Kitchen, done!

We were going to go out tonight, but decided tomorrow will be expensive enough, so we stayed in and ordered pizza, and I hooked up all the plumbing. We have a full working kitchen again.

See here for before and middle. Note the lovely oak, the yellow counters, and the super-80s linoleum.

And here is final:



That fridge is great, tons of room. The microwave also does convection cooking and combination microwave/convection for superfast cooking and browning.



Bamboo floors.


That faucet is huge, with a built-in pulldown sprayer. And amazingly enough, one of the least expensive faucets Kohler makes. We were looking through their stuff, and everything we liked was $800, $900, $1200. Um, thanks, but no. Then I modified my search a little, and saw this for $250. You get so conditioned to the high prices, my first thought was "What's wrong with it?" Absolutely nothing, is the answer to that question.

Here's a detail:

On the left we have a soap dispenser, on the right a filtered water faucet. That doesn't match at all, but it came with the filtration system, so I'll use it until we find something we like.The undermount sink rocks. I've always liked that look. The left basin is extra-deep, 10 inches instead of the usual 7 to 7.5. Very helpful for large pots.

Phew. It's only been three weeks, but having half a working kitchen was getting to be a pain. Doing dishes in the utility sink in the laundry room, etc.

Now we're cookin'!

Busy busy busy

Well, I got the weight/yoga room done. Really nice. Now all it needs is a TV, for The Wife's yoga tapes & DVDs.

Almost done with all the wood flooring downstairs, and the granite should be installed today. I'm kind of surprised they're not here yet.

A flood of pictures should follow in the next couple days.

Kitchen, continued...

Well, the floor in the kitchen has been done for a couple days, and I'm almost done getting it into the foyer. As great as it looks, and that certainly feeds the motivation, this is getting old.

But we have guests for the weekend, so I need to finish a lot tonight.

This is the normally weekend of my annual Saratoga Racetrack party (Saturday's big race is the Alabama), but not this year. It's just too difficult to cook for, and clean up after, 10-15 people. So just my friends from Boston, Tom and Alicia, and a good friend from Troy, John.

I'm predicting the damage to be: 2-3 cases of beer, 8-12 bottles of wine. That's reasonable for 5 adults, right?

Also, my birfday Friday. A pancake/blowjob breakfast and a round of golf. What else does one need?

Half a YAY!

Well, I called it quits at 4:30AM, and still had work to do this morning, but I got it done just 20 minutes before the granite templaters came.

Here is before:




Yummy!!!

Anyway, cabinets are in, and 1/2 the floor is down.

Here is the "middle" of the project:




See, I had to get the floor to at least the dishwasher by noon today, so I could get that installed, and the put up the right vertical enclosure, otherwise the templater couldn't do his job. Now that that's done, I can just work away at my leisure, aiming for Thursday night completion.

When this is all done, I'll have a full gallery of the various stages of the process up on my photography website.

Installing flooring?

It sucks. Especially when there are all sorts of funky angles and cuts, and your house isn't very square.

UPDATE: Still sucks. But I've got to get 6 or 7 more strips down so the granite people can measure. Then I'm calling it quits. I've got all week to finish the rest.

Kitchen!

I spent the weekend tearing out our old kitchen so the installers could put the new cabinets in today. Not near the top of my list of things to do on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon after rounds of golf each day, but anyway. It was worth the $1200+ we saved. Essentially, I paid myself $200 an hour to do a little manual labor.

The guys came today, and cranked through pretty quickly. Around noon, The Wife asked them what they wanted for lunch. Since we have no kitchen, she was going out to get something for the two us, and offered to get them something from the local deli. They were shocked. They had never been fed before, in years of doing this! Are people that fucked up? Sure there are a lot of assholes in the world, and rude people, and selfish people, but not once had someone thrown a pizza or a sub their way?!?! Jeez.

Anyway, a couple hours later, I'm asking for advice on putting in the over-the range microwave/convection oven (sweet!), one guy starts explaining this and that, pauses, and says "Fuck it, we'll do it. Just don't tell the boss." The installation was so automatic for them it took 20 minutes. It would have taken me 2-3 hours.

See what a little kindness and consideration gets you?

Anyway, tonight I start putting the floor in, Wednesday the counter people come to measure for the granite, and 3 weeks later that'll be installed. I'll get a series of before/during/after pictures up once I get them into Lightroom.