Damn near back to normal
Today, one month to the day since I took out the last of the kitchen cabinets, we once again have a functioning kitchen. Well, almost.
Since my last post here
- The wood floors have all gone in. Bellawood Brazilian Cherry, 3/8-inch thick solid wood. The installer did a good job. Not perfect, a couple of spots where I'd have liked the boards to be fitted more tightly together, but a good job.
- We've moved the furniture into the library although there's work to be done in there. That includes two wing chairs that came back from the upholstery shop last week.
- We've moved what furniture we have into the living room. The big couch and big oversized huge armchair are still off at the upholstery shop.
- The granite countertops went in day before yesterday. Turns out the stone place had released the slabs but they had not been sold. So the stone and tile guy was able to get them and do all the fabrication. The guy does great work. There are two angles, one on the bar and one on the main counter, where the granite is in two pieces. They did a great job of minimizing the appearance of the seams.
- With the countertops in and the kitchen sink installed it was time for a plumber. So the kitchen sink and dishwasher are now functional.
- I installed the powder room vanity and sink. It's a funky modern thing. Like a table with a bowl on it and a faucet that belongs in a modern art museum. I thought about plumbing that in myself but the stock PVC pieces from the local big box home improvement warehouses didn't quite handle the spacing. So that went to the plumber too. Ditto the toilet reinstall in the powder room.
- The former owners had installed a whole house water softener but had never maintained it. So it was worse than useless. I had switched it to bypass the day after moving in. The plumber removed it. The owner of the plumbing company is a friend from church. Good thing, even after the discount he gave us the bill was ... surprising. We kept one of his guys occupied for the entire day but still...
- The garage has been fully unpacked. Still more work to do out there. I've cut but not installed pegboard for behind the former-kitchen-now-workbench countertop. Before I put it in I'll run some surface wiring down to where we want the freezer.
- The new range arrived today. Mrs. Geek called and asked "do you want the good news or the bad news". She thought the range didn't fit in its space. That touched off a flurry of phone calls (countertop guy: "can that granite come off?", cabinet person: "you put 'em too close together, you're going to have to come fix this!"). When I got home and had a look, though, it slid right in. Absolutely zero space but that's fine according to the book. There's actually a little less than an eighth of an inch on each side except for where the cabinet fronts stick out on each side. So the space is exactly to the 30-inch spec it should be.
From there on it's all DIY stuff. The gas range isn't hooked up and didn't come with a flex hose to do it. I've got some finishing details in the powder room. There are two spots in the kitchen where I'll do trim pieces where cabinets meet the wall (should have caught that when the installers were here but at least I have a big piece of "universal filler" that matches the cabinets). I'm on the hook to design and build shelves in the library and to box in for a window seat. After that it will be new baseboards, crown molding, and shoe molding in there. The final stuff in the garage is still on my to-do list. As is fixing some trim outside above the garage door. Mrs. Geek still has a ton of painting to do. Touch up and trim downstairs. Stairway, laundry room and master bedroom upstairs. And then there's hanging artwork and whatnot on the walls all over the place.
We're thinking about another three to four weeks and the place will be presentable.
But tomorrow, for the first time in a month, the coffeepot will be fired up down in the kitchen instead of on my bathroom counter. And I'll be able to make a capuccino! Woo hoo!
