Vis a tergo

Hardware and windows and tile...oh my!

An entry in which I bring you, the reader, up to date on the kitchen remodel saga.

Some more pics:

This is a mock up of the tile pattern on the backsplash. Below it will be more of the field tile in a square pattern. Behind the vent hood for the range, the field tile will also go all the way to the ceiling.

Here's the sink. I think this ended up being our boldest statement in the kitchen. It will definitely be one of the most noticable features. It's colored cement and the apron will extend proud of the cabinet surface. It's 9.5" deep, so there's plenty of room to wash the stock pots after Ronda makes her dad's famous soup.

Another view of the sink. In this view you can see the metal grate that's embedded in the cement at the bottom to keep pots and pans from marring the surface.

Here's the wetwall with the drywall up. It also shows one of the windows with new sashes. They were done by a local window restoration expert that was recommended on the neighborhood mailing list. They look just like old style windows, but have double paned glass in them.

A better picture of one of the windows. This one is in the breakfast nook. I have a feeling we'll be replacing the bright brass hardware with something different. With the double paned glass in the sashes, the window is very heavy. To make the weights work, they took the weights from the upper sash and added them to the existing weights for the lower sash. So, the upper sash is now fixed in place.

The cabinet company wanted the walls textured ahead of time, so here's how it turned out. To match the rest of the walls the texturing guy used a technique called "skip troweling", which is popular around this area. Ronda tells me that in Cincinnati smooth walls are the prevalent wall finish. (click for more detail)

A nice big picture of the faucet. All of our hardware is oil rubbed bronze like this. We kept the original plumbing location for the faucet. It's kind of an old fashioned look, with the hot and cold coming in through separate pipes out of the wall. With the 9.5" deep sink, we're going to have tons of room for washing big pots and pans.

The new light for the breakfast nook was a great find Ronda made in the "Rejuvenation" catalog. It matches closely with the original lighting from the living and dining rooms (as you'll see below).

...and the original living room light for comparison. Notice the polished nickel cups with the shades that match the new light. Rejuvenation calls the color of the shades "ivory", but they have an orange tint to them. In any case, it was a great find.

I've almost caught up! A lot of work is happening today, though. Cabinets should be in by the end of tomorrow. They were delivered yesterday, so Ronda and I paid them a visit and were really happy with them. Pictures later!

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Demolition!

Demolition was completed a while ago, but I just downloaded the photos from the camera. In fact, things are quite far along. I'll put up the demolition pictures here and add new entries for the other stages that are completed.

Some of the original linoleum, revealed when the cabinets were removed

Some of the original wood floor. I don't know if this was meant as just an underlayment, or was used as flooring. Unfortunately we had to rip this out so that the tile didn't sit too high.

The laundry room. Some ugly linoleum faux-tile stuff was originally up here. The plumbing and electrical will be new and real tile will be put up as a wainscoat

This is where the refrigerator will go. The new refrigerator is taller, so the cabinet above had to be ripped out so it would fit. A smaller cabinet will eventually be installed

This is the wet wall. I was glad to find out that the old leaky plumbing hadn't ruined the floor underneath. The cabinets were a mess, but once they were disposed of, everything else was fine. New plumbing will go here, as well as new window sashes with double panes windows.

This is the opposite wall where the range will go. New electrical and gas lines are part of the deal here. The heater vent for the room behind the kitchen had to be moved slightly to make room for the new gas line. It also involved doing some work from underneath which meant that some drywall had to be removed in the finished basement. Funny how the job always grows as it goes along.

The breakfast nook. We'll get new sashes in the window and more electrical, as well as some structured wiring. It's the same wiring that I ran to the garage and includes 2 video, 2 Cat 6 and 2 fiber optic cables tied together in one sheath.

Finally, here is the entry hall. We'll be refinishing all of the hardwood floors as soon as the kitchen is done. This area used to be tiled, but we've decided to try it as hardwood. We'll just tile over it if we don't like it.

There's actually quite a bit more done at this point. These pictures were actually take on August 7th, so it's been about three weeks. More later...

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San Jose Grand Prix

Ronda and I attended the San Jose Grand Prix again. Last year was the inaugural race, which was something I was excited about. A major motorsport in my backyard was a great surprise when it was announced! Both years we've taken the Friday of the race weekend off to explore the festival grounds around the area of the city that's been turned into a track. The Champ Car World Series is more than just a single race. Both years they've included more than just Champ Cars, which makes it more interesting. The good news is that the success last year didn't wane this year. I was expecting a slight dip in attendance this year after the novelty of the first annual event. Here are the numbers I found in multiple places online:

Attendance 2006: ~156,000
Attendance 2005: ~154,000

2005 Grand Prix

Not everything was improved over last year, though. So, there were a number of pros and cons, which is my cue to make a couple lists:

Pros:
- Much better crowd control. Three pedestrian bridges over the track and regularly scheduled track crossings between races.
- A better view of the race on the front straight. They switched the pits to the other side of the street, so the cars went right in front of the grandstand,
- We took the lightrail this year. This might have been done well last year too, but we didn't take advantage of it.
- The car auction, paddocks, and all of the displays in the Convention Center were the same as last year, and we were glad they kept them that way.
- Well, the paddock for the Atlantic cars changed. It was inside, which was nicer for us, but probably especially nice for the Atlantic teams.
- The work carts that travelled around through the crowd all had misters with fans, which was a nice touch.
- Ronda says "Good bratwurst!"
- Ronda says "Good shaved ice!"
- We both say "Good brawl!"
- Diamond Dave.

Cons:

- $8 beer? $6 shaved ice? $7 cheesburger? Was it me, or were the prices way out of control this year? Do I sound like an old man?
- They moved the large screen TVs, so there were two in front of the Gold 1 grandstand, but nothing in front of Gold 2. Bad.
- A number of the timed races were stopped early. I assume it was in order to keep the schedule, but it sure made the races anti-climatic.
- The T-shirt selection seemed limited. Maybe there were just none that we liked very much.
- They removed all of the nice shaded seating in front of the Convention Center near all of the food vendors.

So, on balance, more good than bad. Plus, we were kind of nitpicking. The prices were a little shocking, though.

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Cuerda Seca

Here's another example of an interesting bit of knowledge gained from doing research on different aspects of the remodeling we are in middle of. As I said earlier, there are some decorative aspects that I could imagine, but couldn't seem to locate anywhere. As a rule, I think you could say that I didn't conjure these patterns and colors out of thin air, so it has always been a case of having to dig a little deeper to find what I had pictured in my head. The most recent case is tiles decorated using the cuerda seca technique.

Cuerda Seca literally means "dry cord" (or "prudent drought" if you ask Google). Colloquially it's usually translated as "dry line". The technique, as I understand it, is to use a medium such as wax to draw a design on the tile and then "pool" different colors of glaze within the design. When the tiles are fired, the glaze fills the areas delineated by the wax and the wax melts leaving behind a dark line. I've seen the results likened to stained glass. Here is an example of tile created using the cuerda seca technique at el Museo Lázaro Galdiano.

The cuenca ("river basin" according to Google) technique sounds similar, but instead of using a wax type material, a ridge is made in the clay that creates the pooling effect similar to the cuerda seca method. The cuenca tiles sound similar to the decorative tiles we're using from Handcraft Tile. These decorative tiles are glaze and fired, then buffed to take the glaze off the raised areas. The end result is terracotta colored raised areas, and glaze colored depressions. You can find an example of the cuenca technique here at the Florida Museum of Natural History's website.

One of the decorative tiles from Handcraft Tile that we're using:

All of this information gained was borne out of a picture I had in my head. I wanted a certain look to the address on the outside of my house. Somewhere I had seen address tiles done using the cuerda seca technique. Maybe it was during a trip to Spain in 2000. Maybe it was on a walk around the neighborhood.

Either way, I didn't know how to describe what I wanted, so I hadn't found it. Now that I know what the technique is called, there are a number of possible places to find what I want. Coincidentally, another idea I had in my head was installing cuerda seca tiles on the risers of the stairs down to the basement. Before, I had no idea that this was the same look as the address tiles I was seeing in my head. Now I know which direction to go, and learned a little something along the way.

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