Kitchen Remodel, Week Three

After a delightfully calm and quiet three-day weekend, Tuesday morning brought the sheet rockers. They worked almost 12 hours, at the end of which we had recognizable interior walls. Taping and mudding followed; Dave will finish that up next Monday.

Southwest corner

Stovetop,  oven and pantry wall

Ceiling (with can lights)

Meanwhile, Les made good progress on the deck. He hoped to complete it this week, but there was a glitch in delivery of the door, which meant that he couldn't finish the siding and framing of that giant rectangular hole in the side of our house. The supplier promises the door will be here on Monday. If not, I suspect heads will roll.

Then he resumed work on the basement stairs. It was a case of one step forward -- the deck -- and twelve steps back. We knew that area would present some issues. For instance, this is the tradeoff we had to make, load-bearing-wise, for raising the kitchen ceiling to a uniform height:

We haven't lost any below-stairs cabinet space, but right now it looks ugly, weird and awkward. We'll make it work somehow. It's actually less intrusive on the rest of the room than I'd feared.

I explained earlier why we're messing with the stairs at all. Scroll toward the end of my August 28th post to refresh your memory. (Yes, this will be on the test.)

The first problem came to light when the carpeting came off. That charming linoleum riser wasn't confined to the first step; nope, it went all the way down. So much for my clean-and-simple vision of varnished wooden treads and painted risers. The linoleum would probably take paint, but: uck. No, we'd have to either remove it all or cover it with wood. We opted for the latter.

Before

Working our way up

Side view (note fiber art hangings)

After (with wastebasket)

The second stair problem compounded the first. Les discovered that the original risers weren't quite perpendicular; each was off by about 1/4 inch. In addition to raising the height of each riser slightly so it would all come out even at the top, Les had to shim each one to square it up. It looks very patchworky right now, from both front and side. I'm not sure how we're going to make the funky-looking profile (below) look decent. Maybe putty and paint will suffice. After all, they're just basement stairs.

Stair risers (side view)

We'd been contemplating a carpeted runner but, even after patching and painting, the exposed portion of the risers would look kind of shabby. The dark sections (below) are the original treads, which are bullnosed and will have to be firred out. (I love construction terminology; actually, I love the specialized vocabulary associated with any given profession or pursuit.)

Then we considered running the kitchen Marmoleum down the stairs, but the unevenness of the pieced-together risers --  even after firring, filling and filing -- would likely lead to buckling and sagging down the road. And I don't love the look of those anti-slip strips that typically go on the edges of linoleum-clad stairs, and that we'd be foolish not to put in place for when we get old and unsteady.

Stair risers (head on)

So, after all this, we're going with fully-carpeted stairs again. The cats will be thrilled. Jer and I returned to the floor 'n' wall store today, surrendered the Marmoleum samples we'd had out for way too long, and chose a commercial grade carpeting that should bridge the transition between the new kitchen floor and the blue-green wall-to-wall downstairs. You can judge for yourself when it's installed.

Between the late door and the escalating (no pun intended) stair problems, it's been a difficult week. I asked Les if this was the worst set of stairs he'd ever worked on. "It's right up there in the top two," he smiled.

Hopefully next week will be less fraught. The schedule calls for painting, cabinet installation, countertop template and fabrication, and finishing up the deck, siding and stairs. What could possibly go wrong?

Our block party is this Sunday. I wondered what we could possibly contribute, given our primitive food  prep facilities. Whatever it is will involve tomatoes. Here's yesterday's harvest:

Kitchen Remodel - Week Two

This week started slowly, with some digging and concrete work for the second-floor deck footings, delivery of new windows and decking material, and other undramatic but necessary activity.

On Wednesday, the corner windows went in, which was kind of exciting. Here's the southwest end of the expanded kitchen, where the little deck used to be:

The downstairs deck, my preferred good-weather hangout, is not very hospitable right now, piled as it is with lumber for the upstairs deck. The boards closest to the camera (below) are the new deck flooring; they're a composite material designed to look like Ipe wood. I like the natural-appearing variations from board to board. I wish we'd used something this good-looking on our front porch when we built it, but the material probably hadn't been invented yet.

By Wednesday afternoon, the south wall of the house looked like this:



Then the pace picked up. Thursday was totally insane: two electricians and a plumber worked upstairs and down simultaneously, while Les began framing the new deck. Power went off and on unexpectedly. The noise from all quarters was varied and, at times, horrendous. The electrical work involved the breaker box, of course, which is adjacent to our makeshift kitchen sink. Several downstairs ceiling tiles in the same area were removed to run pipe or wire. Sawdust drifted ankle-deep (you think I'm kidding) in the construction zone; the west end of the basement received, through the subfloor, a light but significant coating.

I managed to escape the madness for a while to have lunch with a couple of friends. They declared it a month-to-the-day delayed celebration of my birthday, and presented me with a tiara and matching magic wand. Can you guess what I wished for?

By the end of an 11-hour workday, plumbing and electrical rough-in was complete. Here's the wall by the entrance to the kitchen, where the phone will live, as well as an outlet and light switches for most of the kitchen, including the undercabinet lights:

We'll have plenty of outlets at counter-level, too. This is the south wall to the left of the sink-to-be. I can barely imagine a functional kitchen without three-prong plug adapters and tangles of extension cords. Apparently we will have one:

Electrician Hieroglyphics

Friday AM, while Jerry and I were out shopping for cabinet pulls, the city inspector came and passed us on electrical, plumbing and framing. Woo hoo!

The rest of the week was all about the deck:

It's Labor Day weekend and, fittingly, "labor" is taking a well-earned rest. We probably won't see any action until Tuesday. But we're still on schedule and, after a week like this one, all of us -- including the animals -- can use a respite.

The tomatoes, though, are still producing.

Kitchen Remodel: One Full Week

It has been a full week. Today is Sunday. Work began last Monday and continued through this afternoon.

Here's the colorful corner where the oven used to be, and will be again some day:

I love this photo compositionally. It shows where the stove hood will vent through the roof:

At this stage the small deck off the kitchen, soon to be enclosed, was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Good thing we hadn't planned a cocktail party for that evening:

Instead, Jer and I entertained ourselves by peeling paint, like sunburn:

One of our minor irritants over the years has been how easily the kitchen walls bruised. Obviously they weren't properly prepped before that bright yellow paint went on. We'll do it right this time.

Despite the amount of stuff the Rebuilding Center is taking off our hands, the dumpster was already full after a couple of days of work. I didn't see it go out, but I'll bet this tile, wherever it came from, must have added a special zing to the kitchen predating ours -- or maybe the one before that:

By Wednesday afternoon, when I last blogged, demo was complete and framing had begun. The impacted areas were almost down to studs, boards and subfloor. Speaking of which, late in the day, we -- by which I mean Steve and Les, the framer -- discovered another artifact of the earlier remodel, in which the kitchen was bumped out over a portion of the deck to create a dining nook: The old decking was still there. This caused some consternation, until we (same "we" as above) discovered that the underlying joists did, in fact, meet code. Whew; major win. The redwood stain is very similar to what Jerry and I chose for the backyard deck we put in.

Deck (left); former deck, a.k.a. dining nook subfloor (right):

Dining nook flooring, seen from below. It was disconcerting to stand in the yard and look up into the kitchen:

Thursday morning, I decided to git outta Dodge. Actually, this was a long-planned three-day excursion to Tacoma with my fiber arts pals. Our plan was to take in the APWQ show, as well as a couple of galleries and museums. We had a great time; I'm sure Gerrie and/or Terry will blog about it soon, if they haven't already.

The highlight of the trip, for me, was the Museum of Glass, especially the hot shop, where visitors can watch molten glass turned into vessels and other objects. I could have spent hours there. As it was, Jerry called in mid-performance; there was another design issue to resolve, this time involving the steps from the kitchen to the garage. I won't bore you with the details; not now, anyway. We worked it out.

By the time I got home last evening, the treacherous rail-less deck was gone. The space is now the southwest corner of our enlarged kitchen. If you look closely at the following pic, you can make out, just to the right of the big square window, the framing for the door that will lead to the new deck and the two corner windows above where the sink will go. All those dangly bits represent plumbing and electrical wiring, most of which will have to be relocated:

Here's what it looks like from the outside:

The other major change in my absence was that the pantry had been framed out to support the extended kitchen floor, eliminating the annoying step down to that area. Note the entombment of the old linoleum, which had lined the bottom of the pantry as well; we've left something for future remodelers to discover. To the left (below) is the base of the old pantry. To the right, the new framing. Beyond that, a sheer drop to the garage floor:

Going from living room to basement kitchen and back, last night and this morning, with occasional forays into the garage: not fun. But the inconvenience was short-lived. By this afternoon (yes, Sunday), the floor was level out through the pantry area:

And we had stairs again, of sorts:

The entire staircase to the basement will have to be rebuilt, and that's going to be a mess, since it'll impinge on our temporary setup downstairs. But that's a few days off. For now, it's navigable, though that first step is a doozy:

Kitchen Remodel: Daze 1 and 1.5

Living without a kitchen for several weeks will be challenging. But preparing for the experience has been friggin' exhausting. Let's hear it for ripe tomatoes.

After clearing out and storing all our non-essential paraphernalia -- why do we own so much stuff? -- I turned my awesome organizational skills toward setting up the field kitchen downstairs. The main expanse is normally my studio work table. Before I retired, it functioned as my office desk, easily accomodating a computer, printer, and flatbed scanner, with plenty of room left over. Now the microwave, toaster and toaster oven are at one end, the cutting board and general prep area at the other. Desk, you have served us well.

Elsewhere in the finished basement, we set up a breakfast cart, bar, and -- in a corner that's always been underutilized -- a gracious dining room:

Upstairs, in our so-called dressing room -- which doubles as a cat-art gallery and triples as my yoga space -- we established the animal feeding and treat station. Their accustomed bowls are arrayed around the perimeter of the room. In the morning the cats come in and stretch with me.

The official start of the job was marked by the arrival, mid-yesterday, of the dumpster and porta-potty:

Steve spent several hours digging through heavy clay to prepare the foundation for the new deck supports. China Rose conducted the pre-inspection:

I'm hoping my Marathon conifer, which is now over six feet tall, survives the framing and other outside work. Perhaps my festive pink ribbon will protect it:

As soon as Steve's truck pulled into the driveway this morning, Jerry and I began unloading the refrigerator. Steve and a helper then carried it to the garage, where it'll live for the duration. (That's the dishwasher, which we'll reinstall, behind it in the photo). I carted essential foodstuffs -- I love that word -- to the smaller fridge that lives downstairs, conveniently adjacent to our temporary kitchen, and shlepped items we probably won't be using for a while -- pancake syrup, whole wheat flour, exotic seeds and grains -- to the one in the garage. This sort of logistical triage is every bit as tiring as the multiple trips up and down stairs.

So much for prep; on to the remodel itself. How's that going? Well before noon, the old cabinets and some other fixtures were in the garage, awaiting pickup by the Rebuilding Center.

I forgot to post a "before" picture earlier of the beam that runs east-west through the kitchen, a remnant of an earlier remodel. The original owners of our house sacrificed a portion of their kitchen deck -- sort of similar to what we're doing -- and bumped out to create a dining area. The beam will go, and the ceiling will be raised to match the height of the rest of the room. This alteration, which we wouldn't have imagined was possible -- and thanks to Jack Barnes, our architect, for pointing out the potential -- is going to make a huge difference.

Note the darker yellow paint splotches on the wall. It would never have occured to me to paint the kitchen yellow -- I'm a blue-green person and still somewhat averse to red and orange in my personal environment -- but the people we bought the house from thought differently. Combined with the bright green floor, it made me smile every time I walked into the room, especially during our grim, gray winters. So we're sticking with yellow walls, though a darker shade to harmonize better with the new floor, cabinet and countertop colors.

Jer and I snuck into the construction zone while the guys were on lunch break. We're already down to the walls. The first photo was the stove area, the second one the sink. Amazing.