Our New Kitchen

• By: Mo Morrissey
• On: 09/11/2008 16:08:44
• In: Personal
• Comments: 5

So far, our kitchen renovation has gone smoothly – as long as you don’t count such things as budget overages as anything other than de rigueur. This is largely because we haven’t done anything yet. Okay, we’ve stripped off most of the wall paper and found some interesting things with that, but otherwise we’ve just kind of been waiting. That waiting stops today.

Okay, it really started last night.

Our contractor came this morning to start ripping the place apart – the cabinetry comes Monday…sometime. They give you a 4-hour window for delivery. Spend $20 on a pizza, get 20 minutes. Take a second mortgage out to renovate and they have you rot on the vine for 4 hours. Worst, I can imagine the window we’ll get will be in the middle of the day such that nothing else of value can be accomplished.

At any rate, the actual fun began last night as we have to move the pots, pans and assorted other sundry items. We have had some good preliminary fun though – most recently Tuesday night.

We’ve been working with one of the box stores’ kitchen consultants to build our space. While we were initially designing our kitchen, we noticed one of the displays had 3 pendant lights that were marked for clearance – marked down from $45 each to $15.98. We said we wanted them, but alas they were the last 3 in the store. Needless to say, anything out of the ordinary tosses everyone into a tizzy and it wasn’t until Tuesday that we could pick them up.

So, we went to the kitchen department to pick them up and were told we just had to check out at Customer Service. Well, customer service couldn’t find them on the paid order, yadda yadda yadda. To make a long story short, we were there for 45-minutes sorting this latest disaster out. They couldn’t find the SKU numbers and they’re part of inventory, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I finally told the store manager that I understood his problem, but that it was his problem and that it seemed to me that if it was a problem it should have been taken care of in the previous couple of weeks, that we’d been there for 45-minutes and at this point I had a 3-year old who needed to get to bed. Mrs. Mo explained that we’d just leave the pendants, and come back to return the fixtures we had just bought and buy others elsewhere.

Now, it took this for the manager to find religion. “They’re beautiful lamps,” says he. “Yes, we know, that’s why we wanted to buy them in the first place…we need to go now.” “But they’re beautiful…” We know, this point isn’t up for debate. We get it. We agree. “Okay, look, I’ll just make up a SKU number and I’ll deal with it later.” Ah ha! It only took ¾ of an hour, but he finally developed a leadership gene. He instructed the cashier to use some code and ring $5 each. I was fine with $15.98, but I’ll take $5. When she asked him again how much – she was busy banging in his fabricated SKU number – he was so flustered that he said $1. So, after about 55-minutes, we bagged $150 of lighting for $3, plus the state mandated sales tax.

Last night we moved – as mentioned earlier – all our crap out of the kitchen. Man, I like to think we’re reasonably neat, clean folks, but some of the funkiness coming out of those cabinets… It’s funny because when you start in on a project like this, you start to find these weird shortcuts others have taken along the way.

I moved the refrigerator to find that the pine flooring underneath had not been urethaned. Why? How much more effort would it have taken to urethane the 3x3 square where the fridge would sit?

Now, I used to own a house built in 1840 and I used the very same wall paper as that which was on, for the lack of a better description, an accent wall in our kitchen to cover a bunch of sins of the past – cracks in the horse hair plaster, etc. Over the past few years I’ve on occasion wondered what sin was being covered up – ours is a 20 year old house after all, but you only use that paper to cover sins. I now knew what sin was being covered. 

When I moved the fridge, I noticed a hole in the wall paper. Since I’m taking the wall paper down, I didn’t think anything of punching a further hole into it…but then I realized what I had uncovered. Seems the sewer pipe from the bathroom upstairs runs down through the wall – which we knew – but what we didn’t know was that the wall paper was hiding the fact that the sewer pipe had not been fully enclosed in the wall.

And while on the subject of wallpaper, I found some interesting things out.  As I was taking the wallpaper down, I noticed that whomever had put it up did a really nice job of prep work, having actually painted the sheet rock underneath to protect the surface.  I was duly impressed....until I got to the ceiling level when I realized that they had prepared the wall RIGHT OVER an existing border....which made it even more difficult to get off.  If it's not one thing it's another in this house.  How does a 20 year old house (20 years of which we have lived here 5 1/2) have so much half assed stuff in it?


Above the existing cabinets, there is this strange boxed in area which has the effect of reducing the height of the ceiling to floor. Our guy said it was probably hollow and that he would take it down for the new cabinets. After having discovered the exposed sewer pipe, I was a tad hesitant to allow this to happen, but he knows best. As it happened, he did know best – it was hallow.

How do I know that? He called me to let me know that they had taken it down…but…it was fully a steel frame, and that it was designed simply to hold the cabinets. He was quite impressed at the craftsmanship, actually. Great. The one thing in the flipping house that wasn’t done half-assed is in the way and is being demoed. Now my real concern is that absent that encasement, the new cabinets will all come apart because there is no real support holding them up. We’ll see how that goes.  In this picture you can see the sewer pipe AND the funky boxed in space above the cabinets. 

By the end of this thing, we SHOULD have a beautiful new, contemporary kitchen. Where what existed – before today – was an odd sort of collection of starter cabinets and an antique stove, we’re going with the granite, stainless steel, wainscoting look.

Here's a shot of the kitchen as it is now - as seen facing the stove:




Here's what the layout will be:


 
And here's what the imagined kitchen will look like from about the same angle as the picture of what it currently looks like:



For sure, those stools running along that island will be a little more tasteful and won't be the only seating area - the perspective of the rendering would have you standing in the eating/seating area of the new kitchen. If you're trying to figure out where you are in the schematic/layout (second picture), if you look at it right to left, you would be standing in the right hand side looking toward the left.

The cabinets we chose are something called Shennendoah Charleston:



And the granite countertop is called "Uba tuba" - how can you not smile when saying "Ubatuba"?  It looks like this:



Now, my men Felber and Sully have both warned me about the perils of taking on a kitchen remodel. You’d think I’d listen. I need to tell you guys right now, I hear you and I get it.  This is all for now.  Much to do...I'll update this with a picture of today's demolition a little later.

Here's what the sink looked like when I left for work today (sans the crap on the counter, that is):


And here's what it looked like when I got home:



If you click the links below, you can see larger renditions of the pictures shown here.