It's like magic

I left at 7am for work on Friday. The sheet rock was up, plain and sheet rocky. I came home Friday from work, the sheet rock had texture, the plastic around the laundry closet/refrigerator area was gone and I could see straight outside instead of through cloudy plastic. The kitchen looked bigger, but it took me a while to realize it was because the refrigerator itself had been pushed into the hole designed for it. It really feels like magic, I go to work and come home to a home that is different, poof, what money and labor can do.

We have our kitchen back for a couple more weeks before the counters are torn out and it becomes not so usable for a while. The kids don't even seem to realize that anything is different, they just ride their bike through the plastic doors and over the bumps of the protective floor covering as if it's just a new obstacle. Hatie keeps asking where Thomas (the Foreman) is and Olivia smiles at everyone who comes in the door.

Peter wanted me to write about the "green" stuff we are doing, so here goes:

A busy day all around

It's been a busy day:

• Peter met a new client
• Jen went back to work for the first time in two months
• Peter dropped off lots of "junk" at Goodwill
  
• Jen worked all evening at back-to-school night
  
• Peter fed Willa successfully twice (yea!)
  
• Olivia peed in the potty on command
• Peter consulted with our GC on yet more custom cabinet engineering plan details
• Peter watched our dining room and laundry closet go from open framing to drywall and 'mudded'
• Hatie & Olivia actually slept through banging and drilling and vacuuming in the next room
  
• Olivia said a six-word sentence
• Peter picked up a new LED pendant light for the new counter space (looks nice!)
  
• Peter worked 5 hours
• took some great videos of Olivia's cuteness
• The kids all went to the zoo
  

Olivia is still sick and coughing, though she is sleeping much better as of last night.  Willa is at about the same stage.  Hatie so far has pretty much avoided the ick, fortunately.  She doesn't nap a preschool, though, so she sleeps a lot when she is home or else she gets totally out of control.

Tomorrow I've got all the kids all day alone, so let's hope Willa eats well.  The guys will be doing more drywall work - hopefully everything will be nice and neat before the weekend starts.  it may actually look like a room again! (albeit an unpainted one).  And our fridge actually will be shoved into it's intended space, too, so we'll have more room to maneuver.  More pictures of the construction to come soon.  Now it's back to work...

Kitchen Remodel: Days 9-13 - slowing down a bit

Wednesday - Sunday, September 23-27, 2009

Wow, quite a lengthy session Thursday morning poring through the cabinet engineering drawing that we got last night.  We spent almost two hours with Seth going through almost every measurement to verify it.  We did catch a few mistakes and a few issues that we hadn't considered, and made a few changes as well.  Hopefully they all make sense to Nandi et. al. at Rivendell and they'll get updated drawings back to us soon that we like.

The latter half of this week has been slower than previous days.  Had a plumber spend a couple hours here Friday fixing a crack in the clothes washer pipe that was created during demo, and re-running the dryer gas and fridge water lines.  Friday was a ocst-cutting day for Berkeley, so the inspection services were closed, so we'll have to schedule on Monday an electrical inspection hopefully for Tuesday.  Then they can start drywalling on Wednesday.  Critical path is still the cabinets, so we're expecting to finalize those ASAP.

I want to put in a ventilation system for the media cabinet, but am having a hard time figuring out whether I can realistically spend a couple hundred bucks for vents and fans and have it work well enough, or if I have to buy something upscale like this, which costs several hundred bucks.  The local upscale audio store recommended the expensive one (of course), but it looks like their markup is way high.  I think I'm going to go for the good solution, but get it online for almost half the price.  This is something that is moveable, too, so conceivably if it continues to work for a long time I could use it elsewhere after a second-floor remodel or something like that.

We're trying to make a final decision on the dining room lamp, and have lots of options.  I'll have Jen post the links.  We are also eagerly awaiting the arrival of our outdoor heaters - hopefully Monday.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 8

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Today was another electrical work day.  Not a lot of exciting things to report on that front.  Wiring the appropriate circuits for the new clothes washer & dryer, putting the new switches into the walls, etc.

We need to decide on our counter backsplash, though, so Jen and I spent an hour at the tile shop, actually called "Tile Shop".  We hadn't really thought much about how the backsplash would look, so we were kind of starting from scratch.  Here's a few ideas that we liked.

Smaller tiles might look fancier but are multiples more expensive, and as Jen found out earlier, recycled "greener" options are double (or more) the expensive prices, so it's not so easy to go green.  We took some of these samples home and will consider it.  This place stocks most everything and seems to be where the larger contractors shop, so we feel comfortable putting off our decision for a little while.  We'll meet with the tile setter later this week to help us out with some practical issues, such as "What goes on top?"  These designs all have their own bullnose or rounded edge solutions that will have to be incorporated into the design.  Grout color, too, we'll have to pick out.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 7

Monday, September 21, 2009

Today was a later start: 9am.  Thomas called in sick.  Though he was worried he would give our kids his cold, we told him it was probably more likely that our kids gave it to him.  In any case, Seth appeared in his place this morning along with the first construction visit from the electricians, headed by Jim Hiatt of Hiatt Electric.  I though this might be a dull morning, but we needed to discuss a bunch of things before they could start to make sure we were all clear.  Ideally, of course, all this would have been perfect on the plans already, and some was, but some things we decided to change later.

Kitchen Remodel: Days 5-6 - the first weekend

Saturday & Sunday, September 19 & 20, 2009

Well, we survived the first week intact.  Lots of destruction and noise and disruption, but really it wasn't so bad.  It was fun, in fact.  So far we're having a pretty good experience.  We really think we've chosen the right GC.  They've been quite personable and easy to work with, which, as we thought, would be pretty valuable when we are all in the same space all day long.

Now our place is a torn up mess, but thye've still kept it liveable.  I think the kids are liking the larger open space already!  We're even still eating on our dining room table, though that is going to stop now.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 4

Friday, September 18th

This was mostly a cleanup day from the previous day's destruction.  Made some holes bigger, cleaned things out, patched up some ragged edges, etc.  The big event for us was the appearance of our cabinetmakers from Rivendell.  Kanda is a classic cabinetmaker and Nandi, his son, is a whiz at the measuring software, so they were measuring and graphing on the fly.

Kitchen Remodel: Day 3

Thursday, September 17th

This was the big demolishing day.  The wall separating the kitchen and dining room was completely removed, and the laundry space was gutted.  Lots or loud banging, cutting, sawing, etc. all day long.  The guys were wearing masks, but did a great job with their plastic walls of keeping the extra dust and debris under control.  It was exciting to see it all come down so quickly.  The aftermath was quite spectacular:

Kitchen Remodel: Day 2

Today (Wednesday, September 16th) Thomas returned and went at it full-bore.  He and his assistant ripped and sawed and tore at things all day long.  We needed to get the cabinetry dismantled and the fridge moved out of the way before the wall could be demolished.  Also, there was shelving in the laundry closet to be removed.  Some of this material will hopefully be reused, and some will be sold to Urban Ore, a well-known store for previously used material.  (We bought a slab there once for 30 bucks or so that we still use as our desktop.)

Things moved along quite quickly, and it was all I could to to keep from recording the whole thing on video.  At 9:30 or so they started removing the fridge,

Kitchen Remodel: Day 1

On Tuesday, September 15th Thomas (our foreman) started at 8am.  The critical path for the project is the custom cabinet manufacturing, so we needed to get the kit/dr wall torn down as quickly as possible so that we could measure for the cabinets that were to be underneath the new peninsula countertop.  The first task was getting the built-in cabinet un-built-in.  This was also, from our perspective, the trickiest.  If it didn't come out in one piece, or was too damaged in the process, we probably would end up scrapping it, which would be a shame.  We really wanted to keep this part of the original house.  Not only would it keep the house in character and retain the original house pieces, it also would be quite a handy and beautiful piece of furniture.

Countertop selection

We're going to replace our existing tile countertops, and also add a raised "bar" above the countertop along the dining room side of the new peninsula.  Our tile countertops looked great when they were new, but with the tiny tiles there is so much grout that it is impossible to keep clean in a busy kitchen.  Especially around the sink, it is now permanently moldy.  We've read that with tile counters, you should re-seal them regularly, and we think for us that probably means several times a year.  That's just not going to happen (and hasn't more than a couple times in 5.5 years) and it probably only prolongs the inevitable anyway.  The tile also has gotten chipped along the edges fairly often, so it's starting to look pretty beat up, too.  Ultimately, it's just not working for us, and as long as we'll have to get a new countertop for the new peninsula portion, we've opted to replace the whole thing rather than duplicate what we have (or have 1/3 of the counter different from the rest - ugh).

Kitchen Remodel: Day 0

We got started Monday September 14th.  That morning we signed the contract with Seth Melchert, owner/gc of Master Builders, and that afternoon they started laying down protection for our floors, plastic sheeting to cordon off work areas, etc.  Since we are going to continue living here and cooking food in the kitchen throughout, one significant concern when choosing a general contractor was their ability to work intimately with us.

Before they started work, we recorded some videos to create a walkthrough of what was to be done.  Last month (actually, on the morning of the day Willa was born) we bought Jen a new MacBook Pro, partly so that we would have a decent multimedia laptop.  I decided to try my hand at making a video with iMovie of our walkthrough, so here it is.  (It' also my first upload to youtube.)

Kitchen Remodel Kickoff

OK, I've finally convinced myself to start blogging.  Hopefully this will turn out to be fun and rewarding for me, the extended family, and anyone else interested in our ramblings about our family.  And I'll be able to keep it up.  We'll see.  I'm kinda learning how blogger works now, so hopefully these posts will improve soon.

Anyway, without further delay, on to our kitchen/dining room remodel!  That's what y'all want to see now, I know.  Since the work has already started, I'll dispense with the preamble for now about find an architect, making preliminary design decisions, etc.  Hopefully I'll come back to that at a later date.  If you want to know something specific just ask and I'll make a post about it.

We love our house, but there are definitely some improvements that were needed to make it workable with the whole family.  At the top of the list is removing the wall between the kitchen and dining room so that the five of us can eat in the dining room, but we can watch the kids while we are in the kitchen.  Our house including the kitchen went through a major remodel about ten years ago, and the construction quality was quite high, so we wanted to be sure to keep within the style and quality that already exists, while updating for a more workable living space.  Here's the original dining room, looking toward the kitchen door:

And here's the other side of that wall, in the kitchen looking towards the dining room door:

Yes, that's the fridge there and it is being moved to the other side of the kitchen, to be located directly to the left of where you would be standing if you took the kitchen photo above.  Currently, this is where the washer/dryer are, in a large closet to the right in this picture, which is taken from almost the same point as the previous photo, just in the opposite direction:

Here's the laundry closet interior:

The w/d will be replaced with new stackable ones and stacked in a new smaller closet on the left, and the fridge will be sitting on the right.