Next, The Living Room/Dining Room

Now I'm psyching myself up to work on the living room/dining room. I've taken input from several sources and gotten several good ideas. Nothing's really pinging for me yet, so I'm still circling this idea from every angle. My notion is that I want built-ins in between the LR and DR, and something matchy on the LR wall surrounding the fireplace.

Given all the maple and oak in the kitchen and fir everywhere else in the house, what wood to use is one piece of the puzzle, what style to use is another. I'm running out of steam (and budget) for high(er) end finishes. I like the thought of paint-grade white, but then I would be tempted to paint a lot of existing stuff too, which wouldn't be so painful to consider, except that I remember the process of stripping paint off trim years ago... Not just ANY trim but THIS TRIM... or actually, maybe my "childhood" home of my high school years in Portland, come to think of it. Anyway, having done that work so long ago makes it difficult to consider undoing it, in this manner now. But it's what's tempting me the strongest right now.

Not only that, I went into my den this evening and even though it's on the north side of my house, it felt very bright. I think it was because of the light bamboo flooring in there. Light flooring. Hm. I like the refinished fir upstairs. It's not as light as the bamboo, but it's much lighter than the present finish on the LR/DR floors. Definitely something to consider. Dang that fir it's so soft!!

10 Months Later...

Finally, I've put on my lower cabinet handles. Er, crap, make that mostly. I did the top row drawers eons ago (read "weeks"), and the cabinet doors and remaining drawers about a week ago, maybe a little more.

The more I tried to notice knobs and handles on doors and drawers everywhere I went, the more I saw that they were all centered. For some reason I was really resistant to that. And I noticed that cabinet handles for lower cabinet doors were pretty nearly always symmetrical to the upper cabinet door handles (that's a chicken and egg thing, I'm only saying they matched in the end).

So something in me snapped, and I pulled the trigger. I got my pencils and my measuring tools and my drill and my screwdriver and I put the dang things on. Can you tell whether the lower door handles are the same measure from the edges as the upper door handles? Can ya', huh? How about the lower drawers? :)

I'm a rebel, they're not just the same, but they're pretty dang close. It's like that time I dyed my hair, anybody else could barely tell the difference, but to me it looked a clownish compared to my natural hair color I was used to. I have the same feeling about make up, though I've worn it on occasion and truly enjoyed it (more often than not thanks to my cousin Leslie's handiwork).

Oh yeah, and I've skipped one cabinet that I'm thinking about doing differently. Don't ask me why, I guess I'm just not done thinking about it yet.

Drawers: the Third Option and Another Thing

So there's a third option, which is to put the drawer handle's 1/3 down the vertical dimension. I like it, but not so much for the top drawer, it just looks a little too high for such a small vertical span. These two pics show one image with 1/3 measures for all 3 drawers and one that's 1/3 for the 12 inch tall drawers and, well, a little closer to centered for the top drawer, but still high of center.

But the 'nother thing is, I happened to be at Lowe's this evening after coming up empty handed at Home Depot last night looking for handles or knobs for my bathroom vanity cabinet. I'm getting a little tired of bending over to the floor to grab cabinet doors by their bottoms... Anyway, I found a handle that I liked at Home Depot, but they only had one and I need two. (argh!)

Tonight I happened to be up north so stopped by Lowe's on the way home to check out their selection. I managed to find a couple of acceptable designs, or so I think, that will go okay with the faucet. I think that's all I have to worry about matching or clashing with. So I got those, then I looked at electrical--looking mostly for inspiration--and under cabinet lighting and tools and and... And then FINALLY it occurred to me to walk through their mock kitchens and see how they did their knobs. Every single drawer handle is centered. Huh. The door knobs/handles were all slightly farther from the edge in the vertical direction than they were in the horizontal dimension, actually jives pretty well with what I have. So that was interesting. But I still think I like the drawer handles slightly high of center...

Cabinet Hardware--Drawer Handles

So here's the other thing. Do I want the drawer handles to be a consistent distance from the top edge? Centered vertically on each drawer face? Or some proportion in between? Here are two test scenarios. One shows the handles a consistent distance from the top edge of the drawer face, the other shows them 5/8 of the height of the drawer face.

It surprises me, but I think I actually like the equal distance from the top better. At least in the pictures. Somehow, in real space, they look to high, make the drawers look bottom-heavy.

I need a tripod... No wait, I have a tripod. I need to use it.

Cabinet Hardware--Door Handles, Lower

I'm putting hardware on cabinets. I've sort of just started even though I'm kind of 1/3 done. I mounted all of the handles on the upper cabinets, and now I'm not sure how to place the handles on the lower cabinets, and same for the drawers.

So here are my choices. Note there's a higher and a lower option. One puts the handle as high as is practical on the door edge. The other is offset slightly lower, kind of less symmetric distances from the top and side. Each has it's appeal to me, but I haven't decided yet. So for now, I'm still mounting them temporarily for "testing" kind of purposes with stick-em putty stuff. So every time I go to open a lower cabinet door I pull the handle off. Sometimes they come off all of their own volition. I guess it's asking a little much of stick-em to hold on cabinet door handles.

So, I guess I'd have to say that one of the candidates is in the lead. I also have to admit that I'm actually considering a third option which is somewhere between the first two. That just sounds nutty to me, but as you can see I can rationalize overthinking pretty much ANYTHING.

These two shots show how the larger reveal matches the upper cabinets. But I think the fact that they're lowers means they look different anyway, so I may not need to worry about that symmetry problem. I'd really like them to be as high as I can aesthetically tolerate, though we're only talking about a difference of a half an inch here. I really don't want to drill any holes 'til I feel like I know I've chosen the option that I want. The larger reveal, the one that matches the uppers, seems like the safest option... Ugh, but I don't like it because it shows too much space!

We'll see how long this little puzzle entertains me.

Forgive Me For I Have Not Blogged

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!

Order Vanity, Check!

I ordered a vanity/sink base this morning and the top/sink to go with it. And I'll still get to work by 9. Whew!

I Should Be Asleep Right Now

I'm sick. Yesterday I was off work and took the opportunity to have a couple of contractors come to the house. One came and left in under a 5 minutes. He was just evaluating the situation and determining what needed to be done. The other was a plumber and he was LATE and he was here for HOURS (ka-ching!).

Today, I'm blogging while I should be in bed sleeping. But the workers sent by the first guy yesterday are here installing steel straps under the island countertop. I'm really glad to have this done sooner than later (of course, I thought this was what would be done yesterday), but I'd rather be sleeping than typing and listening to them work. ...Actually, it sounds like it may not be much longer now. Forgive me but I don't feel like taking their picture even though they're probably very photogenic young couple (maybe they even really are a couple?) and she's wearing a fun pink long pile hat. I'll take pictures of the work when they're done, and when I'm done napping.

As for the plumber yesterday. I now have kitchen sinks!! Yippie! Still to be done, install the dishwasher and the insta-hot (it's actually some other brand, but I'm not going to go look right now). That'll be the end of the plumbing in the kitchen.

Other stuff to do in the really near term:
wire electricity for the oven
buy/install and oven
install bathtub trim kit
buy a vanity/sink for the bathroom
install/mount cabinet hardware drawer and door pulls
install a threshold/transition for the step up to the bathroom
clean up the breaker box and re-mount the face plate
lights and switches
trim
take a bunch of crap to the dump

Late last night I went to finish up my taxes. I forgot that I had done them on my desktop machine at home, I was thinking that I had worked on them using something web based so they were on a server somewhere. About 2 months ago my desktop box stopped working completely. There's not so much as a flicker when I hit the power switch. So I got to re-do my taxes last night from the beginning. It wasn't that much, but it took me a while to put my hands on it all. I e-filed right at midnight. I'm unsure what to expect, but I hope to get an email from the government in the next couple of days.

Oy! I need to sleep!

The people are gone and the work for this particular task is done, and it's 10 a.m. Whew!

Here are some photos of the sinks and the underside/backside of the island.

The Money Shot

Ultimately I couldn't wait for them to finish. By their first estimate they should have finished between 6 and 6:30pm. At 7:30 Lara called and asked if they should hold dinner for me. I told her no. But then I asked how much longer 'til the countertops were finished and the lead guy told me about half an hour. I opted to sign the form and leave them to finish and lock the door behind them when they left, and I headed off to dinner. I returned to find it looking FABULOUS. Unfortunately there is a missing element. The overhang on the island is a little bit too long and requires some structural support, and that's missing. It's a little frustrating because I had to go back and forth with the sales person when I was doing the ordering and I paid an upcharge explicitly for the inclusion of steel strapping or ell brackets to support the overhang. Now on delivery they are not there. Aagh! Nearly there. But doesn't it look great!!?

Sinks, Cooktop, Backsplash

They're putting in the backsplash and mounting the sinks. They have yet to try dropping the cooktop in, but I don't think that'll be a problem. (fingers crossed)

Still Working

Dang it, the airborne dust and the flash are a bad combo. I'm sitting at my laptop, listening to the guys working on the countertops. I took some early pictures when they started. They're nearly done with all the horizontal stuff now I think, hopefully they'll be onto the backsplashes soon. I'm going to be late for dinner.

They're He-e-e-re!

Fineline Pacific staff just arrived to install my countertops. I'm so excited I could just about throw up. They say it'll take around 4 hours.

Yippie!

Plumbing and Caulking in the Bathroom

It was a good weekend of visiting and working. After spending weeks mulling over countertop options, with the help of my parents I finally got back to some hands on stuff, including revisiting my caulking skills improvement efforts.

It started out we were going to just try to get a toilet into the bathroom upstairs so that we didn't have to traipse down through the kitchen to the 1st floor 3/4 bath, especially at all hours of the night and states of undress. It doesn't normally bother me much, I can navigate this house in the dark. But it's a nice courtesy to my folks to forego that midnight adventure. Okay, it--and everything else--is just long overdue.

Since we were on the subject of plumbing, we also moved the water for the vanity back to the wall where it used to be. It was an ugly move, but it's done and the valves are in place now where I want them. Now I (still) need to buy a vanity.

It was a lifesaver having my folks here to help. I'd never installed a toilet before and that's a lesson I would have dropped fifty times over if I'd been left to do it myself. As it was we more or less destroyed the first wax ring we tried to mount and didn't think to buy an extra at the store. In all I think I took 5 trips to the hardware stores that day.

So we got in the (good) toilet (now I'm sorta shopping for a replacement for the other one which is functional but not elegant... inasmuch as a toilet can be elegant. I'm not sure other people use the word "elegant" the same way math people and coders do, but it's a pretty dang handy word. But I digress.) and we--that's a real loose use of the word "we" too, Dad did nearly all of the work but the shopping and clean up, but let's not let those go underestimated either. Remember I said I made 5 trips to the hardware store!--plumbed the as yet nonexistent bathroom vanity/sink. I was happy to call that good. But when I was at work today I got a call that they started caulking the shower corners (and 2 shirts and countless paper towels and my hands repeatedly) and installing the handle for it too. If I worked on it when I got home, it's possible I could shower upstairs in the morning...

Well, I did pretty much get to work on it when I got home. The caulk is not pretty (no coincidence there are no close ups here), but I think it'll work. I also took apart the shower handle to put an o-ring in order, but I'm still not sure I'll take a shower upstairs tomorrow. It's after midnight and my toiletries are all still downstairs. Plus I've got no curtain or window covering upstairs and the shower is visible from the neighbors' kitchen so... No.

And I shopped vanities on my way home and in the process found the exact same sinks that are included in Costco's granite countertops deal so I can more accurately compare prices. Blam! Take that. I'm still waiting for them to get back to me with a quote. I'm also hung up on corbels, but I'll probably just suck it up and use them. They don't seem as elegant as a cantilevered solution might be.

It's My Turn

I paid a little money for a lot of caulk tonight...
That sounds funny if you say it right

For a couple of weeks now, the tile has been done and it's up to just me now to get the corners caulked and the fixtures mounted so that I can use the shower and the tub.

TWO WEEKS and I only JUST BOUGHT the caulk I need. I feel like I can't wait for it to be done, but apparently I can.

I just got a bid back for the kitchen counters. Maybe that will come together more quickly. That's another task where my part is little more than reading and pen- lifting.

Put A Fork In It

I got home pretty late today. Csaba was still here at 7:30 putting in the last few tiles around the tub faucet. Tomorrow is "clean up and grout". Wo hoo!

Hocus Focus

Daily progress continues in the bathroom. I couldn't be pleaseder. Today Csaba finished the shower except for the cubby for the shampoo shelf thingy. And he started putting the ledge on the wall for the tub surround where, truly there should be bullnosed edge, but that's just not how the chips have fallen.

So time was of the essence for me to make a needed fix to the tub fixtures. Can you see what I did? I fixed the "fix" that my first tile-setting contractor did.

There's No Progress Like Daily Progress

The tile setter returned. I didn't see him at all today, but he did like he said he would and set up the wet saw in the bathroom where he was working. It cut out several runs of stairs to the front porch for each cut, but it made for tight quarters in the workspace. It looks to me like my bathroom was fairly well covered, well enough anyway for surfaces that should be able to tolerate getting a little wet sometime. Plus, it also looks like he got a good deal done.



The shower walls are nearly done just a few more cut tiles on adjacent to the floor on the south pony wall, tile in the inset shelf and we're golden, just the tub surround to finish. Awesome.

Tilesetting Resumes

Whew! I arrived home today to find a van at the curb. I didn't really panic, but I also arrived home to an open front door. Luckily by the time I got to the porch I saw my dog Henri inside. According to Csaba, the tile-setter, H got out twice today. It's tough to keep track of that dog. He never goes very far (lately anyway), but he doesn't tend to come back until he feels like it.

It feels a little like two steps forward, one step back as he took out one row of 3 tiles tile along floor on the back wall of the shower so that he can replace them with a set that matches what he's putting in. The new stuff will be more like two rows of half-tiles so that he can make up the difference between the one-tile-high row that was there and the > one-tile-high area that needs to be filled in the same line where the floor line drops for the shower drainage.

When he pulled the "old" tiles off they took some of the waterproof seal with them, so he had to re-apply that. That's the red goo on the wall there.

Anyway, Csaba will be back tomorrow and back at the shower walls. Yippie for that!

That Was Weird

I noticed the lock box was moved, but it was just a little, in fact, maybe I was just remembered it wrong (wrongly, incorrectly, dismembered it, er...). Anyway, MAYBE that means the contractor showed up today!

So I went inside and upstairs to the bathroom. Nope, no change.

Oh well. Note to self, call contractor in the morning. I'm frantically cleaning house--okay, not even that, I'm just picking up jetsam, mostly laundry and hucking it down the stairs to the basement where the W/D are, but other stuff too. I even managed to sweep before my friend arrived to walk the lake.

We walked the lake and had a little food and drink. My point here is that hours later I got back to the house and went to the bathroom, the other bathroom, and I noticed that the toilet seat was up. Now, I may leave the lid up on occasion, but the actual toilet seat, I'm pretty reliable when it comes to that, since I don't put that up in the first place unless I'm cleaning or puking and I would have remembered either one of those.

So someone has been here.

I wasn't totally freaked out or anything. But it's a little creepy when someone has been in your house, but their stated purpose has not been tended to at all. So that begs the question, is THAT the person who was here? I did change my combination on my lock box again just that morning, so presumably no one else would know it. I notice the back door is unlocked, but wait I did that myself after I got home...

No biggie. Later that evening I went down in the basement, getting back to some other cleaning up I was doing (just starting really, tip o the iceberg kinda' thing) over the weekend, plus starting that laundry I'd thrown down the stairs. As I got down there I noticed a lot of lights were on. Not typical me to leave them on, but then I did sort of stop in the middle of my crap sorting adventure last Sunday, went up for air and never went back down. So I don't think the contractor dude was down there. It's just that the creep factor/aura sort of thing has a lingering imprint on my mood. It's like what having ghosts would be like, if there were actual physical evidence.

So once again, I'm up 'til 1 A.M. doing nothing particularly useful. (Well there was that laundry and cleaning, whoopie for me!) I can blame the creep factor, or the coke I had at dinner, or really just the same old same old. Old habits die hard. And I had and 8 A.M. meeting to look forward to in the morning!

Tomorrow Noon

I received email from my new contractor for the bathroom tile-setting. They plan to start tomorrow noon. It still didn't sound CERTAIN, but at least they called me proactively. That's a (giant) step in the right direction.

Now I need a vanity! O crap, and a plumber.

Plumber: vanity and toilet, and finish shower and tub
Electrician: move vanity lighting, wire the switch for the radiant heat