Vis a tergo

Counter top and upper cabinets

I stopped by the house last night because of an interesting message I received on my phone yesterday morning. I hadn't heard the phone ring, but I heard it beep like a message had been received. Ronda's in Ontario at a conference for work, so I thought maybe she was sending me a text message. It ended up being a voice message: "Mr. Heiser, this is Meyer's Appliance. We're delivering some appliances to your house this morning and wanted to give you twenty minutes warning." Luckily, my general contractor lives right across the street so someone was there to meet them. So, without further ado, some pictures from last night:

A front view of the sink, as it sits installed. I really like the decisions we made where the cabinets, granite and sink meet. We originally were going to have a full bullnose on the granite, but decided to mimic the edge of the sink instead. The granite covers the sides of the sink by about a quarter of an inch, and the sink sits proud of the counter in front by about a quarter of an inch.

A wider view of the sink area. You can get a feel for how the colors all go together. I can't wait for the backsplash tile to go in.

Here are the upper cabinets, with the "appliance garage". There's a lot of usable counter space, which will be a nice change. I can see one of the next little decisions we'll have to make is where to put the knobs. Ronda wants to put them in the bottom corner of the cabinets, mostly so she can reach the upper knobs. I agreed with her when we discussed it a while ago, but now I'm wondering where we'll put the knobs on the lower doors to make it look right. The knobs on the drawers will go in the middle of the face of course.

Once again, the kitchen is a step further ahead. Once again, I'm even more excited to see the next step. All of the appliances except the range and refrigerator were sitting in the other room waiting to be installed. By this weekend the change will be huge. The range hood will be in, and most (if not all) of the tile backsplash will be done. After that, I think painting and detail work is all that's left! October 7th is still the target date.

Comments closed because of comment spam

Tile

The floor tile is in!

By the end of the day, the floor tile and granite should be installed. The range, range hood and backsplash tile are targeted for the middle of next week.

Here are a few pictures of the current state:

Here's a good view of the kitchen looking through the back door. The tile isn't grouted, but it looks awesome! You can see a test fit of the granite on the cabinet to the right. The color matches everything really well. The gaping hole is where the range will go next week. I think the plan is to secure the range and range hood before affixing the granite, so that there's wiggle room. Apparently the dimensions are really tight, which could be really good -- or really bad.

OK, another quick taste of what the backsplash is going to look like. Ronda spent some time with the tile setter to finalize the design. It's basically what I mocked up a couple weeks ago, but this gives a sense of what it'll look like with the gaps for the grout. I can't wait to see it up on the walls.

That's it for now! I'll pay another visit to the house this weekend, but I don't anticipate any new pictures. Further progress won't be apparent until about the middle of next week. Everything seems to be right on schedule for October 7th!

Comments closed because of comment spam

Cabinetry

I went back today to hook up the automatic sprinklers so the new lawn wouldn't die because someone forgot to turn on the water. Hopefully I hooked it up correctly. While I was there, I took some pictures of the cabinets -- using the flash this time. Without further ado...

This is the non-appliance side of the kitchen. I lie. The diswasher will be here. It'll be cabinet-front, though so the effect will be the same. You can see the sink sitting below where it will eventually go. The upper cabinets in the corner won't be installed until after the granite. We got one of those "appliance garage" doohickeys and it sits on the granite surface, so can't be installed yet.

The other side of the kitchen has an upper cabinet with an open shelf to hold the microwave.

This is a good head on view of the cabinets. The door style was called "Shaker 3" by Jay Rambo Co., the makers of the cabinets. I'm not quite sure what makes it Shaker, but so be it. The wood is quartersawn white oak and the stain is called "Restoration". The door style is almost identical to the built-in cabinets in the dining room, although they are finished with a faux-grained gumwood look that was popular when the house was built. We were also able to find similar hardware for the cabinets. Since the house was built in 1938, it has an interesting mix of Arts & Crafts era architecture coupled with Art Nouveau type hardware and fixtures. I guess we put names on "eras" when they've passed. I'm sure at the time the styles were just whatever was popular in this place at that time.

Here's a "still life" I composed to show most of the major contributors to the color scheme of the kitchen together. All of the pieces are laying in or on the sink. The floor tile is inside at the bottom of the picture. One of the accent pieces (or "tacos") is laying against the floor tile and sink. The field tile for the backsplash is leaned against the cabinet, with the "pencil" tile accent against its bottom. I stood one of the knobs on end to the left. The only major color contributors that aren't present are the wall color and the granite. Ronda and I were extremely happy with how the color combinations turned out.

Our contractor, Marty, tells us that by the end of the week the floor tile and granite should be in. Ronda's in Austria, so she'll be relying on my descriptions and pictures until she gets back. Before she gets back, I'll be off to my Fantasy Football draft. So, we won't get to enjoy the progress together until at least Sunday night (and probably later than that).

Comments closed because of comment spam

We interrupt this remodel...

...to report that the backyard grass is in! The landscape guy, Craig, was able to sneak in between the cabinet guy and the tile guy and lay down sod yesterday. I hadn't seen it until I went by to take a few pictures of the cabinets today. As it turns out, almost all of the cabinet pictures were blurry because I didn't know how to use Ronda's camera and left the flash off. The backyard pictures came out fine because it was a nice sunny day.

So, without further ado, I present the besodded backyard:

Here you can see the red stone paths that Ronda and I slaved over a month or so ago. The patio that the hot tub sits on will eventually be tiled and have an arbor covering it. The back corner will hopefully get a built in barbecue. Notice how I skillfully cut the garage out of the picture. It's still in mid-progress.

Here's the other half of the backyard. The sprinklers work. I think the pathway looks great. It'll look even better when we plant sage between the pavers.

Comments closed because of comment spam

Here's the side yard. Craig recommended puting packed gold fine there. Gold fine is the same material you see on baseball and softball fields and holds up to traffic well. I'm not completely sold on its look, but it's easily changed if need be. We'll give it a year.