Done.

Well it's done but we're still slowly getting everything back into the kitchen. Once we do, I'll post a bunch of nice pics of it in its finished state.

floor.

back splash.

No grout yet. It's just the tile stuck up there. The grout will be a medium grey...so it'll actually look similar to this.



That stuff on the floor is floor leveler. I guess we had a pretty big low spot, so they dumped this on to level it out before putting the floor down.



Our nook.



Stairs are done.



Close up of the floor.



Close up of the tile and photo realistic rendering I did of how I wanted the tile laid out.

granite.

The linoleum went in today too.



The edges will be finished off tomorrow.



The dudes got a surprise today. As you can see -- they were ready for it.



We had a drawer front that had a defect which we had replaced. Since they let us keep the old one, I thought it'd be cool to turn it into a nice doggie bowl holder. I bought the bowls and Bob built it for us for free. That was pretty cool of him! Even though it is completely unnecessary, it looks much neater than a bunch of bowls laying on the floor, and it actually matches the cabinets.

light rails, door & granite debacle.

This and the next few photos show the light rails, a piece of trim that runs under the upper cabinets to hide the under cabinet lights. We really didn't want to put these rails on at all because we liked the cleaner look, but I suppose it finishes it off more. If I were to do it all over again, I'd look for a more low profile under cabinet light so we wouldn't have to put this trim on. Just another thing to check off as a learning experience.









On the left is a small cabinet Bob built after we realized we had a little more space here than expected. It gives us a broom closet and a place for the doggie treats.



Doors are way more expensive than we imagined, unless you buy one off the shelf at a Home Depot type store (like we did.) And if you want anything different than the typical door we bought you have to special order it, which is insanely pricey. We looked all over and online and we couldn't beat this fiberglass door for $225. The funny thing is, Home Depot and Lowes stock about a million "fancy leaded glass doors" but don't offer any options if you just want simple windows. I guess more people like "fancy leaded glass" out there than something plain and simple.



This is primed.



This is painted. The storm door will go on next week. We spent a little more for a nicer storm door that has hideaway screens because I hate changing screens out.



This is a chunk of the granite that's going in on Monday but it's not the stuff we originally ordered. (I'll try to make this very long story as short as possible.)

We ordered our granite from Home Depot because it was on sale and we got 20% off, which ended up being about $58 a square foot. How it works at Home Depot is, you pay for it and then when your cabinets are installed you call the granite installers. They set a date to come out and measure. Once they do that, they set a date to install the stone. In this case, it was exactly 2 weeks after the measuring. Our floor and tile backsplash are going to be installed by a guy Bob recommended, but we are waiting for the granite before doing either. (We don't want the granite guys dragging or dropping stuff on our new floor and can't do the tile until the counter is in anyway.)

We went on vacation, and the granite was supposed to go in the day after we got back. When we returned we got a call from "Innovative Stone" the supplier to "Stoneworks," the local installers Home Depot. We were told our granite is on backorder and they hope to have an ETA later in the week. I called our installer (since I'd never talked to Innovative Stone before) and they said I had to call the supplier myself (which was annoying.) When I called them, they told me I had to call the installer! Frustrated, I called Home Depot to try and get to the bottom of things. In the meantime I called the supplier back and tried to see if they had another stone in stock or if they would at least consider upgrading our stone. I got a big fat "no" but I was finally able to get a guess of 96 hours until delivery, which meant Friday. The problem with not knowing the delivery date is I can't schedule my very busy tile and floor guy until I know when the counter will be installed.

I called the installer back to try and set a tentative install date for Monday just in case it came in on Friday..and if it didn't we'd just keep sliding the date until it arrived. They refused and said they don't schedule installs unless the stone is in stock, which is BS because I actually had a set install date even though my stone was not in stock. Why this is a problem is it means I'd have to wait around for the granite to show up, once they received it THEN they'd schedule an install, which could be up to a week after it arrives. Since the installer and supplier could not give me an answer or one ounce of customer service, I called Home Depot again, asking for help. In the meantime, I got a recommendation for a granite guy my boss had used who was local. He said I could have the granite installed in a week after measuring.

I called Home Depot back and said I want to cancel my order (which you aren't supposed to do after they've measured because they don't stock the stone. It's made to order.) He said "Let me call you back and see what I can do." Then I got a call from the regional manager of Innovative Stone, the supplier...who suddenly cared about my situation, offered me a stone upgrade and asked "How can I keep you as a customer." I told him the whole story and said it was too little too late. I had to call all around to try and get any information whatsoever and I was expected to just sit and take this...and it's not until I'm ready to walk that they care.

So I cancelled, we got our refund and I ordered new stone from Quality Stone in Cleveland: http://www.countertops-cleveland.com/ This was on a Tuesday. They measured on Wednesday and are installing it on Monday. Pretty cool.

I will say that the Home Depot department has been great with this and a few of the other problems that have popped up. They gave me no hassle when I wanted to cancel and actually tried to get the stone companies to do something for us. Home Depot even let us borrow a template from a sink on the shelf because the previous installer took ours with them.

progress.

We've been gone on vacation a week, so I've completely lost track of the number of days Bob's been working. Here's what we came home to. I've got more pics of things that've happened since these photos that I need to post. You can see the handles have been installed, wine rack hung and the dishwasher installed.



Here's the window all trimmed out now. We wanted to go with no trim on the windows at all, but because of the thickness of windows we bought, we unfortunately had to go with trim. They do match the other windows in the house though.



Nice little detail on the base molding which ends over the stairs.



More work on the stairs.

handles.

One of the things I was most looking forward to in this kitchen were the long horizontal handles. The problem is that all our doors are different widths, and I wanted the same amount to the right and left of the handle regardless of how wide the doors are.



We liked this style of handle and bought a few of sizes Home Depot stocks just to play around with at home. Even though this style handle comes in a bunch of lengths (special order) there still are only so many sizes. I stood at Home Depot for an hour trying to do math in my head and figure out what size handle should be purchased for what size door. I gave up when I priced the handle I thought might go on our 18 inch doors (the most common size in our kitchen.) When I found out it was $23 for one, I died a little inside (since I'd have to buy 17 of just these alone), gave up and went home.



After searching for hours on the internet, I found the site knobs4less.com which sold the exact same handles for way, way cheaper. They also had a similar brand called "House of Knobs" that looked the same, but was cheaper still. I was a afraid to buy these though, thinking they'd be crap, but luckily the site has consumer reviews and everyone seemed to like them. Since I'm posting this after we've already received the handles I can safely say - they're completely the same weight, look and feel of the others. I'm so glad I bought these.

Price wasn't the only factor. It was also the sizes offered by each particular company. Some offered a 13.23 inch handle, where others offered a 12 inch handle. Doesn't seem like a lot, but if I put a 12 inch handle on all my 18 inch doors (3 inches from the edge on each side), if the smaller and larger sizes aren't scaled proportionately, then I'm screwed when I try to put a 7 inch handle on a 9 inch door (1 inch from the edge on each side.) I had to play with the lengths in order to figure out which company had the closest sizes to what I needed. And the site only had things it metrics, so I had to find a converter online in order to get the right size in inches.

If you ever do this on your own, wait until you actually have your physical cabinets to measure because an 18 inch door actually might be 17.75 inches wide.



Once I figured out the brand I was buying, I created "handles" out of painter's tape. This allowed me to stick these strips onto all the cabinets to make sure I liked each size on each door.



I started with the 18 door since that was the most common.



I know it seems like a psycho thing to do this, but how else can you see what they'll look like. Check out those drawers in the background. The top drawer has the size I went with (a little too big) because the one below it looked weird ( a little too small.)



I also used the handles I bought at Home Depot to figure out where each handle would stop on these two doors. No matter what, these doors are going to hit each other, but if I bought the wrong length, they'd hit too early and we wouldn't be able to get into the cabinets. It's stuff like this you never think of when designing something. I have no idea how I could have unless I knew CAD or something.



Then there's this thing. This is called an "easy reach." It's one of those cabinets that opens like this, and then the entire thing pulls to the left. Because of this, there's no way I can put a handle on both doors. I played around with it and there's just no way because they hit each other. We opted to put just one handle on the door to the right.

Once all the handles arrived, I grouped them all and labeled them with letters like A, B, etc. Then I put a piece of tape on each door so Bob would know what handle to put where.

Day twenty- nuke it

(in Ryan's absence, his lovely and talented, not to mention bored, wife will update the blog)
I came home today to a wonderful surprise; the new microwave oven was installed. I think we got lucky that the stainless from GE matched the stainless from our other LG appliances. We heard the matching LG microwave was horrible, so we opted for the stainless GE oven hood/microwave. We got this puppy at sears on sale. They had some crazy microwaves that basically functioned like an Ipod, but Ryan quickly informed me that these were not in our budget. Oh, and it looks like Bob also installed all the shelves inside the cabinets


Behold the glory of my frozen meatloaf dinner!

day nineteen - it's a kitchen.

Val called me when she got home, excited saying "It finally feels like a kitchen." She was right. It's such a nice feeling, especially after the past two weeks. Having all the cabinets in boxes in the porch, and then loose all over the house really invaded our space. It's also been hot and muggy causing us to need the air conditioning on, so not being able to open the windows up hasn't helped much either.



It feels bigger than we thought it would. I was convinced that we were so used to the empty room, that we'd feel cramped as soon as we started hanging cabinets. The complete opposite happened. I know they always say that on those design shows, than an empty room looks smaller than a room with furniture in it. It's completely true.



Last week I got really anxious once the cabinets started going in. You start seeing weird little problems you didn't expect and all these small things you realize you'll just have to "live with." This started to bum me out and I felt that I had built up an unrealistic expectation about how well things would turn out. Then as the week progressed, I began to accept this as a fact...and relax.

To my surprise, when I walked into the kitchen tonight, I felt like "Holy crap. This thing IS actually turning out the way I'd hoped. It DOES feel the way I wanted it to feel when I walk in from the back door." It's such a relief.



One thing we never planned on or thought we needed, were under cabinet lighting. Bob sold us on the idea. Well, he sold me on the idea. Val was never really convinced. It was "gratuitous" as she likes to put it. I half agreed with her after making the decision to go with the lights. Both of us changed our mind once we saw them installed. It will be really useful when working on the counters and makes the kitchen look and feel better overall.