PhotonStopper

Appliance garage with upper cabinet is slid into place – the final piece!

The guys from A&G arrived bright and early and immediately set about multiple operations in our house. Dan installed electrical outlets flanking our kitchen range, John started in on moulding, and Al assisted with moulding and installation of the final cabinet unit. That last unit was second only in size, I think, to the pantry … it’s the appliance garage with two-door cabinet above, and all one piece! Al and Dan slid it from its huge shipping carton, prepped it for installation, and slid it into place. Once fastened into position the garage/cabinet completed installation of the new kitchen cabinet suite. The garage was last because it had to wait for installation of the countertop — it sits directly upon it! The garage door has a wonderful, tensioned, parallelogram action meaning one pulls out and up to open it and the door rises parallel to the upper cabinets and does not swing out. The mechanism prevents slams both during opening and closing and is brilliantly designed!

Dan installs bar-pull style handles on doors and drawers.

Dan installed all of the bar-pull style handles on the cabinet doors and drawers. The hardware is solid stainless and has a soft finish, just reflective enough to pick up color from the surrounding wood. Interestingly, we think the handles are a beautiful accent to the design complimenting the cabinets without calling much attention to themselves.

John installed most of the new moulding including tough fits.

Outside of the kitchen, trim and shoe moulding were added, completing the flooring project. Most of the moulding went up rapidly but there were those bothersome little spaces that needed a lot of measurement and attention. The finished product really looks great but, where it meets the original woodwork, calls attention to the fact that the old stuff is just too, well, ordinary. We’re also gonna need to repaint all of the walls. {ugh}

End of Day 9 – All Cabinetry is in Its Place

If the shipment comes in as promised this evening, the kitchen will see backsplash tile put into place. There will be one day of waiting as the tile adhesive sets. On Friday, the tile is to receive grout. The tile will really finish the project and, for the first time since we’ve lived in this place, the kitchen will have beautiful walls and will practically be a showplace.

It’s getting hard to continue the project’s numbering scheme. After the first week, many of the work days have not been contiguous and sometimes not entire days. So today’s “day” number is somewhat arbitrary. I don’t really care because, whatever day it is, plumbing was connected in the kitchen!

For the first time since the project began we have a fully-functional kitchen. Al, of A&G Home Improvement, came in with his associate Dan to connect our plumbing and we are most appreciative of their Saturday afternoon efforts!

With the new countertop in place and the sink installed, the two attached the garbage disposal, drain pipes, the wonderful new faucet, and connected the dish washer. Everything’s working now — hurrah! We can stop using paper and plastic dishes, won’t dry our hands washing, and can cook real food. Al & Co. will return on Tuesday to install the trim moulding for the new floors, the one remaining cabinet unit, and on Wednesday will put up the glass tile backsplash. Once grouted (next Friday) the project should be complete! Now the condo will be worth way more than we could possibly sell it for. These improvements, however, are for us.

Sorry! No pictures today but what was done, while it was good work, is largely that “invisible” stuff that counts for so much but wasn’t very photogenic.

Countertop end-piece is slid (pounded) into position.

We’ll call Thursday, November 29, “Day 8” though there has been a period of inactivity that — given our living circumstances — probably ought to be added to the day-ticker! We won’t gripe too much, however, as the Cambria countertop arrived and was installed. Installation was quite a process. We have three countertop areas: two flank the kitchen range, and one forms an ell around the far corner of the kitchen and holds the sink. The two smaller finished pieces were, essentially, just brought into the house by the installers, set in place, and adhered to the tops of the cabinets. The ell, however, was another matter. The main expanse of Cambria arrived in two pieces with one solid piece running across the far end of the room, the other covers the right-hand base cabinets; the two butt on a miter. Cambria is heavy stuff looking and feeling like polished granite.

The sink section of countertop is positioned.

The two men of the installation crew muscled the first piece into place then, with the first piece tilted up slightly to allow the tight fit, eased in the larger section and lowered both to the cabinet tops.

Vacuum joiner device holds the two pieces together for bonding.

They used a special vacuum-secured device (as seen on TV) to, first, create a gap along the mitered ends. Then they added a bit of adhesive and used the vacuum machine (it looked like some sort of brain transplant device from a cheap sci-fi movie) to press the pieces together and hold them tight as the adhesive cured. The installer adjusted for level and repeatedly felt along the seam to assure the surfaces matched perfectly as possible.

Adhesive bead is run along all of the edges.

While the joining was taking place, the crew ran a bead of silicone adhesive along the underside of the countertop where the Cambria rested on the base cabinets. Special color-matched material was pushed into the space where the ends of the countertop touched cabinet walls. The big, dark-colored sink was raised from inside the base cabinet, adhesive added, then wooden braces installed to secure it in its subsurface-mount position.

Countertop is completed!

I’m leaving out a bunch of steps that made this a good installation; it was fairly intense. The process took a couple of hours and the results are splendid, though the place smelled like a chemical plant: resin and adhesive odors were so strong I opened the house to 37-degree (F) air to stop my eyes from watering!

Looking good? Hmmm…. needs tile! Hardware, too!

Funny thing: the cabinets look great, the countertop looks great, why am I not thinking the whole thing looks great? Ah! Whereas the cardboard we had covered the base cabinets with was crude, the Cambria is perfect and that draws attention to the terrible walls! Backsplash tile cannot come too soon, though we’ll have to wait til Wednesday!

The painted trim moulding sits atop a pair of empty bookshelves awaiting installation.

Things have been crawling along this week as we all await the delivery of our Cambria quartz countertop. While we’re waiting, She Who Must Be Obeyed has nearly moved all her gear into the kitchen. Every available cabinet and drawer seems now to be occupied, a bit early I think, as the handles are yet to be installed! I can barely find anything now and, without handles on the drawers and doors, it’s difficult searching for whatever it is I need. We’re muddling through, however, even hand-washing all of the reusable dishes and flatware — something we’ve not done on a regular basis in years. More challenging, perhaps, is the fact that there is no running water and no sink on the main floor so dishwashing is done in a tub within the basement utility sink! I made pasta last night and had to carry a big pot of nearly-boiling, pasta-filled water to the basement for draining. Pasta and I made it through just fine. I have been keeping busy painting baseboard trim and shoe moulding that will be used to complete the flooring portion of our remodel. That, too, is challenging as it’s hard to find places to lay out the pieces that are up to about 15 feet in length for painting, then storage. I solved part of the problem by using boxes and bits of flooring to suspend the moulding above the paper-protected floor while painting. The wide trim pieces are now being stored atop two empty bookcases in the living room, awaiting installation. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the painted shoe moulding. We’re hoping the crew will return this Friday and install the moulding, finishing the floors. The countertop is expected in around the end of this week, beginning of next. This project, if completed in early December, will have taken fully six months from the time we ordered cabinets to completion. Seems longer than that.

Shoe moulding laid out for painting in our “former” living room.