Author Topic: Kitchen Addition/Remodel  (Read 24065 times)

Roots&Wings

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #50 on: September 25, 2019, 11:41:04 AM »
It's really coming along! The porch swing sounds lovely. The white shaker post base will look fantastic with your porch design, that's such a classic design. Potentially a bit more maintenance/painting to keep clean and bright than the stone, but could be easier for railing connections.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #51 on: September 26, 2019, 06:39:22 AM »
It will be a bit more maintenance but since the beam design in the gable end will periodically need the same kind of maintenance, i.e. white paint, from time to time, it won't be much more maintenance than what we have already consigned ourselves to. It will definitely be easier to attach rails which we plan to go with something maintenance free like PVC or coated metal.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #52 on: September 29, 2019, 05:45:58 AM »
The cabinet designer mismeasured one wall resulting in a cabinet an inch too wide. The reorder should be arriving sometime perhaps late this week. I've ordered my flooring and it should be coming maybe early next week. Countertops are slated to arrive the second week of October along with appliances. Electrical final should happen early this week as well as HVAC final. Things are really starting to come together now.

Unfortunately, now that the contractor is gone, it has been raining cats and dogs every day so I haven't got any painting done on the outside. I did make wraps for my porch columns and primed them so I can install them on the first day without rain. That doesn't look likely to happen until late this week. We'll see.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #53 on: October 02, 2019, 07:38:57 AM »
Nothing picture worthy to show but I thought I would give an update. In between rains I got the rest of the concrete siding primed at least. That however has been the extent of my outside activities the last few days. The electrician is here for the second day and is continuing to button up all things electrical. I was excited to have lights in the new addition/remodel but they brought the wrong ones (yellow instead of white light) so they will have to reorder them. However all the outlets and switches have been done (albeit with a mixture of temporary lightbults in some cans) and they are working on the undercabinet lighting and power right now. They still have to wire up the island later and they should be done until the reordered lights get in.

The reordered cabinet arrives today and will be delivered tomorrow or Friday. Still waiting on the HVAC guy to tie up loose ends but then it is just waiting for either flooring to arrive hopefully sometime next week or our countertops on the 10th.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #54 on: October 02, 2019, 01:28:31 PM »
The electrician informed me that we had a problem because he wasn't sure if they had pulled a wire for undercabinet lighting and outlets on once section of cabinets. He said he will have to start removing drywall to verify which wasn't really that big of deal since that area will be tiled backsplash eventually. But I pulled out my smartphone, scrolled through the pictures and found one of the wall in question after the electrical rough-in that clearly showed the wires in the stud cavity next to the vent piping and they had been covered over by the drywall crew. Now that we had proof, we could cut a much smaller hole to fish out the wires. Two days ago, when they stopped by to make a list of supplies to bring for the final electrical work, they noticed that the switch for the garbage disposal was "missing". I had used the same picture to verify the switch on the right did exist and got it cut out before they returned yesterday to start.

Two reminders why it is good policy to take pictures of your work progress daily just in case it might be needed as reference in the future.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #55 on: October 03, 2019, 02:19:20 PM »
Thought I would give a pictorial update today. The first picture shows the outside of our addition with new covered front porch. The cement siding is primed. I just using the same tinted primer on all the trim but will eventually go back and paint that white. I also boxed in the porch columns and primed them white. Originally we were going to put stone up about half way and perhaps someday we will but for now, I just put some thin pieces on them to give them a shaker look. The second picture is a close up of the lights I bought at an architectural salvage auction several years ago and refinished earlier this spring. I am really pleased at how they turned out and they are definitely unique.

The reordered cabinet arrived so after getting it screwed into place, I am ready for countertops when they arrive. It is an inch narrower than the one it replaced so that the adjacent slot for the dishwasher can be the standard 24 inches and not 23 inches with the old wider cabinet in place. As a bonus, they left the old cabinet behind so it will go into our pantry and be one less cabinet I have to build this winter. A nice bonus.

Our contract specified that backsplash tile was included and the contractor just told us to go out and pick out a backsplash and let him know. We did that a month ago and were told that it would arrive 6 to 8 weeks later which would be 2 to 4 weeks after the countertops were in place. He called today to say it will be here a week after countertops but that he needed a change order of $2000. I pushed back hard and let him have it a bit but no budging. I did ask him what he budgeted and he told me. I'm not sure what we will do at this point but I'm tempted to just tell him to refund me what he budgeted for backsplash and I will do the work myself. I'm not sure what my SO will say about that since she is desperate to get her kitchen back ASAP. I'm going to sleep on it and make the decision tomorrow. Another lesson learned that I should have asked for a budgeted number before signing the contract.

economista

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #56 on: October 03, 2019, 05:03:08 PM »
If you go the diy route I can say from experience that backsplash tile is extremely easy to do. It just takes two days since you have to let the thinset dry for 8+ hours before grouting. I did it myself in two days during the federal government shutdown in January.

rosarugosa

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #57 on: October 04, 2019, 03:53:29 AM »
The exterior looks great!

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #58 on: October 04, 2019, 06:50:09 AM »
I've done backsplash before several times so it isn't the work I'm leery. At the end of the day, we decided to just pick a different material that was within the "budget" given to us a month after we picked the tile. It is still a nice tile. Mainly we feel like we are hemorrhaging cash and don't want to spend another $2k just for backsplash. Even if we could have gotten the allowed budget refunded and bought the stuff ourselves, it would still cost more than we really want to spend after all this is said and done. Our checking account will be down to a bare minimum but we haven't had to touch any of our investments, taxable account, or home equity loan and would like to keep it that way. If for some reason five years down the road we don't like it, I can change it up then.

Right now we just want a kitchen. We've been without since June 10th and considering we started boxing and moving stuff about a month earlier, it has been a painfully long time to be without a kitchen. We have a little over a week to go before we have a functioning kitchen and depending on when the new tile and flooring is delivered and I can install the latter, perhaps a few weeks before a completed kitchen. I can't wait.

former player

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #59 on: October 04, 2019, 07:11:01 AM »
Do you even need a backsplash?

I mean, I know it's a standard element of kitchen design, but it's one that is a hangover from decades ago, when 1) cooking was a far messier occupation (more mud on the veg, fewer dishwashers), 2) other messy operations went on at the kitchen sink other than cooking (fewer utility/laundry/shower rooms), 3) paint was of worse quality and less easy to wash down without taking it off the wall (I'm talking just about ordinary emulsion here, not even waterproofing paints like gloss).

The alternative is to just have painted wall, or perhaps just to put up smaller panels behind the sink and cooker if you think you need them - it should be fairly easy to find something to stick on the wall, although preferably something flameproof behind the cooker.  If you are concerned about liquid spills on the counter then seal the back of the countertop well, and perhaps put a low run of countertop (an upstand) along the back.

In other words, before spending $2k put a bit of creative thought into alternatives.

(Also, tile is a very outdated technology.  It's 2,000 years old, for dog's sake.  You can do better.)

Dicey

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #60 on: October 04, 2019, 07:23:50 AM »
Late to the party. PTF so I can read through when time allows.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2019, 11:10:34 PM by Dicey »

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #61 on: October 05, 2019, 09:59:17 AM »
Do you even need a backsplash?

Around most of the counter, not really. I do like them behind the cooker for the obvious reasons. I also like it around the rest for aesthetical reasons as well and since it has already been quoted in our contract and we picked out something that was withing the "budget" given to us belatedly, we will keep the backsplash. But yes, it isn't worth $2k which is why I balked when they told me that.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #62 on: October 07, 2019, 07:04:31 AM »
Not a lot to report on the project. I spent the entire weekend painting and there is still plenty of painting to go. I have one more coat to put on the exterior siding, and two coats to put on all the exterior trim. I primed all the bare wood inside and got the trim ready for a top coat of paint. I've done lots of touch up painting on surfaces previously painted but really should just give up and wait until everything is installed because it gets scraped up again.

Electricians are hopefully coming back today to finish the undercabinet outlets and lighting. My flooring arrives today but requires a five day acclimatization so I will probably just wait until appliances go in a week from today before starting in installing that. Countertops are still slated for Thursday. I'm hoping this is my last full week without a functioning kitchen after four long months.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #63 on: October 08, 2019, 07:25:57 AM »
So that is what 850 square feet of solid tongue and groove bamboo flooring plus vapor barrier looks like shortly after delivery. I'm glad the delivery was included in the price because it certainly wasn't something I could fit in the back of a minivan as I had envisioned. After carrying the smaller of the two pallets inside yesterday to start acclimatizing, it also isn't something that my minivan could physically handle even if it had been small enough to fit in the back. Each box weighs I'm guessing around 125 to 150 pounds and there are 32 of them. After carrying 10 of them inside, I took two advil and quit until I could think of an easier way and a different place to put them. I was planning on just keeping enough to do the kitchen upstairs and putting the rest in the basement until I redo the dining and living rooms later this winter but I'm certainly not carrying all those heavy boxes down any stairs. Now I'm thinking of spreading them out among the upstairs bedrooms for the time being.

Dicey

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #64 on: October 09, 2019, 07:28:34 AM »
Not a lot to report on the project. I spent the entire weekend painting and there is still plenty of painting to go. I have one more coat to put on the exterior siding, and two coats to put on all the exterior trim. I primed all the bare wood inside and got the trim ready for a top coat of paint. I've done lots of touch up painting on surfaces previously painted but really should just give up and wait until everything is installed because it gets scraped up again.

Electricians are hopefully coming back today to finish the undercabinet outlets and lighting. My flooring arrives today but requires a five day acclimatization so I will probably just wait until appliances go in a week from today before starting in installing that. Countertops are still slated for Thursday. I'm hoping this is my last full week without a functioning kitchen after four long months.
Wow, I'm confused.  Shouldn't it be flooring, then appliances,  then paint? You definitely want the flooring under the appliances, not in front of them, especially the...well, everything.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #65 on: October 10, 2019, 07:36:21 AM »
Wow, I'm confused.  Shouldn't it be flooring, then appliances,  then paint? You definitely want the flooring under the appliances, not in front of them, especially the...well, everything.

Flooring can be done either way. In my case, I have a cooktop and two wall mounted ovens so there is no flooring underneath any of them anyway. I never put flooring underneath the dishwasher so really the only appliance in my case that will have flooring under it is the refrigerator and I'm keeping my old one and it will stay in the dining room until I get the flooring installed where it will go. Because I will be having countertop crews today and then the appliances guys on Monday, it seemed better to just leave the flooring off until they are all gone to minimize chances of the flooring getting damaged.

As for the painting, I did interior painting (ceiling, walls and trim) before cabinet installation so I don't have to worry about splatters all over the new cabinets or new floor. It saves a lot of time since you don't have to mask or cover anything. All I need to do in the interior will be to do touchups on spots that got scraped between then and now. Most of the painting I referred to in the last post was on the outside of the house.

charis

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #66 on: October 10, 2019, 10:32:25 AM »
Wow, I'm confused.  Shouldn't it be flooring, then appliances,  then paint? You definitely want the flooring under the appliances, not in front of them, especially the...well, everything.

Flooring can be done either way. In my case, I have a cooktop and two wall mounted ovens so there is no flooring underneath any of them anyway. I never put flooring underneath the dishwasher so really the only appliance in my case that will have flooring under it is the refrigerator and I'm keeping my old one and it will stay in the dining room until I get the flooring installed where it will go. Because I will be having countertop crews today and then the appliances guys on Monday, it seemed better to just leave the flooring off until they are all gone to minimize chances of the flooring getting damaged.

As for the painting, I did interior painting (ceiling, walls and trim) before cabinet installation so I don't have to worry about splatters all over the new cabinets or new floor. It saves a lot of time since you don't have to mask or cover anything. All I need to do in the interior will be to do touchups on spots that got scraped between then and now. Most of the painting I referred to in the last post was on the outside of the house.

Same here (but used a contractor).  Paint first - it also sounds pretty difficult to paint around cabinets and appliances, even if you could do it perfectly - Cabinets - Flooring (except under cabinets or dishwasher) - Appliances. 

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #67 on: October 11, 2019, 06:58:47 AM »
Definitely starting to look like a kitchen now. The countertops were installed yesterday as well as all but one bar of undercabinet lighting. The countertops are quartz so no maintenance which we wanted. The undercabinet lighting bar didn't work out of the box so the electrician is going to bring a replacement one today when he installs the reordered can light LED's with trim rings. The original ones were the wrong color temperature and the new ones were supposed to arrive yesterday afternoon. The place where we ordered our appliances called to confirm Monday morning installation. Not sure how that is going to go down since the gas and water connections are only roughed in and there is no venting yet for the range hood vent. The contractor's crew is supposed to be here though during appliance install so hopefully between both of them, we get some functioning appliances. I suspect we will have to wait for a sink until the plumber comes back after the appliances are installed.

I moisture checked my flooring and it is within specs to install now but like I mentioned previously, I am going to wait until the appliances are installed just to minimize chances of damaging it. As it happened, I slipped on a steep muddy hill behind our house yesterday and pulled some apparently important muscle on the left side of my chest during my fall. Right now just getting out of a chair or putting my shoes on is a challenge. Hopefully by early next week, I will be healed enough to start on flooring because I really want to see this done.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #68 on: October 14, 2019, 01:44:40 PM »
Today was the big day for our appliances to be installed. Because we purchased enough of them, we got a free installation plus a free dishwasher. The guys showed up and got the oven and the convection oven/microwave installed in short order. They got the dishwasher slid into place. I couldn't be permanently hooked up yet since the plumber hasn't been by yet to plumb in the sink and garbage disposal. I already knew that we wouldn't be able to do the hood vent since the backsplash tile just arrived and hasn't been installed but it is a fairly simple install and can be done at a later date. The final appliance was the gas cooktop. As soon as we set it in place, there was something obviously wrong. It sat above the countertop by three inches. Turns out the cabinet person has typed in the numbers wrong so she will have to reorder the cabinet three inches smaller. It will take another 10 to 14 days for us to get it. Not the end of the world since our old cooktop is still plumbed in down in our basement as it has been during this entire process. In her defense, she had a stroke between our initial meeting and the final design and admitted that it was her fault. On the positive side, it looks like I will now have a second cabinet for our pantry that I can re-purpose. While waiting on that, we can go ahead and do the backsplash, hang the hood vent and start on the flooring so the overall completion date is delayed by much.

Roots&Wings

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #69 on: October 15, 2019, 06:10:32 AM »
You must be thrilled to have a working kitchen again, really looks nice. Hope the pulled muscle is feeling better soon, that's quite a flooring project ahead.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #70 on: October 15, 2019, 06:48:51 AM »
Well not yet working but it is getting closer. With the reordered cabinet it will be another two weeks minimum but at least we have working ovens. With the microwave on the table in the dining room and the old cooktop in the basement, we can cook anything we wish once more.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #71 on: October 15, 2019, 10:48:08 PM »
While prepping the floor for flooring, the electrician showed up to complete his part of this project. All he had to do was install one undercabinet light that had been no good out of the box and put the can light trim kits with LEDs in place. We were standing there chatting when he had finished and he was checking out my newly installed appliances when he asked me if the dishwasher was plugged in. I told him that they had plugged it into the outlet behind it. He said that outlet was for the garbage disposal and tied to a switch. We flipped on the switch and sure enough, the dishwasher lights came on. I'm not sure why I never really noticed that when I was looking at it the other day after the appliance installers had done their thing and I don't really understand how they left without checking it out to see if it functioned either.

So the electrician went out to his truck and about thirty minutes later, we had the outlet behind the dishwasher moved to underneath the sink so that we could plug the garbage disposal into it without having to pull the dishwasher out. The cord on the dishwasher was long enough to reach to the other side of the sink where the non-switched outlet for it was located. I'm not sure why it was there other than the electrician read the plans wrong and thought our dishwasher was on the left side of the sink instead of the right.

Yet again I amazed at the things that would have happened had I not been there to set things right. Even then I still missed things like the dishwasher being wired for the wrong side of the sink and the cooktop cabinet being the wrong height. For everyone I missed, I caught ten others and had then corrected before we got this far along.

I didn't grab a picture today because the backsplash tile is going in and we didn't quite finish so everything is everywhere until tomorrow morning when we can finish it up. I also heard that the plumber might make his presence known tomorrow so I may have a functional sink and dishwasher to go with the functional oven. I can ditch the paper plates we've been eating on all summer and go back to the real deal again. That makes me very happy.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #72 on: October 17, 2019, 03:52:13 PM »
Backsplash is complete except for one partial row up against the cooktop which we can't put in until the reordered cabinet gets here sometime next week. Hopefully we can start putting in the range hood after a trip to get all the necessary fittings for exhausting it through the roof.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #73 on: October 21, 2019, 07:04:51 AM »
After a week of not really healing from my "pulled" muscle, I went to the doctor and found out I had three busted ribs. That explains things and I hope it explains the lack of progress on my kitchen project. Still waiting on the plumber and HVAC guy, the latter one at least stopped in Friday and said he would be back out today to finish up. I can't wait for the plumber because then we will have a sink and a dishwasher, two things we haven't used since June 10th.

We had an issue on the backsplash and once again I'm kicking myself for contracting that out when I could have done it myself. Our first choice tile turned out to be out of what was budgeted by the contractor so we went with the second choice which included a lot of natural stone tiles. The person installing it didn't know that you are supposed to seal natural stone tile before grouting so all the white stone tiles in the field are now a dirty gray after the application of the dark colored grout, something I didn't notice in my aching rib induced pain. They came back Friday and tried to clean it and didn't do any good. I assume today I'm going to be talking about what happens next with the contractor. I'm not looking forward to that conversation. If he doesn't want to fix his mistake, I think I'm going to just shoot for getting our money back from that part of the project and just doing it myself.

Hopefully our reordered cabinet will arrive this week so we can get our cooktop installed which with a sink and a dishwasher would mean we have a fully functioning kitchen but just no floor and possibly a but ugly backsplash.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #74 on: October 23, 2019, 04:13:05 PM »
After six days of hearing nothing, I called the contractor and he came out again to look at the tile. He was very nice and professional and agreed that if it was definitely not going to be fixed short of removal so if my wife didn't like it, he would redo it. The crew he had do it the first time was a sub contracted crew and he said he hasn't been able to find them all week. Having heard the crew talk about how they didn't like this kind of work and would rather not work for the contractor, I suspect they have quit and the owner just doesn't notice yet but he said he would track them down and have them redo it. Rather than risk having them in to do it a second time badly, I cut a deal with the contractor. He is going to remove the tiles and restore the backsplash surface to a smooth surface ready for backsplash tiling. He will also deduct the cost of tile from what I owe him. I will then purchase the tile that my wife wanted to start with and just do it myself. I've done it twice in the past and should have left it out of the contract this time around but tried putting it in the contract in hopes of speeding up the timeline for the project by having a "professional" do it. Live and learn. I have attached a photo of a section of the original tile leaning up against the grout stained tile to see how much different they are. 

In other news, I started laying the initial row of flooring but had to quit after a few hours due to aching ribs. The first row is the hardest since I'm having to get down on my hands and knees multiple times to drill and hand nail the first row. When I get to the second row, the flooring cleat nailer I bought can do the nailing from a standing position and won't hurt my ribs so much. I will try to grab a picture when I get the second row started.

Dicey

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #75 on: October 26, 2019, 11:18:51 AM »
Ooh, what tile did the dear wife want that you didn't go with? Hate to think there might be some kind of karmic blowback for not going with her pick /jk

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #76 on: October 28, 2019, 07:22:18 AM »
Slowly, slowly on the mend with my ribs. With my oldest kid's help, I was able to get a couple hours done this weekend on the flooring. Because it involved a lot of doorways and other things to cut around, it took a fair amount of time. While I'm waiting on a resolution for the rest of the kitchen, now that I have the flooring to the hallway leading to the front door, I'm going to work that way with the flooring and save the main kitchen floor for last.

My reordered cabinet that was supposed to be here last week isn't going to be here for another eight days. The excuse was the entire factory switched inventory systems and it didn't get on the truck for this week. Since the cabinet lady we used in this design had a stroke this summer that effected her in many visible ways, I'm guessing she just forgot to order it again until I called her asking where it was. She freely admits that the mistakes causing this cabinet and the other one to be misordered were probably because of her stroke.

To the person who asked above, the tile my wife originally wanted was a more elongated hex tile that had more glass than stone than what she ultimately picked out due to the budget. Had the contractor not forced the issue and just bought that tile without trying to milk us for more money, he probably would have come out ahead over where he is now. We had a verbal agreement that he would remove the damaged tile and credit me the cost of the replacement tile so I could just do it myself as I should have done in the beginning. But his secretary sent me an email a day later saying he couldn't credit me for the tile because it had already been installed. I emailed back repeating that the credit for for new tile to make this whole problem right and that if he didn't want to credit me than by all means he could by new tile, grout, sealer plus spend the labor to reinstall it correctly this time. I haven't heard anything back and its been five days.

sammybiker

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #77 on: October 28, 2019, 01:20:19 PM »
@lthenderson   Hell of a thread, thanks for posting.  Looking great so far.

I'm sorry if I missed it but did you post any cost details?  Real curious what kind of equity you're building, especially acting essentially as a GC and doing a good part of the work yourself.

The floors look awesome - any product link/curious as to what those run?

Keep it up, good luck as you enter the final phase.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #78 on: October 29, 2019, 07:31:57 AM »
@lthenderson   Hell of a thread, thanks for posting.  Looking great so far.

I'm sorry if I missed it but did you post any cost details?  Real curious what kind of equity you're building, especially acting essentially as a GC and doing a good part of the work yourself.

The floors look awesome - any product link/curious as to what those run?

Keep it up, good luck as you enter the final phase.

I did post the cost details in a post on page one but didn't want to put it front and center for a variety of reasons. One is because we live in a very rural place where cost of living is very cheap but as a counterbalance, we asked for around 8 quotes from every contractor in about a 100 mile radius and after two years of repeated calls, only got one serious returned quote. So in essence, we had no choice. I'm also doing a fair amount of the work. Also, technically our project is redoing the entire common areas of our house but the contracted portion is only for the addition and kitchen. So with all that in mind, we contracted out the addition and a fair portion of the kitchen with higher end finishings for $90k and we have a budget of $120k for the entire project. With the additional expenses occurred along the way, we are looking close to about $130k total which is less than 10% overrun which I don't think is too bad compared to other projects I have read about. We are paying cash for the entire project.

In our area (very rural, very poor) building equity is pretty much non-existent. Houses sell pretty much for the county assessed value for tax purposes if well maintained. If not, for much less. I'm guessing our assessed value will go up maybe $50k or $60k. (I haven't seen a new assessment yet.) So if we were to sell right away, we would probably be lucky to get half our money back from this project. But we didn't do this project with dreams of making money or even getting all of it back. Both my spouse and I love to cook and were tired of a kitchen that was small for one person and had no space for all our cooking paraphernalia. I'm hoping that this money is essentially buying us happiness for the next decade or two that we might continue to live here.

The flooring is CaliBamboo solid tongue and groove nail down flooring. We got it from a local distributor and off the top of my head it was about $4500 for 900 sqft.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #79 on: October 29, 2019, 01:56:51 PM »
Broken ribs are healing nicely and the pain is slowly subsiding. I was able to finish installing the flooring down the entry hallway and install a door sweep. Due to an impending snowstorm, I spent the rest of the afternoon rearranging the garage to get the snowblower out and ready and took the time to clean up accumulated "stuff" and debris one tends to get when working on an extended project. Since I have the perimeter areas floored, I may pause to paint and install baseboard trim so that we can start moving some furniture around and my spouse can start decorating the area.  All that I have left to floor right now is the main work area between the island and the cabinets and in the pantry. The remainder of the flooring goes in the dining and living rooms and will probably wait until late winter after I have removed a wall, scraped the ceiling of popcorn and done a few other minor things.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #80 on: November 04, 2019, 07:17:03 AM »
Things have been kind of on simmer for awhile while we wait for the reordered cabinet which is supposedly going to be delivered tomorrow. I'm not sure whether that means to the warehouse in the urban jungle or to our house. But I'm hoping we see it this week and put this project to bed, at least as far as the contracted part goes.

For my part, I did a lot of trim painting and installing baseboard. We then spent the weekend doing the furniture shuffle to get stuff back to the kitchen area, the hardest being a huge china hutch. I was able to unscrew the top half and slide it over onto sawhorses and then using rugs, were able to slide the lower half into place on our new wood floor. (Keep in mine I am only halfway through the 6 to 8 week healing time for my three broken ribs.) We stall out on the top half. I was able to lift my side using my good arm opposite the broken ribs but my wife wasn't able to lift her side. I tried calling a few people with strong backs but everyone wasn't answering. So in the end, I used a car jack, a cut to size 2x4 and some Egyptian engineering and we got it in place. 

I have also been working on repairing my office which is directly below the kitchen and got pretty beat up during the install of all the various mechanicals. Fortunately I have a ceiling system that looks like a false ceiling but actually snaps up to the bottom of the floor joists so you don't loose any headroom. So other than a couple damaged pieces I have to replace (and I still have extra panels from when I installed it), it is like putting a giant all white puzzle back together again. I've got about half of it back up and will work on the other half today.

The backsplash tile.

We met our contractor for a sit down to hash it out. In the end, he agreed to keep our original verbal agreement to tear out the incorrectly installed tile, smooth over the surface and credit us for the cost of purchasing the tile over again. I will then use that money and some more to purchase my spouses first choice of tile and install it myself later this winter.  He said he would do that at the same time the reordered cabinet gets delivered and promised us that he would be gone within two days of the delivery.

It's been a painful experience living without a kitchen for five months and at the mercy of someone else and if there ever is a next time, I will do more of it myself. The only reason I contracted part of it out is because I thought it would be faster and less of a headache to not have to deal with certain aspects I really don't enjoy doing anyway. Live and learn. Once the contractor leaves for good, I plan to install the rest of the flooring and trim first, then work on building cabinets and finishing the pantry area. Then I plan to turn a narrow filler lower cabinet into a pull out spice rack and build a wine rack and a few other minor pieces for the kitchen. After all that is done, it is back to the dining and living rooms to scrape down the popcorn ceilings and redo them, maybe tear out a wall, and continue the hardwood flooring throughout. That will necessitate redoing the stair railing to our basement as well. Hopefully a lot of that can be done before spring when I need to landscape our new addition and finish painting everything that I didn't quite get done due to untimely broken ribs. Despite the list being long, I'll be doing it myself free of contractors and for that I'm excited.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #81 on: November 04, 2019, 08:01:22 AM »
I'm enjoying your description of your project, and I'm excited for you to be so close to having it done. Thanks for taking the time to post through the process.

I have a beat-up drop ceiling in my basement that I've been thinking about replacing for a long time, and I'm curious about the false ceiling you have. If it's easily available, can you point me to a link of what you used? I love the idea of reclaiming those few inches of headroom.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #82 on: November 04, 2019, 09:44:03 AM »
If it's easily available, can you point me to a link of what you used? I love the idea of reclaiming those few inches of headroom.

I have used CeilingMax grid systems sold by Menards. I would put up a link but I couldn't find a general link, only a link to the various individual parts of the system. But they had a worksheet in the store back by the physical parts that has the formulas for determining which parts you need and how many. But there are videos of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tzu7q79V7E

Basically you have a track that gets screwed to the bottom of your ceiling joists every two feet on center. Then using a system of cross bars and a T-cap, you just snap them in place. I like it because in my case where I needed to access the space between the floor joist for this project, I can unsnap the plastic decorative pieces and pull the panels down as needed. I just got done putting it back up and had to redo a couple pieces destroyed by trades people mishandling them.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #83 on: November 05, 2019, 12:17:56 PM »
The stained tile has been removed and a skim coat put on to flatten out things again. I ordered the tile I will be putting on and the original tile we wanted to start with in this project until we got hit with a $2000 change order on top of the supposed $1200 the contractor said he budgeted for it. So with the $1000 credit he is giving us to fix this problem, the new more expensive backsplash will only cost me $500.

Our cabinet will be delivered Thursday morning so hopefully by this weekend, we will be using a fully functional kitchen, the first time in five months, albeit without a backsplash or all the flooring installed. But I should be able to get the rest of the flooring done before the backsplash tile arrives so that I can focus on that when it gets here.

Dicey

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #84 on: November 05, 2019, 08:12:35 PM »
How did I not notice that your new kitchen has a pot filler? So jealous! In CA, the GPM limit on faucets is crazy low, so a pot filler is a dream solution. Alas, my backsplash is crazy custom expen$ive, so I'm not tearing it out. There are counter mounted ones, but the water is on the other side of the kitchen, which kind of defeats the purpose.

You're getting there, even if it doesn't feel like it. In the end, the angst will have been worth it.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #85 on: November 06, 2019, 07:07:34 AM »
Yeah the pot filler was one of those decisions we made since we were gutting and moving the wall that it would mount to anyway.  I do a lot of canning in the summer months and have always dreamed about not having to lug the big canners and pots over to the sink. It will also be nice for the occasional shrimp boil too. But we need a cooktop first to try it out. Perhaps by the end of this week. The replacement cabinet for the cooktop is supposed to arrive tomorrow.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #86 on: November 07, 2019, 09:50:18 AM »
While waiting for the replacement lower cabinet to arrive before noon today, I've been taking a break from flooring to design the pantry upper cabinets so that I can start building them perhaps this weekend. I am making three identical units that will fill up the entire wall of the pantry and they will all be constructed identically. I made my office cabinets the same way so it should go pretty smoothly.

I make mine out of 3/4" cabinet plywood which will probably be white oak since that is usually the cheapest. I cut the pieces out by laying the plywood across a couple sawhorses on some sacrificial two-by material and using my skilsaw and a homemade sled made out of leftover 1/4" plywood scraps.  I will join the carcass together using Kreg pocket screws and glue. I will make the face frame out of 3/4" popular and paint it to match the cabinets in the kitchen.

We are leaving these without doors to start with but I looked up the door hardware for the ones in the kitchen and left enough room so if we change our minds in the future, I can make some inset doors to match. I haven't started the lower cabinet design yet since I hope to make use of the two cabinets that were incorrectly ordered and left behind. It will take a bit more figuring to figure you how best to use them and then fill in the gap with one that I custom make and a countertop. But that will be down the road a bit yet.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #87 on: November 11, 2019, 07:14:33 AM »
I picked up the plywood and face frame supplies but due to a busy weekend, didn't get started on the upper pantry cabinets. Since I had a half sheet extra of plywood, I did build a feed table for my hybrid table saw. It is permanently attached to the table saw, folds up and travels with it where ever I push it. I found a video on Youtube of one that is similar and just winged it. It turned out nice and I can't wait to give it a try. It should make building cabinets easier and safer. I'm waiting for my garage to heat up enough to make working in there bearable. 23 degrees and snowing right now.

J Dough

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #88 on: November 11, 2019, 08:35:34 AM »
If it's easily available, can you point me to a link of what you used? I love the idea of reclaiming those few inches of headroom.

I have used CeilingMax grid systems sold by Menards. I would put up a link but I couldn't find a general link, only a link to the various individual parts of the system. But they had a worksheet in the store back by the physical parts that has the formulas for determining which parts you need and how many. But there are videos of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tzu7q79V7E

Basically you have a track that gets screwed to the bottom of your ceiling joists every two feet on center. Then using a system of cross bars and a T-cap, you just snap them in place. I like it because in my case where I needed to access the space between the floor joist for this project, I can unsnap the plastic decorative pieces and pull the panels down as needed. I just got done putting it back up and had to redo a couple pieces destroyed by trades people mishandling them.

Thanks!

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #89 on: November 13, 2019, 07:33:26 AM »
Before I could start pantry cabinets, the contractor showed up and installed the replacement cabinet, cooktop and hoodvent seen in the photo. Other than a could trim plates owed to me by their subcontracted plumber, they are officially done on site and out of my hair. Nothing has made me more excited in a long time as being rid of them. So I switched gears and am working on installing the rest of the flooring in the kitchen before my backsplash tile arrives next week and I can start on that. Once I get those two things done, I will jump back on pantry cabinets and get them cranked out.

(Note, the hood vent is just roughly attached and doesn't have all the upper trim pieces on it. I'm going to be removing it to install backsplash tile in a week so just told them to leave it off. I can install it myself permanently later.)

Dicey

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #90 on: November 13, 2019, 08:31:13 AM »
What a relief! I like the way you trimmed out the cabinets. It drives me nuts to see fancy crown molding installed on Shaker-style cabinets. Excellent choice.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #91 on: November 15, 2019, 07:39:02 AM »
Yeah, we wanted something simple yet sophisticated which is why we went with the shaker style cabinets with inset doors versus overlay and the square molding versus crown.

Heard back from the tile place that there isn't enough tile in the U.S. to fill our order so they will have to make some more at their factory overseas and we likely won't be seeing it until mid-February. Frankly I'm happy about that because it will allow me to focus on other things for the time being.

Although not mentioned in this post, my mom passed away almost a year ago after a two year fight with brain cancer and my dad no longer wants to farm. After meeting with lawyers and such to settle my mom's estate, my dad has decided he is done farming and wants to sell all the farm equipment soon rather than later. So for the next couple weeks, I will probably not be able to work on my kitchen and will instead be down on the farm helping to get everything ready for the auction. But I still plan to update this thread when I get back and start crossing things off MY list instead of dealing with contractors.

Dicey

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #92 on: November 15, 2019, 07:41:26 AM »
Yeah, we wanted something simple yet sophisticated which is why we went with the shaker style cabinets with inset doors versus overlay and the square molding versus crown.

Heard back from the tile place that there isn't enough tile in the U.S. to fill our order so they will have to make some more at their factory overseas and we likely won't be seeing it until mid-February. Frankly I'm happy about that because it will allow me to focus on other things for the time being.

Although not mentioned in this post, my mom passed away almost a year ago after a two year fight with brain cancer and my dad no longer wants to farm. After meeting with lawyers and such to settle my mom's estate, my dad has decided he is done farming and wants to sell all the farm equipment soon rather than later. So for the next couple weeks, I will probably not be able to work on my kitchen and will instead be down on the farm helping to get everything ready for the auction. But I still plan to update this thread when I get back and start crossing things off MY list instead of dealing with contractors.
Sorry for the loss of your mom and your family's way of life.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #93 on: November 22, 2019, 06:47:13 AM »
After a week down on the farm, I was able to get back to the kitchen project yesterday. I painted all the shoe molding that will cover up the floor expansion gap left between the cabinets and the flooring. In between coats of paint, I was installing flooring in the pantry which is also the storage place for the miss ordered cabinets that we have been allowed to retain. It was a pain shuffling them around and nailing down flooring in such a tiny space but I eventually made it work out. I have one more flooring board to install and then that project is done until sometime after the holidays, most likely into spring. I still have more cabinets and other woodworking projects left to do for the kitchen before flooring the dining and living rooms. Today I'm going to be installing the rest of the trim and shoe molding. I'll try to grab some pictures for the next post.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #94 on: November 26, 2019, 12:18:40 PM »
Well not much to show since the last post. We had plans all weekend that didn't involve working on our house. Monday I spent a very nice day hanging up Christmas lights on our new addition. Since it was the first time, it took most of a day but should take less than an hour in upcoming years now that all the hardware is in place. On Tuesday, I spent the day getting ready for an upcoming trip to the family cabin in the Ozark mountains which meant cooking a turkey and pies. But I snapped a few photographs to share showing the pantry in the background that I'm currently working on.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #95 on: December 03, 2019, 02:25:41 PM »
Back from the holidays, I got to work on building my pantry cabinets to match the purchased ones for the kitchen. I ended up finding some birch plywood at the big box store with one cabinet grade finish side for a little over $40 per sheet. I used my circular saw jig to cut up the sheets into final sized parts shown in the second photo. It makes that process easy and very accurate. The only problem I had was that I noticed about three-fourths of the way done that the catch on my tape measure was bent and everything was 1/16" shorter than I planned. Due to the way I designed the carcass, everything still works but the cabinets will be 1/16" of an inch shorter and 3/16" of an inch narrower when all three cabinets are attached together. I planned for 1/8" of a gap so I will just have to deal with a slightly bigger gap when the time comes.

I used to make cabinets old school with dadoes, routers, lots of fiddling to get things fitting right and then lots of time clamping and waiting for glue to dry. Since I started using pocket hole screws, it has made things quick and easy. I could have had the cabinets completely assembled if I hadn't ran out of glue. I also have a shelf pin hole jig which makes adjustable shelving really easy to do too.

lthenderson

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #96 on: December 03, 2019, 02:30:52 PM »
The method I use for making carcasses is to place the cabinet back panel, good side up on my table and screw the top and bottom panels to it using pocket screws. I then flip it up on it's side and screw in one side panel, flip it over and do the other. All told, it took me about four hours from starting with full sheets of plywood to getting all three carcasses glued and screwed together. I used poplar, a miter saw and my tablesaw to cut out the pieces for the face frame. I used pocket holes and glue to assemble them in much the same way as the carcass. It took me another hour to get three of those made. I would have attached them to the carcass but this is where I ran out of glue. Tomorrow I will get some more glue and get them attached and then I can hang the cabinets. Eventually I will paint the face frame the same color as our upper kitchen cabinets so they blend in. Since this is a pantry, the upper shelving is going to be all open with no doors though I left space on the face frames so I could add doors in the future if we change our mind.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #97 on: December 04, 2019, 02:29:09 PM »
After obtaining some more glue, I was able to glue and screw the face frames onto the carcasses, sand them and carry them inside and install them. I can't say how much I love pocket screw technology when it comes to making cabinets. I hadn't planned around shelving but looking at the scrap birch plywood and poplar, I had enough to build seven shelves. I used glue and pocket screws to attach an 1-1/2" strip of poplar to the front edge of each shelf to cover up the raw plywood edge and give a bit more strength. Since I ended up with an uneven number of shelves, I just put the extra one in the middle to make it look symmetrical for now. I'm not going to go buy another sheet of plywood just to make two more shelves. I will probably end up with some more leftover when I turn my attention to the bottom cabinets. Thanks to a misordered cabinets with three drawers next to the dishwasher and a too tall base cabinet underneath the cooktop, I have two cabinets I can use to fill this space. The three drawer cabinet is nice and I will definitely use but since the other cabinet is less than standard height, I'm not sure if I will use that or not. I may try making a drawer on top of it or underneath it to make up some of the height. It doesn't have any slideout drawers anymore since they were put in the reordered one so I will have to remake them if I go that route. I'm going to finish trimming out the upper cabinets and painting the face frame first and mull it over before making any decisions.

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #98 on: December 04, 2019, 03:29:21 PM »
We have a kitchen remodel in our future. Posting to bookmark this and re-read later on because there's a lot of good info here. Thanks for sharing your project!

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Re: Kitchen Addition/Remodel
« Reply #99 on: December 05, 2019, 02:19:13 PM »
Turning my attention to the lower pantry cabinets, you can see the two misordered cabinets that got replaced by the manufacturer. They were kind enough to let me keep them but they didn't make new drawers for the shorter one holding the cooktop and so I had to swap out the interior drawers. I decided to make a plug to bring the old one up to the bottom of the countertop height and make another lower cabinet to fit in the remaining gap. It will be just pullout drawers but left open so you can see what is inside. I can make doors for it at a later date if I change my mind.

The second photo is of the completed lower cabinet I made to fill in the gap. I just used pocket hole screws and glue to hold it together. The manufacturer sent me a bunch of 3/4" by 6" solid boards already painted the same color as our lowers. They were supposed to be baseboard trim around our island but it looked so klunky that we never put them on. So I have been shuffling them around the garage for the last six months wondering what to do with them. I took one of them and cut it up to create the face frame for the lower cabinet and the plug that I built for the old cooktop cabinet so I didn't have to worry about matching paint. I think it turned out nice.

The last photograph shows the new cabinet installed along with the plug on the short cooktop cabinet. I also primed and put a coat of paint on the face frame of the upper cabinets. One more coat of paint and we can start loading them up with things still sitting in boxes around the house. Because the cabinet with the plug no longer has pull out drawers and the replacement cabinet I build doesn't have pullout drawers, those are next on my list to do. I'm going to build them all in one go so I only have to set up my dovetail jig once. I am going to make the drawer sides and back out of poplar and the bottom out of birch plywood. For the drawer fronts on the filler cabinet, I think I have enough of the trim boards that I can repurpose them as drawer fronts.