It's hard to believe it's only been a little over a month since I've blogged here. A lot has happened in that amount of time. Starting with the present and working backward. These first pics are of the bathroom vanity and sink. Note first that the water is on and the underbelly of the sink is DRY. Wohoo! When I took that picture the backsplash and sidesplash were just sitting there lookin' pretty, but now those are installed too--which just amounted to gluing them in place. I like to celebrate the small victories, even the very small victories.Before the vanity went into place there was a matter of moving all manner of wiring for the vanity light--that actually still isn't in yet--the outlet, and the switch for the cieling light/fan/heater, and then installing the in-set mirror and also painting (nice blue eh? It's bears an uncanny resemblance to the color I had/have in the hall. Mom actually painted over some patches in the hall with the bathroom paint, and while the color blends fairly well, that semi-gloss shine is a dead give away against the otherwise very matte finish)
Before working on the bathroom though, we struck hard at installing the kitchen appliances. Somehow when we did the rest of the wiring of the kitchen, I spaced the fact that there would need to be power to the cabinet that housed the oven. Running a wire might be pretty straightforward sometimes, but not in this case. There was only about a 1 foot cube that was at all mysterious, but it was a doozy. We drilled a good-sized, like an inch and a half or 2-inch diameter hole through the back of the cabinet into the wall cavity. Somehow that hole ended up being what seemed like just under 6" deep before we hit the void inside the wall. Then we tried to cross that telescope with a 5/8 inch wormhole from the basement through about 4 inches of material because of the angle we tried to make through the flooring and sublfoor so as not to drill through a double joist from the underside. Sheesh! I'm still not quite sure how we missed it the first time and the second time, but with the third hole when we threaded the wire up it it came up right dead center of the eye of the needle upstairs in the cabinet. What a relief. I still have that swiss cheese to fill up, but at least the wiring is complete (nearly).
We put a vent to the 2nd floor bathroom toilet that seemed to be missing, guessing by the gurgling sound of a flush. It took some elbow grease but we managed to get a T joint and two flexible rubber "boots" my dad called them but Lowe's called them something else, anyway, we got 'em all in there in a straight length of 3" (or was it 2.5"?) drain pipe by making an opening in the kitchen ceiling just in front of the refrigerator. Having succeeded at that we fed a 1.5" vent pipe from there through the stub wall in the upstairs bathroom that obscures the toilet from the bathroom entry.
But before that even, we hooked up the cooktop, my Dad and I... come to think of it that was mostly Dad's doing except for my several trips to the hardware stores. Dad built a plug for the cooktop which required also changing the wiring to the panel inside the cooktop from the aluminum that was there, to copper. This last picture (O the glare! Not my best photography thank you very much.) is of the panel inside the underside of the cooktop.Still there are some niggling things that remain to be completed.
In order for the dishwasher (not pictured) to truly be finished, I need to take it back out, which may well mean removing the electrical and water hookups, in order to epoxy some brackets to the underside of the granite countertop to screw the dishwasher clips too. It's amazing how much trouble it was to find where/how to do this in the instructions. I only knew it (might) need to be done because the countertop installer supplied the brackets, screws and epoxy for the purpose. But nowhere in the instructions was there mention of it, even though there were a couple of screws included with the instructions that had no designated purpose therein. So I went looking online for more generic DW installation instructions. What the heck, I even went to the Maytag site. The instructions I found there looked suspiciously familiar, only in frame 24 (I think it was, there were I think 36 steps in all) of the scantily annotated picture instructions, there was an inset that showed how to bend the clips so that they essentially line up with the screws for the sound-muffling baffle kinda weather-strippy thingy (I believe "soundproofing" is too strong a word in this case, and I wouldn't want to oversell it) around the face of the dishwasher.
That'll be a pain in the arse to get done, but pretty straightforward. There's still a risk that I'll attempt the task by sliding the dishwasher out just enough to slide the brackets into place, but there's a (HIGH) risk that I won't be able to place the brackets properly without getting the thing completely out of the way. We'll see what happens with that.
KI Pendant lights in the kitchen by the west wall windows
KI Face plate on the electric supply box in the oven cabinet
KI Cabinet trim
BA Bathtub faucet trim
BA Threshhold
A little more sheetrock and a whole lotta preppin' and paintin'
Whew! Happy Thanksgiving!
