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!