Colorado Springs: Florissant Fossil Beds

On Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, Ann and I drove downtown to try out a highly regarded coffee house which proved to have both mediocre coffee and mediocre food, quite the disappointment after coffee on two previous mornings at Switchback Coffee Roasters. Over breakfast, Ann and I surfed the web for something to do and stumbled across Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument a few miles west of town. Why not, right? You only live once and it sounded like a road less traveled to us, something that we appreciate: seeing things that other visitors might skip.

We started climbing northwest out of town on US 24 up past Pike's Peak before striking almost due west at Woodland Park before continuing on nearly to the town of Florissant, where the park is located. We did not know that the Visitors Center was closed for repairs, which a ranger told us when we knocked on the door, trying to pay our entry fee, our annual pass left behind at home in my pickup. "Enjoy the park, no fee today!" he told us.

With the park situated smack in the middle of the montane zone at about 8500 feet of elevation and being mainly an upland grassland punctuated here and there with Ponderosa Pines and Aspens, we really expected to see a lot of animals grazing in the early morning sunlight, far from civilization. We were disappointed on the day to see only a Red Squirrel and a ground squirrel, along with a mere handful of birds. On the other hand, the scenery was gorgeous as we hiked around the park, going in and out of the trees and fields.

Interior Steller's Jay with White Eyelid Not Found
on our Coastal Steller's

We weren't sure what to expect at this fossil beds, but it turned out, it is not a barren rocky place at all where one can nose about looking for fossils. The main attraction here, the considerable beauty of the upland grasslands aside, is the petrified stumps of ancient sequoias, redwoods that no longer inhabit the planet. It appears that most have been discovered by tiny bits protruding through the soil and then excavated to reveal more of the stumps. The stumps were buried and ultimately preserved by an ancient pyroclastic flow, a massive lahar.

Three Petrified Sequoia affinis Stumps, Growing
Around Base Stump of Mother Tree

Unsure What This Handsome Plant Is

Prostrate Common Juniper Growing Beneath Ponderosas

Pike's Peak Through the Pines

Photogenic Ponderosa Snag

Unknown Plant

The Grasslands, Bordered by Ponderosa Pines, Studded Randomly
with Barren Patches of Shrubby Cinquefoil, Dasiphora fruticosa 

Over and over as we walked through the park, we would remark to each other that the local Ponderosa Pines do not look like ours back on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, where they grow straight and tall with massive bare trunks topped by a crown of branches. Here at 8500 feet where the winters are surely much worse than ours, the trees are much closer to the ground and much more rounded, less majestic as it were, but still quite striking trees.

These Ponderosas Look Odd to Us

I guess you'd say that the prime attraction Florissant is what is called the Big Stump, a petrified sequoia stump about 12 feet (3.5 meters) in diameter. It still bears a couple of broken off saw blades from an ill-advised attempt to transport the stump to the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago in the days before the stumps were protected. Scientists estimate that this tree would have been about 70 meters high, reaching above the little hillock in front of which the tree grew.

The "Big Stump"

Broken Off Saw Blade

Big Stump from a Distance;
The 70-Meter Tree Would Have Towered Over This Hillock

Crystal Peak (9547 feet) in Distance Beyond
Grasslands of Buffalo and Blue Grama Grass

Buffalo Grass, Bouteloua dactyloides

Badger Mountains, left; Crystal Peak, right

Crossing the road from the visitors center and starting to climb the hill opposite afforded me the up-close opportunity to see the local granite, called Pike's Peak granite, a coarse-grained pink granite that we would see the following day on the peak itself. I saw a couple of ground squirrels scurrying in and out of these rocks as I climbed to the top to take in the view, not having to worry about rattlesnakes in the cold of November.

An Outcrop of Pike's Peak Granite

Side View of Granite Bluff

Typical Coloration of Pike's Peak Granite

Stand of Mature Aspens

Quite a Large Aspen for This Environment

Mount Pisgah to the South

Badger Mountain, left, and the Tarryall Mountains

Up on the Hill

Typical Ponderosa Form Here, Quite Alien to Us

Pygmy Nuthatches, Most Commonly Seen Birds

After spending a few hours walking around on this cold morning in the warm sun, we headed back into Colorado Springs to find a beer and some lunch. We would stop at a so-called brewery that we saw on our way out of town for a crappy beer that we left unfinished on the bar. From there we went down the street to Cerberus Brewing, where the head brewer Troy took pity on our plight, offering us taste after taste of his delicious beers. After a couple of hazies and some lunch, we returned to our B&B for a few hours. Later in the evening, we met the kids at Phantom Canyon brewing for dinner, where we had OK food and a crappy beer apiece. The quality of beer in Colorado Springs is not on average what we are used to back home in Bend.

Colorado Springs: Pike's Peak

On Friday night, we drove into Colorado Springs from the north with the sun setting just as we reached the southern outskirts of Denver. In the dark, we really couldn't see Pike's Peak very well, so our first real view came Saturday morning when we awoke and drove to a local coffee shop.

Although the peak was a constant presence just 12 miles west of town, it never really awed us. Because of our proximity to the peak, we could get no sense for how really big and prominent it is, even though it sits 8000 feet above town. The peak is at 14,000 feet; Colorado Springs at its feet is roughly 6000 feet.

By contrast, our big Cascade mountains are 20-plus miles distant, with only a 6000-foot prominence above the landscape around them, 10,000-foot peaks rising above the 4000-foot general elevation. These Cascade peaks look very impressive by contrast with Pike's Peak. Why is that?

It was not until Thanksgiving Day, when we headed 30 miles east of Colorado Springs in an aborted attempt to hike Paint Mines Interpretive Park, that we could get enough perspective on Pike's Peak to see how truly massive it is. In town, we were just too close to appreciate the mountain. [Aside: Paint Mines is a gorgeous badlands where the local tribes harvested a variety of colors of clay with which to decorate their pottery. When we arrived, it was 25 degrees and squalling snow with 40mph winds: a no-go for hiking.]

In Oregon, we have impressive peaks, but most are in the 9-10,000-foot range with only Mt. Hood exceeding 11,000 feet. The chance to go up one of the myriad of Colorado fourteeners was too much to resist. The highest peak I had been on is Baldy Mountain in New Mexico at about 12,500 feet, a peak I hiked when I was a teenager. To put Pike's Peak in its place in Colorado, it ranks only 20th in elevation!

Hiking Pike's Peak would be an incredible experience if we lived in Colorado and could do it in the summer, but there's no way we would do it in the winter. That left two options for going up: driving up the road on which the famous Pike's Peak Hill Climb auto race is held or taking the cog train from Manitou Springs up to the top. I cannot navigate endless switchbacks in a car and still enjoy the view and Ann and I love train travel, so our choice for going to the top was a no-brainer.

Enter the Manitou and Pike's Peak Cog Railway. The day before Thanksgiving, we booked seats on the 8:41am train in an effort to get up the mountain before the hordes of visitors. The depot is in the town of Manitou Springs, just a 10-minute drive from our B&B in west Colorado Springs. Manitou Springs is an extraordinarily touristy town shoehorned into a very narrow mountain valley à la Gatlinburg, Tennessee, not our cup of tea. Because of the narrow valley, parking is a huge challenge at the railway depot and all the better reason to take an early train.

Pseudo-Bavarian Depot; Swiss Rolling Stock

Impressive Almost Brand New Rotary Snow Plow

Toothed Rack in Middle of Standard Gauge Rails

Cog rails, while fairly common in the Alps, are not at all common here in the US. I believe there are three and I have seen one in action from a distance on Mount Washington, New Hampshire. With only one other cog rail here in the US, this was a rare opportunity to see one up close and to ride it.

Normal friction locomotives lose their traction at roughly a 10% grade, so they are not useful for steep tracks such as this one which averages 12% and tops out at around 25% on Son of Gun Hill. We noticed that this grade made it really hard to stand up during transit; unsecured objects on the uphill seats fell to the floor on the steep bits.

To combat the grade and loss of friction, cog locomotives operate on a rack and pinion system. The rack is a toothed rail fastened to the railroad ties in between the two normal rails. The drive shafts of the motive stock have pinions (cogs) whose teeth positively engage the teeth on the rack and drag the train up the hill (or going down, retard the train to a safe speed).

Geared Up for Cold Weather, Settling in for 70-Minute Ride

The Selfie Queen in Action

How Astoundingly Beautiful is This Woman?

At the depot, when we departed, the temperature was in the low- to mid-20s and who knows how cold up at the summit. We came dressed for cold weather and we were not disappointed. On the way up, we saw several creeks and waterfalls that were totally frozen over. The water in the creeks is rushing so fast in the steeper sections that we could see it flying down the hill under the surface ice.

Check out How Steep This Grade Is

Almagre Mountain

First View of the Real Rockies

Above Tree Line (11,500 Feet); Austerely Beautiful

Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mine,
An Active Open Pit Mine Worth Untold Billions

As we neared the rocky summit of Pike's Peak, I had hoped we might see some Bighorns, but I figured the odds were against us. But as I looked off to the left, I spied the unmistakable white rump and horns of a large ram. I had already snapped off a half a dozen photos before most of the people in the train caught on. Better still, on the way back down, we were treated to a terribly short glimpse of a group of perhaps 8-10 rams, ewes, and lambs on the uphill side of the train.

At 13,700 Feet, a Bighorn Ram

On the Summit, Our Swiss-Made Train Idling

We finally pulled to a stop on the summit after a very smooth ride up. I'm not sure why I expected a cog rail to be more jittery as the pinions on the drive wheels engaged the rack between the rails, but the entire ride was as smooth as friction rail, despite the crazy grade of the tracks.

I also expected it to be really cold on the summit, but I really had no idea how bitter it would be. Departing the train, Ann and I immediately bundled up against the cold and for the moment, the cold seemed bearable. We did not realize, however, that the passenger platform was on the east side of the summit in the fairly calm lee of the hill.

As we climbed the few feet to the actual summit, we emerged from the lee and were blasted head-on by constant 40-mph winds with gusts even higher. At times, it would take all my strength leaning far into the wind to make any headway towards the western and most scenic side of the hill.

One quick tour of the hilltop was all we could manage before we had to seek shelter inside the Visitors Center. I would eventually make three more 5-minute forays outside during our hour on the summit, but longer than that in the wind was too brutal to bear. You remember my washing the windshield in 8F temperatures barehanded back in Wyoming: mere child's play!

I really like cold weather and don't often get cold. If you ever see me with a down jacket on, you know that it is very cold. If you ever see me in a beanie with the hood of my down jacket up, the cold will be brutal. Had I not had an indoor shelter into which I could retreat, I would have had my buff up around my mouth and nose. I cannot think of any prior time where I have been colder than on the top of Pikes Peak. I really needed a windproof lower layer.

Cold AF

The views from up top were astounding. I am told that you can see all the way across Colorado to the east on a clear day, all the way to Nebraska and Kansas, and I believe it. The views of the Rockies to our west were incredible to the point that the photos do them no justice. Even with my camera focal length at minimum of 18mm, I could only shoot about a third of the mountains in view. This was a time that I would have loved to have a super wide angle 14mm lens. Anybody got a spare $2000?

Colorado Springs, Garden of the Gods in Center of Photo

Looking at all the Fourteeners to the West

Back to the Ferocious Wind, Look at Fibers on Pom-pom

Braving the Cold for a Single Photo

I was curious at one point about how accurate the elevation app is on my phone. To be able to use the phone, I had to go inside where I could take off my gloves, so I estimate that I was about 15-20 feet below the actual summit. That would make this app plus or minus 15 feet, not too bad.

I have to say that I did truly feel the effects of altitude. They say that at 14,000 feet you only get 60% of the oxygen that you get at sea level and I don't doubt that. I did feel a bit lightheaded at times, a little dizzy at others, and in the oddest sensation, when I was walking from one point on the summit to another, I felt more like I was gliding, rather than walking. It was quite the experience.

The train ride back down to the station was truly uneventful. By contrast to the summit, it felt positively hot down in Manitou Springs at about 40 degrees. We saw several kids at the depot waiting to take the train up. What is notable about this is that they were wearing shorts and their idiot parents let them do it.

I am so glad that we took the train to the top of Pike's Peak. It was surely a high point, pun intended, of our trip to Colorado Springs and well worth the investment of both time and money.

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!