wooden shelving. On September 7, the glass shop called to say that they finished the glass shelves and we went to pick them up.

Wine Refrigerators. The supplier promised us product in 2-3 weeks, but that almost ended up being pure fiction. We had a lot of communication with the trucking company about our wine refrigerators on Friday the 9th. The trucking company texted and emailed to say that the units had arrived from across the country and were ready for delivery and gave us a link to schedule that delivery on-line. When I tried to schedule the delivery on-line, the application indicated that our delivery could not be scheduled on-line, to please call a number at the trucking company. When I called that number, the woman on the other end told me that another department was responsible for scheduling delivery.

Once I was transferred to that number, the woman on that end said she could not schedule the delivery because she didn't have insight into the local delivery depot's schedule and that someone would call me back on Monday to schedule the delivery. Could anything in this process be simple?

Just after I got off the phone, I received another email and text from the trucking company stating that my refrigerator order had just shipped from the warehouse on the East Coast, this time with a brand new order number. I suspected a duplicate shipment, so I emailed the sales rep from whom I purchased the refrigerators. I heard nothing back: if we get duplicate units, not my problem.

After no call back by 3pm on Monday about the refrigerators, Ann and I both started calling trying to find someone who could help schedule the delivery. Late Monday afternoon, a rep finally called me and said that the earliest that they could deliver from Portland, three and a half hours away, was five weeks down the road on October 17. This is a far cry from the "2-3 weeks" the supplier quoted. We were in shock at the incredible (in its true sense of "unbelievable") delay, which I conveyed in no uncertain terms to the person with whom I was speaking.

I asked if I had the option to drive to Portland to pick up the units and after a call back from the trucking company, the answer was yes. Unfortunately, the units were palletized, two per pallet, and it would take me two trips in my pickup truck to fetch the units. I did not see the value in driving fourteen or fifteen hours just to get units that we would have to store during construction. I resigned myself to let the trucking company deliver them on the 17th just as the countertops are set to go in.

Then out of the blue on Thursday the 15th, as I was taking a photo atop Mt. Bachelor just before being clipped onto a zipline, I got a call from some unknown Portland number. I couldn't answer it at the time and don't answer unknown calls in any case. The caller did not leave a message and I forgot about it until the following morning when my phone rang again, a call from the same number. It was from a different shipping company, perhaps a subcontractor to the one I had been dealing with, asking if we could accept the delivery on either Monday or Tuesday. Go figure!

Buying Lumber for the Island. On this same weekend, Ann and I bought the lumber necessary to finish the island and stored it in the family room so that it could acclimate to our house. Unlike the Willamette Valley, Bend, being situated in the high desert, does not seem to have the same issues with humidity, issues that cause lumber to expand, contract, and warp. Still, it is best to be on the safe side and I had plenty of stock to pick through to ensure that the lumber we purchased was already bone dry and straight.

Because we chose not to go with a custom cabinet builder, we had to work within the parameters of what the cabinet company offered and they did not offer anything like what I had designed for the back end of the island. So, I decided to stick-build that portion, which pleases my inner finish carpenter. The piece that I designed extends the 24" deep cabinets back an additional 24", giving a flat island surface that is nominally 48" deep. The actual granite will range from 51 inches deep on the sides to 55 in the middle, the seating side of the granite curving gently and slightly.

The extension will have two legs to take the weight of the granite and a frame around the top that attaches to the back of the island cabinets. Flat pieces of steel will reinforce the frame and help carry the massive piece of stone on top, weighing by my cocktail napkin figuring on the order of 800 pounds. The extension will form a counter height table with one seat on each of the short sides and three seats on the curved back side.

Receiving the Cabinets. On the 6th of September, the day before our first order of cabinets was to arrive, the trucking company called to tell us they would be delivering on the 12th or 13th. They claim to have just one driver for the route into Oregon from the Seattle area and that because of a backlog of cabinets, the driver was in Idaho this week. I worried that we would face a similar issue with our second shipment of cabinets.

In voicing this concern to the box store special order manager and asking him if he had any means to expedite delivery, he raised another potential source of delay that I had not considered. He was concerned that there might also be delays in unloading product from the train cars. While getting our initial order of cabinets a week late is not a problem, a delay in the second order would wreck our schedule once again.

In a seemingly miraculous email, on the 9th of September, the box store manager wrote that our second order of cabinets had been off-loaded and would be delivered at the same time as the first order, on Monday or Tuesday. Yet concerningly enough, we did not hear from the trucking company dispatcher about a delivery window by the close of business on Friday. I was more than a bit surprised to get a text from the shippers on Saturday confirming a 3-7pm delivery window on Monday.

On Monday morning, the trucking company texted me to confirm the delivery window in the afternoon from 3-7pm and the driver called about 3 saying he would arrive about 3:45. I let him know that we were unloading in the alley behind the house directly into the garage. We met him in the alley and started to unload.

Unfortunately, the smoke from the very close and very large Cedar Creek Fire meant that we had to unload the cabinets in pretty miserable conditions. When I awoke on Monday morning, it was as if fog had set in overnight making the neighbor's house across the street hazy, so I knew it was going to be a bad air day. The smoke had thinned a bit by late afternoon, but it was still bad.

About 45 minutes after starting, with me helping the driver and Ann checking off the boxes on the bill of lading, we had a large mass of boxes in our garage, 50 cartons in total. We took a peek in one box for each color cabinet to remind ourselves of the colors that we selected way back in late March or early April. Finally, we had something tangible to see for all our efforts, set backs, and frustrations!

A Garage Full of Cabinets! At Long Last!

New Kitchen: Construction Diary

This post is part of the series "A New Kitchen for our New House," giving a day-by-day account of the demolition and reconstruction over the 6-week course of the project.

On the afternoon of Friday, September the 16th, our contractor, Ken, came by the house to talk things over, a really good thing because he had gone worryingly incommunicado for a couple of weeks, being harriedly busy and being on vacation. We reviewed the kitchen schematics, potential floor repair, electrical and plumbing work, and a few other things. On the spot, he called his electrician and set up a meeting at our house at 8am on Monday to go over our electrical needs. I spent some time on the weekend going through my list of electrical requirements and double-checking the amperage of the refrigeration units and hood exhaust fan.

Monday, September 19: Electrical Works Starts. We met briefly with Ken and Bob (the electrician) early on Monday. Ken left to go to another job while Bob came ready to work, so he started in on the plugs for the refrigerators on the bar wall with an eye to putting in the ceiling fixture boxes above the island after that. We decided while he was working on the bar wall to have him put in an extra plug above the bar for convenience. We hadn't considered that earlier because we had not planned on doing any electrical work on that wall for cost containment. Because the refrigerators forced our hand, it was no big incremental expense to add another plug above the bar.

Bob Adding Plugs for Wine Coolers

New Island Outline; Testing Pendant Placement

Because we had not expected work to happen today, we had not determined the exact location of the island and the pendant fixtures above it. So while Bob worked on the plugs, Ann and I measured out the island and marked it on the floor so that we could figure out placement of the ceiling fixtures. After some playing with the spacing of the light fixtures, Ann and I came to agreement about where they should be positioned.

While Bob finished wiring the plugs and rough patching the holes in the wall, I started in on removing all the baseboard, shoe mouldings, and HVAC toe-kick grilles that I wanted to save for reuse. We expected to start the real demo later in the week and I wanted to store the parts that I want to salvage safely in the garage beforehand.

Before installing the ceiling boxes for the pendants, Bob wanted to have the island removed so that he could access the switch wiring, the current ceiling light switch being mounted on the existing island. He wanted to do the ceiling work on Thursday, his next free day. So after installing the bar outlets he left. I texted Ken to set expectations that we get the demo underway on Wednesday to accommodate Bob's schedule. Ken is super busy and I fear that if I don't squeak, I won't get any grease.

Shortly after Bob left, the trucking company arrived with our wine refrigerators. In another infuriating turn of events, they brought only two of the four units that I ordered. I called and emailed the supplier to discuss. Naturally, I got no response.

Two of Four Wine Coolers Arrived

After the refrigerators were delivered, I finally had a chance to look at my phone. While we were working in the kitchen in the morning, the tile company called and left a voicemail confirming our installation date of October 29. Uh, no! I left a return voicemail reminding them that they had agreed to the 14th, but did not hear back from them.

Tuesday, September 20: Herding Cats. The tile company sales rep returned my voicemail from the day before to say that the earliest they could install would be the 18th of October. We are taking a two-day break in Portland on the 18th and 19th, which is why we scheduled an install date with the manager for the 14th. The sales rep agreed to speak with the manager who was in a meeting at the time of our call. While I was on the phone with her, I confirmed that our backsplash tiles are on order and should arrive this week. She called back later in the afternoon to confirm that our install date is the 14th.

I got a text from Ken saying he would come by on Wednesday to help me demo the island so that the electrician can work on the island lighting and power on Thursday.

Meanwhile, I received no more information from the wine cooler supplier despite my emails and calls, so I called their Customer Service department and entered phone-tree and wait-on-hold hell. Forty minutes later and a transfer to the shipping company, I found that the other two units are en route to California and could be in Portland as early as the beginning of next week. I reiterated my difficulty in getting the first shipment delivered to the house (they quoted five weeks to get the units 150 miles from Portland) and asked that they expedite delivery on the final two units. The rep said she would call back with an estimated delivery date. I would believe that only when she actually called, if ever. She never did.

Wednesday September 21: Demoing the Island. In preparation for demoing the island, I had already removed the trim that I wanted to save, as well as all the outlet covers. While I unboxed the base cabinets for the new island (surprise: the exposed backs are not finished!), Ken and his helper Zach removed the cooktop, downdraft vent, and fan motor.

Ann waited nearby patiently (not an Ann virtue, that patience thing) to take a hammer to the half walls which she had grown to loathe. When she finally got to take a swing, nothing much happened. And after a second and third swing, still nothing but dents in the drywall. Behind the half-inch drywall was a 5/8" sheet of particle board, for what purpose I cannot fathom. She needed my Sawzall rather than a hammer.

The Boss Waiting to Swing a Hammer

Watch Out World!

Ken went in search of a cap for the gas line while Zach and I made good use of the Sawzall in taking out the countertop, base cabinet, and the silly half walls. While we were pulling apart the tall wing wall, I found a hot, uncapped electrical wire hanging in the wall cavity. I had already turned off the breakers, but the thought of fire hazard from live exposed wires hanging in the wall cavity for all these years was frightening.

The island out of the way, we put on our puzzle solving hats to determine how best to repair the floor. Wrangling tongue and groove 5/8" solid oak is no easy matter, especially when the original installers stapled it every foot. It's a very good thing that the prior owners left a spare box of flooring in the garage for this flooring is no longer for sale. Between the new flooring and that which we could salvage from under the new island base cabinets, it took every bit of spare flooring to solve the puzzle. Once we had a plan for patching the floor, I left it mainly to Ken and Zach while I worked on other small stuff.

A Lot of Floor to Patch

Once the floor was repaired, in mid-afternoon, we got to the easy stuff: setting the base cabinets for the island, which took all of five minutes. Fortunately for us, our floors are extremely level.

Floor Repaired; Island Base Cabinets Installed

Thursday September 22: Wiring and Preparing to Skin the Island. First thing Thursday morning, electrician Bob and his twin brother Bill arrived to restore power to the island and to install ceiling boxes for the new island pendants. When repairing the floor, we capped the three circuits supplying the island (pendant light switch, plugs, and cooktop/hood) and pushed them back through the floor into the crawl space.

Bob went under the house to add a couple of junction boxes so that we could send new cables up through the new island. While he was under there, he capped off and boxed the now abandoned wiring for the cooktop. [We would later run that circuit to the exterior wall to power the new hood and cooktop.] Meanwhile Bill pulled down the old pendants and cut in new boxes for the new pendants. Using Bob's laser to transfer my pendant location marks from the floor onto the ceiling was a trip! In the old days, I would have used a plumb bob and it would have taken two people and a long time.

Locating the Island Pendants with a Laser

All the island circuits run, Bob and I played around a bit with the under- and over-cabinet lighting and discovered that although the upper cabinet lights do not light, they do have power, meaning that they probably need new bulbs (or ballasts). I will remove the light fixtures before we start demoing the upper cabinets and figure out what is wrong with each fixture and how best to reuse these lights in the new kitchen.

The electrician twins left after a couple of hours, leaving me two electrical boxes for the island power outlet and the switch for the pendant lights. I designed a false drawer front into the center of the island to hold these two boxes. At some point in the future, I will have cut the holes for the boxes into the false drawer front. Moreover, because the front of the drawer panel has a thin sunken center panel that is slightly narrower than a switch plate, I must trim the switch plates a little bit.

Staying positive against the odds (given the history of our botched cabinet experience), I opened all the trim boxes for the island cabinets in hopes of perhaps finding some hidden skins for the back of the island. Yeah, no dice. There was a lot of trim whose purpose was not immediately obvious to me. I hope to scavenge some of it to trim out the skin on the back of the island, but that will have to wait until we build the new bar, to see what trim is leftover after trimming the bar out.

After the electricians left, I went to the box store to get a sheet of MDF to skin the back of the island. While there, I scored a handful of new switch plate covers for the eventuality that I break one or more when sawing them to size to fit the false drawer front. On the way to the store, I took the false island drawer front by the paint store to have them match the color so that I could paint all the island trim.

While waiting for the paint store to call, Ann and I cut the MDF to size for the back of the island cabinets. Once we have the paint in hand, I will start painting the MDF and all the other trim, at least a couple of coats. The final coat will wait until I have built out the back of the island and patched any exposed nail holes.

Getting ready for painting the parts that will make up the new island extension, I scraped all the caulk and excess paint off the trim that I salvaged as well as pulling all the nails and smoothing out the nail pops. And I draped the new island in dropcloths and set all the trim up on saw horses so I could get right on painting the following morning.

I also took the time to set up my router so that I can cut the dadoes into the island support frame to carry the steel supports that I had machined back in August. From owning a half-dozen routers in my life, it took some doing to find the correct collet wrenches from the pile in my router tool box. The only router that I still own is about 30 years old, but still I have bunches of wrenches for long deceased routers! I haven't done any serious woodwork since before I opened the restaurant, a very long time ago.

Friday September 23: Painting Trim. The morning started off with a text from the wine refrigerator delivery company stating that the other half of our order is ready for delivery. Just like for the two units that have already been delivered, I was unable to schedule delivery on-line and after 45 minutes on the phone and a transfer of offices, I finally got the units scheduled for delivery on Monday the 26th. A text later confirmed a morning delivery window. And then another two texts and two more emails followed confirming the same details: talk about over-communication.

Painting Island Trim in the Kitchen

While I was waiting in on-hold hell with the delivery company, I applied the first coat of paint to all the island trim. More specifically, I only painted the show surfaces, mainly because I wanted to create some mini glue-lam beams out of the 1x2" to carry the weight of the granite. I didn't want any glossy paint on the surfaces to be glued. 

After that, I started pulling down all the over- and under-cabinet lighting so that we can take the wall cabinets down, hopefully on Monday. It turned out that only one fixture had a bad ballast and that fixture was not needed for this job. We did need a few bulbs and although we could make do with the fixtures we had on hand, to make the job really nice, I would need to buy one more 12" fixture for atop the floating shelves. So for the cost of three bulbs and one $40 fixture, we will have lighting. This is a far cry from the $1500 the lighting store wanted to charge; recycling and DIY really do pay off.

After applying another coat of paint to the trim, I called Ken and confirmed that the rest of the kitchen demo was set for Monday, squeaky wheel and all that. And then it was Friday afternoon and time for a beer! On the way out the door, I noticed that the MDF still wasn't as glossy as I wanted, so I added a third coat of paint.

Saturday September 24: Starting the Back of the Island. I hoped to get farther today than I did, but I wasted 90 unproductive minutes wrestling with the neighbor's table saw. Today saw me apply the skin to the back of the island before adding the structural frame for the table section of the island. I had hoped to box the 4x4 legs with 45-degree miter-cut trim so that the box seams would be invisible. Unfortunately, the neighbor's table saw is ancient and apparently the blade has not moved from 0 degrees in forever. Forty-five minutes of wrestling with a wrench on the crankshaft got the blade over to 40 degrees, five short of 45, where it stopped moving altogether.

Island Back Skinned; Structural Framing Done

Frustrated, I gave up on mitering the corners and reset the table saw blade to zero and with Ann's assistance in catching boards, ripped the trim for straight box edges. Oh how I wish for a table saw, and more importantly, room to store it. Boxing the 4x4s is a job for tomorrow.

Sunday September 25: Trimming the Back of the Island. I spent about six or seven hours on Sunday in finishing the trimming and painting of the back of the island, from the photo you see above to the photo you see below. It was a long day of fiddly details, mainly to do with the fact that the base cabinets as delivered from the manufacturer were not super square. I guess craftsmanship is no longer to be expected.

Back of the Island, Trimmed and Painted

Monday September 26: Things Get Real. Today reminded me of the Army: hurry up and wait. I started the morning re-caulking all the joints in the island trim and applying a new coat of paint before Ken showed up. On Friday, his plan was to get Zach started on another job, then come to our house to get started on taking out our remaining cabinets. His estimate was "mid-morning." You already know how this story goes: 9:00 came and went, then 9:30, which became 10, then 11 when FedEx dropped off our floating shelves.

I unboxed the floating shelves and reorganized the family room in preparation for receiving the two new refrigeration units. At 11:15, I got a 30-minute heads-up from the delivery company, but still no Ken. This "contractor time" is a bit annoying, especially as I hauled out of bed way earlier than I wanted to, to put another coat of paint on the island so that I could be out of the way when the real work started.

The Floating Shelves Arrived

The refrigerators arrived at 11:35, the last of the items to be delivered. We still have tile and grout on order, but we'll just run over and pick them up. At 11:45, Ken texted, "Headed your way in a little bit." That little bit turned out to be an hour and Ken arrived solo to start demoing. Handling big cabinets is a two-person job, so I grabbed my tools and we worked for the next two hours, before Ken took off to go to another job site.

Removing the microwave turned out to be fairly simple, but the oven was a true puzzle. I ended up busting the face frame off the cabinet so that we could get enough play to wiggle it out.

There Were Fridge and Ovens on This Wall

Wall Where the New Hood is Going

Tuesday September 27: Unboxing Day. Today, we got a ton of work done, the three of us. Ken and his helper James started in on pulling out the existing base cabinets while I was in the garage unboxing and organizing the new cabinets. It took me four hours to unbox and sort the cabinets during which time, I discovered a bunch of trim pieces and four roll-out drawers that don't really have a home. Worse, I discovered that two cabinets that we planned on being drawer units were manufactured as shelf units. Not only were these cabinets not what we wanted, they required different hardware than we purchased months ago.

I put in a call to the special order manager at the big box store and despite an assurance from someone on his staff that he would call me back "in 15 minutes," he didn't call. There's nothing much to do about it except take it out of their hide in cash. With a 3- to 4-month manufacturing lag, we are committed to these cabinets.

The manager finally did call when I was in the shower after we stopped for the day. He acknowledged the issues and the fact that it is way too late in the game to do anything about it now. He offered $500 compensation which I told him was an insult considering the hassles we have been through. I told him I was expecting a 25-30% discount, which is many times $500. He told me that he would have to take it up to the store manager because that amount exceeded the $500 that he could offer.

New Kitchen Cabinets Unboxed

After lunch, I ran over to the tile store to pick up the backsplash tile and grout, just a wee little half-gallon bucket that I was assured would be sufficient for my small job. I also went back over the plan for cutting the granite slab with the sales rep to make certain that she and I are on the same page.

An emergency phone call from Ann got me home in a hurry: the guys were having a hard time getting the corner cabinet/lazy Susan unit in the house and were talking about unnecessarily taking down a section of fence to come through the French doors on the side of the house. Arriving home as quickly as I could motor across town, I was not sure why this was so hard to figure out in my absence. Immediately, I took the front door off the hinges and the unit came in with minimal difficulty.

All the new cabinets in their rough places in the kitchen, we hauled the old ones out to the garage. Those that are in good condition will go to Habitat for Humanity, the remainder, as much as it pains me, to the dump. In preparation for tomorrow, I got out the big level and found the high spot in the kitchen floor. It was our good fortune that the high spot is in the corner where we want to set the first cabinet. And our good fortune continued in that the floor is only out an 1/8" to a 1/4" in any direction. Compared to working on an old house, this is awesome and for all intents and purposes, nearly flat!

We called it a day with the plan for Ken and me to set the base cabinets tomorrow, which will involve a bit of plumbing at the kitchen sink and some modifications to accommodate the HVAC ducts in the toe-kick.

New Base Cabinets in the Rough New Locations

Wednesday September 28: Setting the Base Cabinets. Installing cabinets is always something of a jigsaw puzzle with a whole lot of problem solving thrown in. For starters, they don't come with instructions and a lot is left to the installer to figure out based on the on-site conditions.

Setting the first cabinet is always the trick to setting cabinets, because it governs the placement of each subsequent cabinet. Yesterday, I found the high spot in the room, which, in an exceeding stroke of good fortune, was the corner in which we wanted to start, making our job easier. We could set that cabinet and shim all the others up to that level. But the first gotcha of the day occurred when we set the corner cabinet in its corner: the corner was definitely fairly badly out of square.

So we left the corner cabinet free floating to focus on setting the cabinets on either side of it parallel to their respective walls. We would shift the three cabinets around to find the best fit before screwing any of them to the wall. The sink cabinet to the left of the corner cabinet took a long time to modify before we could even put it in place. We had to cut access holes for the dishwasher supply and drain, the HVAC grille on the front, the sink waste line, the waste cleanout, and the electrical socket for the garbage disposal.

We had to shut off the water to cut the brazed-on valves off the existing copper water supply lines so that we could push the pipes through the holes in the bottom of the cabinet. We have lived in the house only a few months at this point and I have had no need to find the main water cutoff for the house. After a couple of minutes of searching, I found a ball valve on an inside wall of the garage. Cutting off the water could not have been any simpler, nor was finding a low hose bib outside with which to bleed off the pressure in the lines before cutting them. Naturally, Ann tried to take a shower while we had the water off!

Sink cabinet set in place, Ken reattached the water valves and I turned the water back on so that Ann could shower. He and I continued left along the wall, setting each cabinet and solving each mini-dilemma as it arose. Sometimes we had to cut the flooring, sometimes patch the flooring, sometimes cut and install cleats to hold filler pieces, and so forth.

By the time we got to the two pantry units at the end of the run in the corner opposite where we started, it was clear that the designer had not specified enough filler strips to make it to the wall. We ended up putting the factory-supplied filler strip between the two pantry units. I will go buy a stick of maple 1x4 to scribe in against the last pantry unit and the wall. Fortunately, I had the foresight to ask the designer to order a quart of matching stain with the cabinets. But that does not lessen how pissed I am at his poor effort on this job.

Unfortunately, the pull-out section of the last pantry unit is not functioning as it should. Included in the unit was an 8-page booklet of gibberish pictures (wordless instructions) on the pull-out and an Allen wrench for adjusting it. That will be a future project. [Actually, Ann did something to it to fix it while I was working on other things. Go Annie!]

And then we moved onto the other wall extending to the right of the corner cabinet we installed first. We had to cut the face frame of the oven cabinet both vertically and horizontally to accommodate our oven. I laid the cabinet over on its back, marked the cut out in blue painters tape (pencil lines not being visible on black cabinets) and then cut the openings with a circular saw, finishing the corner cuts with a jigsaw. Maple is hard wood, but it cuts beautifully.

At this point after installing the oven cabinet, we were pretty tired and facing some interesting floor repairs challenges around the oven cabinet and adjacent refrigerator cabinet. The new oven cabinet is three inches less deep than the old one so we will need to repair the floor in front of the oven cabinet. Fortunately, all the repair area is up under the toe kick and will not really be all that visible. We decided to save this work for the next day.

The last thing that Ken and I did was to unpack one of the wine refrigerators and compare its height with the cabinet and end panels for the bar. The refrigerators will just slide into the two openings, but each opening spans four feet which is too far to carry the weight of the stone on top without support. After some puzzling on the problem, I decided to top the cabinets with plywood to carry the weight. I will have to trim the edge of the plywood to match the cabinet faces. More work.

Sink, Corner, and Oven Cabinets

Pantry, Coffee Bar, and Cooktop Cabinets

Thursday September 29: Mission–Bar. In the middle of the night, I awoke with a jolt. Remembering that the new oven cabinet was a few inches less deep than the old one, I had the sudden fear that the new cabinet was not deep enough to accommodate the oven. First thing, I headed downstairs with a tape measure: my fear was real. The designer, even armed with the model number and dimensions for the oven, still ordered the wrong depth cabinet.

I made an emergency run to the box store to grab some maple stock with which to extend the oven cabinet and ran right home to stain it to match. I hoped to be able to get a clear coat on after the stain dried in time not to hold up our day's work. We had planned to start in about 1pm today, as Ken had to spend the morning on another job. I was going to occupy myself by knocking small things off my punch list, which I ended up doing, but obviously, I did not get as much done as I wanted because of the maple crisis.

When Ken arrived, the stain was still drying, meaning that I could not clear coat the maple trim for another hour, so we started in on the bar. Because we figured out all the details about the bar yesterday, it went in very quickly. After all the sawing for the bar was complete, I clear coated the maple trim that I had just stained black. No good to have wet paint on a surface and then create a bunch of sawdust to land on it. We used a hair dryer to speed dry the trim so that we could use it right away.

While Ken was drying the clear coat in the garage, I pulled the oven cabinet off the wall and laid it over in preparation for extending the cabinet to be deep enough to hold our oven. After a bit of mulling about figuring the best way to attach the newly dried trim to the cabinet, we attached it and reset the oven cabinet. Then we set the left refrigerator panel so that I could jigsaw a piece of flooring to set around it. We left the right side for Friday.

On his way out the door, Ken said he would stop in tomorrow after visiting another job site. I took that to mean late in the afternoon on his way home and that we were not going to get much accomplished heading into the weekend. After he left, I trimmed out the plywood on top of the bar, spent 45 minutes cleaning, and 15 minutes putting together a to-do list for Friday.

Bar Base Cabinet, Ready for Stone and Trim

Friday September 30: Our 10th Anniversary–Dealing with Details. With Ken not planning on coming by until late in the day, after coffee Ann and I went down into the kitchen and started working through details: where the bar upper cabinets would be placed, how to trim various cabinets, and placement of knobs and pulls.

Working Out Placement of Bar Upper Cabinets and Shelves

Those issues decided, I started in on trimming the bar and the island. I was just finishing painting the edges of the toe kick cover when Ken pulled up. I stopped working on trim and together, we built the refrigerator cabinet out of two end panels, an upper cabinet, and a whole lot of cleats salvaged from my woodpile. There is a reason I keep a fair amount of scrap on hand; I never know when I will need it.

I helped Ken clamp the upper cabinet in place and then while he screwed the cabinet to the end panels, I fabricated a patch for the floor, the new refrigerator cabinet being a slightly different size than the old one. Our previous refrigerator cabinet was only 29 inches deep; the new one I specified to be a full 32" deep so that when we do replace the current counter-depth refrigerator in the future, we can put in a very deep refrigerator.

At this point, Ken gave me a bill for the previous 10 days, time and materials, and it came in way less than I had budgeted. Of course, I have about 50 hours of sweat equity in the game and those were 50 hours I did not get billed for. Moreover, I supplied most of the lumber, fasteners, and tools for the job.

I wished Ken a good weekend as he took off mid-afternoon and I returned to my trim work. I fully trimmed out the island and the bar base cabinets. The bar uppers will not go on the wall until after we paint. The designer only ordered one 8-foot stick of gray toe kick cover for 9.5 feet of toe kick between the island and the bar. Add that to my list of grievances against him and the whole cabinet affair. I stole the extra from the black toe kick for the rest of the kitchen and painted it gray to match the island.

The last thing I did before heading for the showers to get ready to celebrate our 10th anniversary with a nice dinner out was to cut in the outlet boxes into the false drawer front on the island. That went very smoothly. Then I was on to trimming the outlet covers on the chop saw such that they would fit into the center panel of the drawer front, the center panel being about a quarter inch less wide than the outlet covers. Sawing brittle plastic is tricky and I expected to break one or more, so I picked up several more last week when I was at the store. As it turned out, I only broke one. And with that success, I headed upstairs for a much needed shower.

Progress for Today: Refrigerator Cabinet,
Island Toe Kick, and Electrical Outlets on Island

Saturday October 1: Finishing the Island. Once I installed the plywood on top of the bar cabinet, I knew I should also put plywood on the island to help carry the weight of the granite across the 7-plus foot opening across the back. So after coffee, Ann and I went to the big box store and got some 1x and a sheet of 3/4 CDX to top the bar.

Before I put the top on the bar, I wanted to finish the interior. I wired the light switch and the outlet, installed the center trash cans, and did a whole lot of cleanup of small construction debris from the interior.

Before starting on the top, I painted the the 1x trim and the exposed half of the plywood (the part that can be seen under the overhang). While the paint was drying, I worked on the trim around the pantry cabinets, installed the handle on the bar refrigerator, and a few other small tasks.

Topping the island was straightforward and after caulking and applying a final coat of paint, I was very pleased with the results. I should have designed in the plywood from the get-go. It did not look like I accomplished a lot today, but with the top on the island, the whole space looks so much more like a kitchen and less like a construction zone.

Island Finished and Ready for Granite

Sunday October 2: Prepping for the Electrician. Electrician Bob is supposed to come on Monday to finish up the wiring and so task one today was to unpack the new hood and figure out where it will go on the wall so that we know where to locate the outlet for the exhaust fan. After I unpacked the hood, I made a 3D mock-up out of cardboard to make sure that I can work under it and to sketch its location on the wall.

Task two was to figure out the placement of the three floating shelves above the lazy Susan corner unit. To do this, I pulled a sample of the backsplash tile and used that to determine where the first shelf would be located (above 6 courses of tile). Once I marked the shelf locations on the wall, I located all the studs to make fastening the shelves easy. Alas, there is no regular 16" stud gap going into the corner (it's a 20-inch gap) and we will have to anchor the left end of the shelves with molly bolts. Supporting the 60" shelves are long screws into three studs and a molly bolt. That should be more than enough to carry the considerable weight of all our ceramic plates and bowls.

After that, it was on to trim carpentry. I trimmed out the pantry including cutting and coping the wall scribe strip which I will not install until after we paint the wall. And I trimmed out the refrigerator cabinet which because of the odd shapes of the end panels, required some fancy carpentry and compound miter cuts. In other words, it was slow going. More than that, I did not want to do just yet until Bob gets all the electric done for the hood, cooktop, and garbage disposal on the off chance that he needs me to pull out the base cabinets for access.

Wrapping up my Sunday, I fabricated the supports that we will need to anchor the hood duct chase to the wall and ceiling. And I tucked the door and drawer pulls in each cabinet just so that we could make sure that we have all the hardware that we need. I know that I was fuming the other day about having to order more hardware because a 3-drawer unit was delivered as a shelving unit. But once I distributed the hardware to each cabinet, I found that we have exactly the correct hardware. "How can that be?" Ann and I asked ourselves. And then we remembered that the designer told us in advance that we could not get the drawer units that we wanted. I owe him an apology for calling him a sumbitch on that account. I still have lots of other reasons to take his name in vain.

Hood and a Floating Shelf Support on the Island
Today I Marked Where They Would Go on the Walls

Monday October 3: Moving Along. Bob and brother Bill showed up just before 8 in the morning and I had already been at work for about 15 minutes before they arrived. I trimmed out the low cabinets under the window, a bit of tricky business involving many cutouts especially the one for the HVAC grille, while the electrician brothers set about the task list that I had for them.

They brought power to the exterior wall from the old island cooktop circuit that Bob had capped off in the crawlspace on his second visit. The new circuit powers the cooktop and runs directly up the wall to power the exhaust fan in the hood. Then they removed an outlet and a pre-wireless router Cat5 box (and old phone jack and Ethernet port) behind where the new cooktop will be. Next up, I wanted the garbage disposal switch relocated to the right of the sink. The original location to the left of the sink worked for neither Ann nor me. And finally, I had Bob stub off and box up a bunch of over- and under-cabinet lighting wires that we will not be using in the new kitchen.

Bob was all concerned about hooking up the appliances, installing the pendant and cabinet lights, and a bunch of other small stuff. I don't think he was trying to soak me for billable hours, but I do think that he works with a lot of homeowners who know nothing about electricity. I'm going to do all that simple stuff myself and I don't want to install the pendants until we can patch the ceiling and repaint. Moreover, the shelving is not yet installed on which I want to install the under- and over-light fixtures. Those too will go on the wall post painting.

Bob headed outside to tally up his bill which came in just about where I thought it would, $250 over my original budget, because I had not anticipated having to put new outlets in on the bar wall for the wine coolers. While he was working his calculator, I ran out to the big box store to grab some more lumber for trim (especially for crown moulding backers for the bar) and for making backers for drywall patches, my supply of scrap lumber already having been almost totally used up on this job.

Once I got home, I started in on removing the old messed up drywall where the old slate tile backsplash was removed. Twenty minutes into this, Ken and James pulled up out back with a trailer one-third full of trash from another job. I stopped what I was working on to help them schlep most of the debris that we had stacked alongside the house to the trailer. Most of the unusable detritus from our house on the trailer, they headed to the dump, leaving all the useful cabinets that we could salvage to go to Habitat for Humanity. And a bit more stuff for the next trip to the dump.

I went back to removing drywall. Things look so much nicer with the cruddy looking drywall missing. But now with the wall open behind the new stove, I can see issues with the hood. There is a stud directly in the path of the new exhaust duct to the exterior. And there is an old central vac pipe (the house is central vac ready, but the vacuum unit was never installed) in the way. My Sawzall says this piece of crappy PVC will not be an issue. But we are going to have to open the wall even further than I already have and at a bare minimum, do a little reframing to work around the stud that I have to cut.

And for the last act of my day, I tackled the cooktop cabinet, an empty 39" box, installing the electrical outlet in the back. I wanted to take advantage of all that space in there, so I decided to put a shelf in it. After measuring the height and depth of my largest pots, I put shelf supports in place, those supports salvaged from the old cabinets that we ripped out. I also salvaged a really nice end panel from the old refrigerator cabinet from which I wanted to cut the shelf. I asked Ann to help me hold this very heavy panel while I cut the shelf with my circular saw.

Back inside, I dusted the sawdust off the new shelf and dropped it in place. Ann was looking on and asked the very inciteful question, "Where are you going to store your cutting boards?" She knows that I use a series of colored cutting boards to ensure food safety: red for meat, yellow for poultry, blue for seafood, and green (or wood) for anything that does not need to be cooked. I used to store these boards in a pull-out organizer in a narrow side cabinet in the former island.

That set me to looking to see if I could find that narrow cabinet in the garage and sure enough, it was there. I removed the cutting board organizer from the old cabinet and installed it in the cooktop cabinet. Thank you Annie! And that was all she wrote for Monday the 3rd.

Not a Glamorous Photo, But a Good Synopsis of Today
Electricity, Shelf, and Cutting Board Pull-Out Unit Installed,
Crappy Drywall Removed

Tuesday October 4: Let There Be Light. Ann told me a couple of days ago that when she inspected the glass doors for the bar cabinets, she discovered that one was broken, fractured at a rail-stile joint. My first task today was to take photos and email them to Kraftmaid and get the replacement process started.

My real goal for the day was to install the lighting fixtures above the refrigerator and oven cabinets. Because the refrigerator cabinet is 32" deep and the small cabinets above it are only 24" deep, there is an open gap of 8" behind the refrigerator, right where I wanted to place the light fixtures. I had to build a support structure to carry the light fixtures.

Before contemplating the support structure, however, I had to relocate three wires to their appropriate locations for the new cabinets and shelves. Naturally on this wall, the wall board was screwed over OSB (on an interior wall?!?) so not only did I have to cut drywall, I had to cut OSB as well, just to pull wires down the wall a few inches.

After dealing with the wires, I moved on to the light support. First, I had to ensure that it did not interfere with the placement of the crown moulding, which is still TBD pending getting the walls painted. To make sure the lights fit correctly, I needed first to install crown moulding backer on top of the oven and refrigerator cabinets, a super fiddly feat of carpentry that required a lot more work than it should have.

First up was just figuring out how the crown backer was to be installed: I've never seen anything like it before in my life. That problem solved, to install it, I had to resolve some problems with the cabinets themselves. These cabinets, although very expensive, are not the best fabricated things I have ever seen with protruding glue drips, bowed frames, and even top edges that are off an 1/8" from side to side. That took beaucoup work with a power planer and a hand plane to even things out so that when I go to install the crown moulding, it will go on relatively easily.

The top of the cabinets squared away, the next item was to install the lights. I installed a cleat on the refrigerator side under the crown backer to carry the light bar. Then I cut a stick of 1x4 to run from side to side between the crown backer. Onto this 1x4, I screwed two light fixtures that I salvaged from the old kitchen. I tested everything before I lifted it into place and wired it into the house circuit.

On a roll with the crown backer, I installed it atop the pantry unit and both bar wall cabinets, both of which went a lot more smoothly than the refrigerator/oven cabinets.

Testing the Over-Cabinet Lights by
Wiring Them to an Extension Cord

Light Above the Cabinets

Wednesday October 5: Countertop Templates. I was expecting a guy from the countertop company to come by this afternoon to measure the cabinets for their tops. Instead he called just before 8 and asked if he could come by in the morning. After his call, I found in my email a note from Kraftmaid saying that a replacement for the broken cabinet door was in process and it should arrive via UPS on the 21st! That's a pretty damn good response in my book.

While I was in the middle of finishing the base cabinet trim, the countertop guy arrived, big laser unit in tow. I stopped my trimming to help verify sink dimensions, cooktop dimensions, and edge finishes.

This got me to thinking about the big open box of a sink cabinet and how I am going to support the sink while leaving room for the garbage disposal, drain, and supply lines. It is a problem for another day and kind of a tricky one at that: the bottom of the sink is not flat. Rather, it slopes to the drain hole.

I went back to trimming as the countertop guy whipped out his laser and started taking dimensions of everything. He left after about 20 minutes and I kept on with the base cabinet trim until I finished. The only finish carpentry left on this job is to install the crown moulding and a few scribe strips, both of which I will do post painting.

Noodle: Neighborhood Helper Cat

Our next door neighbors have a sweet tailless black and white female cat that roams the neighborhood and is pretty much the neighborhood mascot. Because I have had the back door and garage open, she has been helping me a lot, both in the house and in the garage, often getting covered (or rolling) in sawdust. Today we found her checking out everything in the dining room and again checking out upstairs.

Thursday October 6: This and That. In anticipation of another run to the dump, I wanted to unpack the wine refrigerators so that their packaging could get on the trailer for the dump. I had unboxed three of four when Ken dropped by with the trailer. I stopped to help them load up the remaining garbage. All that we have left at the house is the set of cabinets bound for Habitat for Humanity.

After Ken left, I went back to attaching the refrigerator handles and discovered that although I ordered two matched sets of left- and right-swing doors, I got three right-swing and one left-swing. So much for competence. I spent 15 minutes flipping one door over and moving the hinges to the opposite side. Not a big deal, but considering what I paid for the units, I shouldn't have to modify them.

Refrigerators Unboxed and Set in Place

I then examined the hood in detail prior to looking for a vent for the exterior wall and the appropriate ducting to run the exhaust line through the house wall. I discovered that I am going to have to flip the motor so that it will vent directly out the back of the unit. As delivered, it is set to blow upward. It looks like an easy enough modification.

I had today earmarked as my errand day to fetch needed supplies. We must repaint three walls and the ceiling because of repairs, so we might as well paint the entire open plan living and kitchen area in the shades that we want. So, first stop was the paint store. Ken gave us 5 gallons of a soft gray wall paint leftover from another job (i.e., already paid for!) that works really well with the black and gray theme of the kitchen. At the paint store, I got a gallon of a slightly darker than the wall paint gray to serve as trim paint, a shade that is between the light gray of the walls and the deep gray of the island and bar cabinets. 

Here's a funny story. Ann has been in charge of all the décor decisions, but in this case, she asked me to pick the trim color. At the paint store, it's all guys, a half a dozen painters and three or four employees. I walk in with my two color samples and ask for a fan deck to choose a trim color between the two. I narrow the trim choice to four options and start to take a survey of the guys in the store. They feel my pain, imagining the consequences of their wives sending them to pick a color, only to arrive home with an unacceptable color. A bunch of "You poor bastard!" comments later and I head out with the color that I thought best. Apparently, it passed muster!

Paint secured, next at the big box store I scored wallboard, drywall mud and tape, a couple 2x6s for reframing the hood wall, an exterior duct for the hood, and a section of duct to go through the wall. While I was away, Ann started moving things out of the family room for the painting that has to happen in the near future.

Back home, I patched some holes in the walls, installed drywall on the floating shelf wall and behind the sink, and put on a first coat of mud. That corner of the kitchen at least is starting to look more finished.

No More Holes in the Wall!

Friday October 7: A Rockin' and a Muddin'. I awoke with twin missions for Friday, neither of which was really a big deal, but both of which really starting bringing a sense of closure to this renovation. I started the day by painting an accent table from the family room along with the three floating shelves from the kitchen in the trim color that I selected yesterday. That didn't so much bring a sense of closure as when I used up the rest of the paint in my roller tray to paint four sections of the built-in shelves on the accent wall in the family room. That bit of color on the walls really helped bring the job home for Ann.

We bought maple shelves (to match our maple cabinets) with the idea that we might leave them natural to add some warmth and diversity to the kitchen. But over the days as we walked around the shelves in the kitchen space, we came to the idea that they should be painted. And then to the ultimate conclusion: that they should be painted in the trim color for all the woodwork in the open plan kitchen-living room.

Ed's Open Air Paint Booth

On any job, things really start to feel more finished when the walls are all closed in. Today was that day. I got all the holes in the walls and ceiling patched and put new drywall up where I had removed the old drywall/backer board for the slate backsplash that we removed during demolition. A second coat of mud on the joints I did yesterday and a first coat of mud on the rest of the joints really started to make the kitchen feel almost done.

Saturday October 8: More Small Stuff. Nothing worthy of a picture happened today. I started the day by patching a hole in the floor, a small crack that was covered by the old trim, but not the new. Then I double-checked the layout of the floating shelves and drilled the mounts in the appropriate locations for the screws and molly bolts that will hold them to the wall.

By this point, I had awakened enough to sand and put a second coat of mud on all the wallboard that I put up yesterday. The section behind the floating shelves is just about ready for orange peel and paint. Oh how I hate dealing with orange peel!

After mudding, I decided to tackle the hood. As delivered, it vented straight up, but for our house, I want it to vent straight back and out. I remember remarking a few days ago that it should be fairly simple to change the motor orientation based on reading the instructions. It turned out that the printed instructions were woefully incomplete and nowhere did it mention that the motor wiring did not have enough play to rotate the motor. A couple of skinned knuckles, a couple of curses, disassembling the wiring, and an hour of screwing around and I was ready to plug it in and give it a test run. Fortunately, it worked like a charm.

At this point, I refined the hood layout on the wall, marking where I need support to screw the hood into wood behind the wall, in preparation for opening the wall, cutting the stud where the exhaust line goes through, and reframing. Then I located all the studs and came up with a framing plan. For my last act of the afternoon, I built two 2x6 header beams to span the gap where we will have to cut the stud. Opening the wall and reframing is a project that will have to wait until I have an extra set of hands.

Sunday October 9: Paint! All areas of the kitchen, except one little section by the pantry were ready to finished after the second coat of drywall mud, which I sanded first thing on Sunday. After this, I sprayed on a coat of orange peel, which for the most part, looked great after a single application. I did have to run to the local hardware store for another can to complete the job. When I arrived back home, I found that the trigger on the can was broken, so back to the hardware store and back home before I could make any more progress.

The walls all looked great, but the ceiling still required a bit more work. Once the walls dried, I got out my paint gear and put a first coat in three of the four areas where I want to hang crown moulding. I greatly prefer to paint before hanging crown: taping and painting around crown is zero fun.

First Coat of Paint, None Behind Future Tile Backsplash

Monday October 10: Getting Ready for Crown Moulding. Today was all about getting a second coat of paint on the bar and floating shelf walls and putting two coats of paint on the pantry wall.

Yesterday, getting ready to paint the ceiling over the bar, I took down the grille for the downstairs air return, located above the left end of the bar. I noticed that it was covered in a lot of grease. If that does not impeach the effectiveness of the prior down draft ventilation, I do not know what will. I could not believe that we had so much grease build-up on a grille at least 10 feet from the stove. It took me a half an hour today with heavy-duty degreaser to clean the grille before rehanging it.

By late afternoon, the wall paint had dried to the point where I felt comfortable installing the crown moulding. I rarely hang crown and have not in 20-some years, so each time, I have to relearn how to think upside down: crown moulding is generally cut with the top down and bottom up to achieve the necessary compound miters. I installed all the crown above the oven, refrigerator, and pantry cabinet; that is, all the crown except for over the bar cabinets which have not yet been hung.

After having removed a bunch of painters tape, I installed the scribe strip on the outside of the pantry. The one on the refrigerator would have to wait until tomorrow when I felt fresher and more ready to cope the bottom of the strip to fit on the base moulding. The inside scribe strips, the ones that meet the counter top, will have to go in after the countertops are installed on Friday.

Look Ma, Crown Moulding!

Tuesday October 11: Floating Shelves Installed. First thing, I got out my coping saw and cut the end of a scribe strip to fit over the base moulding, then installed it to cover the slight gap between the refrigerator cabinet and the wall.

That done, I moved on to installing the top two floating shelves; I'll put the bottom one in after we tile the wall. It will be so much easier to install the tile without that shelf in the way. Then it was on to installing lighting above the top shelf, which took a few minutes of lashing a couple fixtures together and rewiring them a bit.

As I had feared, the salvaged slimline fluorescent fixtures really are too visible from out in the room, so I scavenged some 1x2 scraps from the garage and painted them the shelf color. I installed one as a skirt in front of the top lights and will install the other after I attach the lower lights.

Tackling another project on my to-do list, I built a quick jig from scrap lumber and used it to install the towel bars on either end of the island. Using a jig ensures that both towel bars are in identical locations on each side of the bar.

Progress: Floating Shelves, Lights, and Towel Bars

Wednesday October 12: The Schedule Gets Real. I was waiting for Ken to come give me a hand with a few tasks including reframing the hood wall. Because he has gone silent and has not returned my calls and texts, I decided to plow on without help, in hopes that we could get to tiling on Friday. Today, I took on and conquered the hood wall solo.

The new hood hangs on an exterior wall with an 8" round duct passing through the wall directly to outdoors. If you live a good life and have an abundant store of karma, your 8" round duct will pass directly between two studs and all you have to do is cut a hole in the drywall and poke the duct through the exterior sheathing. In my world, that is a fantasy. In my world, where the duct wants to pass through the wall, you will find a stud, a central vacuum line (the house was plumbed for central vac, but the vac was never installed), and your electrician will have run the power line for the hood directly up the stud that is in the way.

Moreover, when you open up the wall, you will also find a pair of Cat5 wires in the way from the days before wireless routers. We still use one run of Cat5, the one that brings the Internet signal from the street directly to our router in the office where I am sitting typing this, otherwise, these Cat5 wires all over the house (terminating in a box upstairs in the laundry room) are no longer of any use.

The tricks for installing the hood were two-fold: first, remove the offending stud, wiring, and vacuum line; and second, provide solid wood into which to anchor the four mounting screws for the hood. To bridge the span between three studs (the intact stud on either side of the cut stud), I built a couple of 2x6 beams some days ago, probably Sunday, but I sure as hell cannot remember now.

After opening up the wall and removing the electrical line, I cut the stud and sistered two cleats to each of the intact studs on either side of the cut stud. These two cleats would carry the bottom beam, the one that passes below the 8" duct and provides the anchor for the bottom set of fastening screws for the hood.

Then I sistered two more 9-inch cleats on along the studs and on top of the bottom beam to carry the upper beam and set the upper beam in place. The upper beam provided the anchor for the upper set of hood fastening screws.

Opening a Perfectly Good Wall

At this point, I needed to deal with the electrics. I had already removed the outlet for the hood because it was too low to allow the upper beam to pass through. I pushed the outlet box about three inches higher on the wall and because the existing wires were about a foot too short to reroute around the duct, I had to install a junction box on the righthand stud and splice a longer wire to run up to the outlet.

From here, it was a matter of putting the insulation back in and chinking up the gaps with expanding foam insulation. And then the easy part, putting the drywall back on.

Just as I had hung the drywall and just before I was about to tape and mud it, my phone rang. I jumped for it hoping that it was Ken telling me that he was coming by to give me a hand with hanging the upper cabinets, etc. No such luck: it was the countertop people calling to say that they could not make Friday, but could do Monday at 8am. [I later learned that their CNC machine went down and needed repairs. Ouch for them!]

F-word! I had hoped that we were tiling on Friday afternoon. Ken has a hook-up with a couple of tile guys and I had hoped that they were on the schedule for Friday. I called Ken, but no answer, so I texted him. He called me back as I was mudding the hood wall.

Closed Up and Mudded

Long and short: he was not sure his tile guys could help any time in the next two weeks (clearly, having them show up on Friday was always a fantasy). So, realistically, no issue moving countertops to Monday (except that Ann and Ed are going to Portland on Tuesday through Thursday to see Richard Thomas play Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird!).

At this point, I had to nail down the tile or this job would never get done (as it is, I am going to do about 80 percent of the job, but I really don't want to rent a tile saw), so I asked Ken point blank. He hemmed and hawed and I said, "Thursday afternoon." He said, "Friday morning." I said, "Put me on the schedule for Friday morning at 8am. I will cut tiles while you install or vice versa and I will call you Thursday afternoon to confirm. Don't forget to bring a tile saw." He said, "OK."

So the reality of our schedule is that we will not see Ken for another nine days, adding at least a week to the schedule. I was going to have him help paint (he loves painting), help hang the bar cabinets, help cut in the sink, and so forth, but I'm not willing to be without a kitchen for too much longer just because his schedule is overcommitted, so I'm probably going to finish pretty much of the job by myself. I actually think he will be happy that he can concentrate on other jobs.

Thursday October 13: Hanging the Bar Shelving. Today, after giving the drywall mud on the hood wall a quick sand then a second coat, I moved on to the bar shelving. How to hang wall cabinets solo? Build a bench out of scrap lumber. After hanging the wall cabinets, I cut and nailed on the crown moulding, then called Ann in for a consult. Of the four vertical cabinet edges against the wall, three fit nice and snug against the drywall, while the fourth really needed a scribe strip to finish it.

How to Hang a Wall Cabinet Solo

I asked Ann whether to omit scribe strips altogether, add them for the two matching sides of the cabinets, or install them on all four vertical sides. She picked the latter option and in about ten minutes, I had them installed.

Next it was on to playing with the shelving in the cabinets. Kraftmaid supplied three shelves for each cabinet, but I only installed two in each to give us room to store our tall Champagne flutes. After this, I consulted with Ann about where the bottom glass shelf should be between the two wall cabinets and set about installing the two shelves. Once they were up, it was super clear that we really need a third shelf and so I ordered another shelf from the glass company and another set of brackets from Amazon.

The final order of business was to attach the three unbroken doors to the wall cabinets. Hopefully the replacement door and the third glass shelf will arrive in the not terribly distant future.

Starting to Look Like a Bar!

Friday October 14: Cabinet Hardware. The day started with a little drywall sanding (the second mud coat on the hood wall) and a good bit of clean up: cutting down cardboard for recycling, vacuuming, discarding useless scraps of wood, etc. The workspace tidy enough for my liking, I asked Ann to come down from her upstairs lair where she hides away from the construction and consult with me on the placement of the cabinet pulls.

Armed with the appropriate measurements, I headed out back to the chop saw to make a jig for locating the cabinet pulls, of which there are beaucoup. The jigs for the drawer pulls were pretty much one-offs (used for only one cabinet) so I made them out of cardboard as I went around the kitchen clockwise installing the brushed nickel hardware.

Before I installed any hardware, I measured the new sink and the sink cabinet and expanded the factory opening to accommodate our new apron-front sink. I left an 3/16-inch gap all the way around to give the sink a bit of wiggle room. Who can say how accurate the sink cut-out in the countertop will be? We will want to center the sink on the opening in the countertop, hence some wiggle room. After the countertop installers mount the sink centered in the opening in the stone, I will hide any gaps between the sink and the cabinet with scribe strips.

Today's Progress: Sink Cut-Out and Cabinet Hardware

Saturday October 15: Appliance Day. After cleaning up more stuff and moving unneeded trim lumber to the garage in preparation for painting, I set about patching some nail holes in the pantry, an easy task to start my day.

Now that there was no more drywall to sand and drywall dust to clog air filters, I started in on the appliances, refrigerator first. It looked so weird to no longer have the refrigerator standing in the family room. I guess we got used to it being there over the course of the past three weeks. And in fact, the next three trips to the refrigerator, I turned the wrong way.

Next up, I started in on the wine refrigerators, which I had set in place earlier, but had not plugged in, waiting for the drywall to be complete. I soon discovered that the units had vertically-oriented flat plugs, two of which would not fit in the same outlet box because one plug would cover both outlets. Ann and I went to the big box store (mainly, I needed more painters tape) to look at replacement plugs that would work.

While I was mulling over the selection of plugs, Ann picked up a 3-to-1 outlet adapter and asked, "Would this work?" I replied, "That is brilliant!" The adapter would let me move one of the plugs to the side so that they would both fit in the outlet box. Back home, I got all the units fully unpacked, plugged in, positioned correctly in the cabinets, and leveled.

Ann's Brilliant Solution to Making 2 Flat Plugs Work
in the Same Outlet

Next up was the built-in microwave. Unfortunately, I was out in the garage unboxing cabinets when Ken pulled it out of the wall and I was having a little difficulty understanding how to put it back. Fortunately, an anal former owner recorded the model and serial number of the microwave (not on the unit anywhere) on the owner's manual which got passed down to us when we bought the house.

That bit of information let me download the installation manual from the GE web site to confirm how to install it in the cabinet and how big the cut-out needed to be. Based on the face frame, it appeared that the unit would fit into the factory-supplied cabinet opening as-is. However, on closer inspection, I could see that there was an additional vent on the top of the unit that would prevent this. I measured the unit to come up with an opening size and verified that in the installation manual. Enlarging the hole was straightforward enough, but I sure wish that I had cut it when the oven cabinet was flat on its back when I cut the hole for the oven.

Next on my list was adjusting all the cabinet doors; most were out of alignment. Adjustments on modern cabinet hinges are super easy. You can move them in three directions (up-down, left-right, and in-out) with the turn of a screw, unless the screws are maxed out. In the case of three doors, I had to take them off and drill new lower holes for the hinges because at the factory, they installed the doors way too high. WTF! I paid a fortune for these cabinets and the manufacturer cannot install the doors in the appropriate location using a standard jig?

And that pretty much eliminated every job that is not plumbing (Ken is a plumber) that could be done before the countertops are installed. So, next it was on to painting and I started cutting in around all the ceiling light fixtures and speakers. I had hoped that the surrounds on the canister lights would pop out of the ceiling so that I could just paint around them in a breeze with my roller. No such luck: the surrounds were not coming off the ceiling. In painting around them tediously with a brush, I could see that everyone who has painted the ceiling before has cut them in with a brush. Just my luck. After two-and-a-half hours of painting above my head, I threw in the towel.

Today in a Nutshell: Appliances and Paint Cutting-in

Sunday October 16: MutherEffing Paint. Today, I painted; that is all. Seven non-stop hours, three gallons, a roll of blue tape, all walls and ceilings have a first coat, how fun.

Monday October 17: Ann's Vision Comes Together–Countertops! At about ten minutes before 8am, the countertop installers arrived and proceeded to start installing the counters. Like anything in construction, there were challenges to overcome.

Even though I had left wiggle room for the sink to move to fit the opening in the countertop, we still needed to open the left side of the cabinet about another 1/8" to get the alignment perfect with the single L-shaped countertop piece that runs from the oven cabinet around the corner, across the sink and dishwasher to the edge of the stove. I cannot believe that they cut this from a single sheet of manufactured quartz!

The low cabinet top under the windows, the bar top, and the island top all went in without issue. On the other hand, it became clear late morning that the guys were saving the cooktop for last (we knew that it would be a complicated cut-out based on looking at the cooktop). And then it dawned on me that not only was it complicated, but based on lots of calls back and forth to the shop, they were short the thin sliver of stone on which the left edge of the cooktop was to rest.

Mike and Joe with the Big Island Slab

While the guys went back to the shop at lunch to fetch the newly fabricated piece of stone for the cooktop, I put the scribe strips in the corners above the countertop and along the sink. I was the process of putting the remaining shoe moulding to the left of the bar when they returned with the missing piece of stone.

We held a three-way back-and-forth conversation among us to figure out what the cut-out on the stone and the front of the cooktop should be. I did not even attempt to cut the cooktop opening into the face frame of the stove cabinet by myself; I feared that it would depend in part on the way the countertop was cut. The exact nature of the cut-out would not become clear until we got the countertop in place and could test fit the stove.

Three of us with three different tape measures verified the measurements over and over because once the cutting started, there was no turning back, no opportunity for a do-over. It turned out perfectly. The old adage came to mind: measure 21 times, cut once.

After caulking all the seams and sealing the granite, they headed back to the shop yet again to get the cocktail table top which they told me was still a work-in-progress when they first arrived. And they returned to the house just as I was typing the period on the previous sentence. 

They dropped the granite on the frame and Mike applied sealer to it, which really brought out the swirls in the stone. The back of the granite (the island granite too) is covered in a rubberized mat which combined with the weight of the slab was enough to hold the table top on the frame without glue. Not gluing the slab gives us the option of more easily moving the table in the future, should that become necessary.

It Looks Like a Kitchen!

Ann and I had a fun day today and all-in-all, I did next to nothing, just some final bits of trim carpentry. We really enjoyed working with Mike and Joe. They really take pride in what they do. And now, really for the first time, Ann and I were able to look around the kitchen and see Ann's wonderful vision come to life.

Tuesday-Thursday October 18-20: Hiatus in Portland. Tuesday morning, we left for a 2-night stay in Portland to see Richard Thomas as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a wonderful break after having been head down in this renovation for a month. When we got back on Thursday, I put a second coat of paint on the ceiling and walls.

Friday October 21: Small Stuff. The plan on Monday before we left for Portland was for Ken and me to tile the kitchen on Friday, but when I texted him on Thursday afternoon, I didn't hear from him. He showed up at the house late in the afternoon as I was painting and said that he was super-delayed on another project, but would bring the tile saw by Friday afternoon and we would get set up for tiling on Monday morning. Breaking that news to Ann was not the highlight of my day!

That left me to deal with a few small projects. While we were away, the replacement cabinet door and the hardware for the third glass bar shelf arrived, so I installed those. The big project for the day was to hang the pendant lights, which came with enough chain to hang from a 20-foot ceiling! It took 45 minutes to get one hung to the point where we could move it up and down to determine exactly where it should hang to provide enough light, to not be in anyone's eyes while sitting at the bar, and to give the best sight lines into the family room. After that, hanging the second fixture took all of five minutes.

And then there was nothing left but to paint, so I started in by removing the blinds in the kitchen and painting those window frames. Before calling it a day, I ended up totally painting the left-hand built-in shelving unit in the family room.

Today: Lights, Cabinet Door, Window Trim

Saturday October 22: Miles of Blue Tape. Save for the things that I need Ken's help with next week, there is literally nothing left to do but paint. Today was trim day: all the windows, both built-ins, and all the base mouldings. All that is left on the paint is some touch up tomorrow and to rehang the window blinds.

I Live to Tape and Paint Trim! Not!

Sunday October 23: Touch-Ups and Clean Up. Today was a taking-back of our living room. I touched up the paint all the way around and removed wads and wads of blue painters tape. After lots of cleaning, sweeping, folding up drop cloths, and cutting up masses of cardboard, we could start to see outlines of our living room. We hung a large poster on the bar wall along with three mirrors that Ann had purchased months ago just for today. I staged boxes of tile for tiling tomorrow. For the first time in weeks, our space looks more like living space than construction site.

Taking Back our Living Space

Monday October 24: Tile! Hurry up and wait was the order of the day with Ken not arriving until 10am or after. In unpacking the tile, we discovered that each end of each tile had been coated with a bit of hard, waxy substance, ostensibly to prevent the tiles scraping each other during transport. O joy! While Ken got the tile saw set up, I started scraping the waxy stuff off of each and every tile using a wood shim for a non-marring scraper. I've never seen this done before and I hope never to encounter such tile again!

Scraping Tile, Not on my To-Do List Today

During the day, there was little that I could do to assist Ken in tiling, so I contented myself with small stuff such as repairing scratches in the flooring, putting the burners and grates on the stove, neatening up mess in the garage, and cutting down still more cardboard. Ken got about halfway done with the tile before he had to leave for the day, with the assurance that he would be a little earlier tomorrow.

Ken at Work

Stove Put Together with Optional Cast Iron Wok Ring

Tuesday October 25: Hurry Up and Wait Some More. I woke up at 4am with a start and the sudden realization that the hole in the drywall that I left for the exhaust fan was not wide enough. Although I had left plenty of room for an 8" round duct to go through the wall, I had failed to remember that there are some odd-shaped flanges on the duct outlet from the hood that are a good bit wider than 8". So, at 7:45, I made a cardboard template of the back of the hood, taped it to the wall, and traced the outline on the wall.

In fact, I did need to trim a bit more drywall to either side and it would be much better to do it before we put tile over an area that needs to be open. And, in the process of examining the hood in detail, I discovered four screws on the back side that protrude 3/8" proud of the back, four screws that would not let us mount the hood flush to the wall. To account for those screws, we will not tile the area where they protrude and that will give us enough clearance for the hood to mount flush to the wall. A mini-nightmare that woke me in the night saved us a lot of heartache in the near future.

My Nightmare Come to Life

Already working before 8, I watched the clock: 8:30 came, then 9:00, then 10:00, and still no Ken. I was out in the garage working on some or another task when he popped in around 10:30. He had a dental emergency, a tooth pulled, which I could see by the swelling on his face and hear by his slurred speech from the anesthetic. Just as we had got things set up for the day, he had to run over to the drug store for pain meds, which should have taken 15-20 minutes, but he still wasn't back an hour later. In the meanwhile, I built a stand for Ann's Oregon cork display from scrap crown moulding.

Playing Games with Scrap Crown Moulding

A few minutes later, he came in. His truck had run out of gas and he had to call someone to come and get him. I could have picked him up and he did call me, but I never heard the phone ring because I was doing a lot of sawing. When I saw the missed call, I figured it was either a butt dial or not urgent because there was no voice mail or text message. Doh!

He got to setting tile while I cut some of the partial pieces, but it was clear that whatever narcotic that he had just picked up and taken was kicking in. Standing up on counter tops and running a saw are not things to be done under the influence. With my urging, he left fairly quickly after that, having only set a handful of tiles.

Meanwhile, I had asked Ann to run to the paint store to get paint color-matched to the black cabinets (actually, a very dark charcoal rather than jet black). The paint was for the mantel. I had hoped that the deep, deep chocolate existing color might pass muster, but I was informed a few days back that it would not. I spent 20 minutes scuffing the mantel to lessen the slick clear coat on it, so that the new charcoal paint would better adhere. Twenty more minutes elapsed as I taped the outline. It took another twenty minutes to cut it in with a brush, and just three to finish the first coat with a roller. Like many paint jobs, the vast majority of the time is spent in prep and only a relative minority in the actual painting.

Mantel and Hearth Now Charcoal, No Longer Chocolate

Ann's frustration level is mounting extremely high. She wants her kitchen back and it is dragging further out. I understand it and am frustrated that a 6-hour tile job is now heading into day three, but I seem to cope better. I should have rented a tile saw and done it myself. Lesson learned.

Wednesday October 26: Tile is Finished. I started the day putting a second coat of paint on the mantel and hearth and had just finished cleaning my brush when Ken arrived, in a much, much rosier frame of mind than yesterday. We started right in on the tile with him setting the tile while I was in the garage cutting the tiles. By lunch time, 90 percent of the tile was complete, with just a few tiles left under the low window, the trickiest tiles of the day, the area being only 2-1/2 tiles tall with two outlets in the middle.

While Ken was at lunch, I pulled spacers and cleaned off excess mortar to get ready to grout from the oven to the dishwasher. While I was cleaning tiles, I found two that needed to be replaced, both cut around wall outlets under the floating shelves. One was just not adhered to the wall, while the other was fractured where it had been cut around the outlet. I cut and replaced both tiles before Ken got back.

While Ken floated grout on the wall, I moved some pictures for Ann, cleaned up some more cardboard, and tossed all the tile scraps from the morning's cutting. It became super clear right away that we did not have enough grout to finish the job. In fact, we only had enough grout to finish about half the job. I remember questioning that when I picked the grout up at the tile company. I specifically asked if the half gallon of grout was sufficient to grout my entire 52-square foot project and was told yes.

Naturally, the grout that Ann chose is a special order color that they call silver but it has a slight metallic flake to it. It sounds weird but looks really good on the wall. Several phone calls later back and forth, I was told that it would arrive Friday morning.

Tile Fully Installed and One-Third Grouted

Thursday October 27: A Little Grout, A Little Set-up for Tomorrow. Yesterday, knowing that we are short by half on grout, we made a plan to grout behind the hood today so that we can hang the hood tomorrow. Ken showed up and used up all the grout in house in about a half an hour. Meanwhile, I was out in the garage getting set up to trim out the hood flue chase and finding everything that we would need to install the hood tomorrow (self-tapping screws, duct tape, bug screen, caulk, tin snips). We were done by 11am, a very short day.

We had a talk about schedule before Ken left and it goes thus: hang the hood and finish the grout on Friday, put in the gas line and plumbing on Monday. Do I really think it will go to plan? Has anything gone to plan on this job?

In the afternoon, I went to the big box store and got some remote-controlled battery-operated puck lights to install on the bar. It could not have been simpler to get nice looking light on the bar.

Lights on the Bar

Friday October 28: Ken o'clock. Ken's plan was to hang the hood starting at 9am while waiting for the grout to arrive at some point after 10, whenever the truck rolled into town. Naturally, Ken arrived at some point after 10:30, which we termed "Ken o'clock" for his perpetually optimistic ETAs. I had already marked out the location of the screw holes for the hood on the tile with my Sharpie while I was waiting for him. Good news: the top two screws can go through a grout line. We will only have to drill tile for the bottom two screws.

When he arrived, we installed the hood quite quickly. I only cut myself once on sharp sheet metal as I was trimming the duct that runs between the hood and the vent on the exterior wall. Ken left for another job right after he and I shoved the oven back into its compartment; it was simply too heavy and bulky for me to manipulate on my own.

The oven needed a shim between the door and face plate to lift the face plate high enough to cover the cut-out in the cabinet. I didn't want to use wood near an oven door with its potentially high temperatures, so I ran to the big box store to get a piece of aluminum stock for a shim and a can of denatured alcohol to remove the excess epoxy grout from the countertops.

Just as I was putting my shopping list together, the tile store called to let me know that the grout was in so I was able to pick that up on my way back from the big box store. Naturally, as soon as I got back home, the glass store called to say that the third shelf was complete. I asked Ann if she would go get that as I was in the middle of finishing the hood installation. She did.

I spent the rest of the afternoon installing the flue cover on the hood and trimming it out at the ceiling with crown moulding. Wouldn't you know that the ceiling drops nearly half an inch from level in first ten inches from the wall? The crown moulding, so simple on paper, was fairly tricky as a result with my having to fudge all the angles. Once all was assembled, I put a bead of clear caulk along all the seams where the hood met the tile or crown moulding. Then I spent a long time peeling the protective wrap off the hood and the grease baffles; that stuff does not want to peel off. Finally, I put in the third glass shelf over the bar.

We Have a Hood!

And so it is that we are heading into our final weekend without a kitchen. Monday, the sink and dishwasher get plumbed and maybe the gas line for the stove, but I feel like that's going to be a Tuesday thing with Ken's overcommitted schedule. I need his plumbing expertise for the gas line. The remaining grout will get done somewhere in there and then all that's left is for me to touch up paint, hang the last floating shelf and wire its light, clean really well, take care of the scratches in the floor, and move back in. We're getting close!

Final Glass Shelf Arrived Today

Saturday and Sunday October 29 and 30: Clean up, Move in, Stock up. All the construction and mess-creating activities save a bit of grout work are complete and so it was time to tackle some final things such as putting the outlets and switches back in their boxes, paint touch-ups, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

We moved all our glassware into the cabinets, wine into the coolers, and a bunch of decorative stuff into the room as well. Naturally, Ann had me relocate a bunch of wall hangings that I had just hung in the last few days. The end result was beautiful, but getting there was frustrating to me. I don't like to put holes in freshly painted walls just to patch and repaint them. But after 10 years of marriage, though I grouse about it, I am used to if not resigned to her decorating process. She obsesses over the décor details as much as I do about the finish carpentry details.

As a final touch for the weekend, I went to the grocery store for the first real shopping in six weeks. Real food is in the offing! And we have friends coming over Wednesday evening for dinner, kitchen ready or not.

Moving Wine into the Coolers

Monday October 31: Happy Halloween! We Have a Kitchen! Please pardon my pessimism on Friday in thinking that the sink and stove would not be plumbed today. I was wrong, thankfully! Ann and I had a bet on what time would be Ken o'clock today. She had 9:20 and I had 10:15. He pretty much split the difference.

Ken finished grouting while I was working on little bits of this and that, helping Ann move furniture in the dining room, hanging pictures, cleaning, and so forth. When he moved over to connect the sink and dishwasher, I helped a bit. But it's mostly a one-person job, so I was out in the garage starting in on trying to get it clear enough for Ann to park her car in there for the first time in nearly two months. The forecast is for snow and rain for the balance of this week and I really did not want to have to scrape her windows, motivation enough to get the garage sorted.

No Longer a Storeroom, our Dining Room is Unearthed,
Ann Reorganized it as Well

Once the sink was in, Ken and I put our brains together on the bits and pieces we would need to run the gas line and hook in the new pressure regulator. We could have used the old one, but I am not sure if they are sized to the stove, so better to use the one that was delivered with the stove. It took us a while and a couple of trips to the local hardware store to collect all the bits we needed to run the gas line.

While Ken worked on the line below the floor in the crawlspace, I strapped it into the cabinet in the kitchen and notched out the cabinet shelf to fit around the gas line. Then it was time for the big reveal, so I turned a knob: a whole lot of nothing! After a couple of minutes of concern and triple checking the valve on the gas line in the cabinet below the cooktop and not smelling any gas at all when trying to light the burners, we concluded the issue must have been at the gas meter. Apparently, our meter is a bit finnicky about having the valve open just so, but once Ken got it in the right place, I heard the gas come rushing through the lines and at last, we had fire!

After Ken left, I spent hours cutting down and relocating cardboard in the garage so that Ann could park her car and then I touched up all the wall paint over the tile and elsewhere throughout the room in preparation for hanging the final floating shelf tomorrow.

We Have Gas and Water!

Tuesday November 1: Cleaning Up and Moving In. We had friends coming over for dinner on the 2nd, whether or not the kitchen was ready. I hung the final floating shelf and wired the lights underneath it. And then Ann and I spent the entire day cleaning and then trying to find a place for everything that was displaced during the renovation. There are still little tasks to be completed, but we celebrated having a functional kitchen with biscuits and gravy. I made the biscuits while Ann made the gravy. We went to bed mentally and physically exhausted, but also with a good sense of "Look what we accomplished!"

Celebratory First Meal: Biscuits and Gravy