Kitchen in Use

Just one more shot to show that it all worked out in the end.

We've moved in!

Merlin the painter was here Monday through Thursday.  The island countertop was due Tuesday, then Wednesday, and arrived mid-day Thursday.  Thursday evening, Sue Clyde helped us move the fridge from the dining room to the kitchen (and to switch the door from opening from the left to opening from the right).  Friday Jamie the tiler worked all day with great care and diligence; with luck the tiling will be finished on Tuesday.  Saturday, Sue came over with her son Nic, and they helped us move into the kitchen (and return the dining room to it's usual layout).  Also, Bill from Kitchen Technician workd for several hours on Saturday installing knobs and pulls; we're short a few of those, and there are another few things that have yet to be done with the cabinets, but they are getting close and should be taken care of in the coming week.  Similarly, we hope to get the stove hood installed by the end of the week.  But for now we're just going to enjoy having this spectacular space and lay out a serious Thanksgiving meal.

There's so much light from the window and the sun tunnels that it is hard to take a good photo.

Moira and her friend Adelaide (and Sandy) grace the Good Room.

We have achieved functionality (but the fridge is still in the dining room)

Yahoo.  Another week of major strides!

Bill cuts a hole for an outlet on the island.

Greg installs the laminate countertop.

Electrician John takes a call (perhaps from his Masseratti) while plumber Rob stands by.





Bill ascends.

Friday 30 September 2011 we cooked!

Cabinets and other delightful things!

What a week of progress!  Merlin arrived at 7 Monday morning and flashed up a quick coat of wengai.



The magician at work.

 Then, a bit later that morning, the muscle from Kitchen Technician showed up with the cabinets.

By and by we had a lot of cabinets sitting around. 

At a civilized hour, master installer Bill arrived, and over the course of the week he installed all of the cabinets.  Yahoo!



Bill's drill.

Bill has a very clever device for putting and holding the upper cabinets in place:  left and right sides raise independently, and it also moves right/left and front/back.



Is this gorgeous or what?  The uppers are maple, the lowers alder.

Meanwhile, Duncan got all of the floorboard and quarter-round cut, with the former installed and the latter sitting in place so that it can be painted and then nailed in. 

And Zeke designed and built doors for the new washer/dryer closet.

Not painted yet, obviously, but Merlin did come by and paint the inside of the closet.  The W/D are scheduled to be delivered on Wednesday.  Will be nice having in-house laundry!

The countertop is also scheduled for Wednesday.  It could possibly work out that by next Friday we have those ever-popular kitchen luxuries known as the sink and the stove.  Heck, maybe we'll even move the fridge out of the dining room, and the dishwasher out of the living room.  Won't recognize the place!

We're still struggling with decisions about the tile for the backsplash, some of the lights, and knobs.  Ah, to have such challenges!

Surging forward

Some real progress this week on several fronts.

Merlin and assistant get 'er done.

What the sun tunnels look like from the outside.

Moira and I sketched a plan for the bookshelves with masking tape.

Zeke's version looks even better than the masking tape.

The plan is for Merlin to be here at o'dark thirty tomorrow (Monday) morning to put on the first coat of paint.  A bit later in the morning, the cabinets are to beging to arrive.  Getting them installed will take most of the week.  We hope to have countertops by the beginning of next week.  Then the final plumbing and electrical work can get going -- and those shouldn't take too long.  So hoping to be able to cook in the kitchen in two weeks.

Paul Fudge restores our floors

In one of the smoother parts of the reno so far, Paul Fudge restored our fir floors.  He came when he said he would, did what he said he would do in the time he said it would take, and charged what he had said he would charge.  In short, a hero.

There had been no fir flooring where the walls were.  Also, years ago I took up the multiple layers of flooring that had been installed in the old kitchen, but of course I hadn't done that for the parts of the floor that were under cabinets and I also didn't take up the layers of flooring from the pantry.  So the floors were a mess.

Paul started by taking up almost all of the existing flooring, leaving only a narrow hallway of floorboards running from the old back door to the dining room doorway.  He cut off and discarded all of the bits with old flooring on them and any that were damaged.

Then, mixing our old fir with fir of a similiar vintage, cut, and amount of wear, he re-laid the tongue-and-groove fir.  The device he's using above knocks the pieces together then fires long thin brads that nail them together.

I was struck by the rambunctiousness of the sanding paper.

I suspect this sander has quite a few miles under its belt.

Viola!  The floors look terrific. 

Zeke then carefully wrapped the entire floor in brown paper, as though for shipping parcel post.

The taping/mudding/sanding are also done, as is the exterior trim, and Merlin the painter and an assistant are expected at o'dark thirty tomorrow morning (Monday 12 Sept) to start the painting.  If all goes as currently planned, the cabinets will start arriving a week from tomorrow.

After the Fall

The Adventure Goes On (and On)





Bug condo under the old study window -- Paul says it's a wasp nest.



 
The first week of August, Moira, my sister Karen, our friend Bonnie Leadbeater, and I spent a week on Pender Island.  Bonnie and our friend Dave Hultsch (who lives on Pender) were walking around Roe Lake when my cell phone rang and I foolisly answered.  It was our contractor, calling to let me know that he had discovered that the main beam of the house was not directly below the main wall of house.  Rather, the beam was quite a few inches to the west.  That's no problem with a bearing wall, but with bearing points on either side of a wide archway (as we are to have between kitchen and good room) it is a major issue.  We had retained experts from Hoel Engineering LTD to develop a plan for supporting the archway.  The plan they produced was based on the assumption that the main beam of the house was directly below the main wall.  That is, they did not MEASURE the location of the beam, they just ASSUMED it lined up with the wall.  We were subsequently charged for an additional visit by the Hoel engineer (Richie Smith) to fix this problem.  He insists that Hoel had no responsibility for determining the relationship between the posts, the beam, and the archway.  I would have thought that was a central part of a structural engineer's responsibility in this situation.  A reno is a learning opportunity.

Extra-wide post in the basement.

Arch between kitchen-to-be and good-room-to-be.



The windows are in and look great:

South-facing window; eventually the sink will be in front of this.

West-facing window in the good room.

The doors, built by Westeck, are gorgeous.

South-facing doors.

Unfortunately they were delivered without a handset, so no way to lock them.  Paul Brownsey, the salesman from Westeck, told us to buy a standard 2 3/8 offset handset, so we shopped at two places and bought one, but it didn't remotely fit. I took photos of how the door had been milled for a handset on my phone and showed them to the lock geeks at Prices Locks.  They were all agog that such a non-standard set-up would be delivered without a handset.  It took a week to get the required handset from Westeck, during which time the security of our house was severely compromised.  But, as I said, they are gorgeous.

The sun tunnels are amazing.  They are 14" metal tubes with highly reflective inner surfaces that seem to amplify the light.  Way cool!

The diffuser on each tunnel softens the light.

Zeke did all of the insulating in two or three days.  The place feels much more cosey and sound.

Up goes the sheet rock (check out cool apparatus for holding it up).

Most if not all of the sheet rock should be in place by Monday 29 August.  Mudding and taping and sanding of the joints, and then on Wednesday the floorers are scheduled to come in to take up and re-lay the fir flooring (filling ruined parts with new used fir).  Then painting.  When we started we had hoped to be finished by now, but in the current plan the cabinets arrive on 19 September.  So it looks like another 5 weeks of reno adventure.