!%$#%$@# Grout

So.

Our grout FINALLY got delivered, and we finally had a night to grout the floor.

We read the directions meticulously, added the exact amount of water, stirred in the grout as directed, waited the allotted time before remixing as called for...

and ended up with some variety of grout soup. An utterly useless slurry.

*&%^&*^%!

The bag had called for 5 pints of water. So we went to the manufacturer's website for an faq section on grout soup, and THERE the directions called for 4 pints of water, with the allowance of an additional pint only if necessary.

ONLY IF NECESSARY.

We now know the fifth pint was reeeeeally not necessary.

So we had to go back to Home Depot (who, may I remind you, does not stock this particular color of grout) to re-special order more grout.

Only no one was there to help.

We will try again today.

And maybe by the year 2525 we will have our kitchen floor finished.

I make no guarantees.

Nothing in our house is level.

This goes for the hearth as well.  

Of course.

When we ripped up the stamped concrete, we found another layer of concrete underneath.  We need to build up this recessed area so when we lay the tiles (which match the kitchen floor) they are level and flush with the base of the firebox.  To do this, we will stack layers of plywood, on top of which will go the wonderboard, and then the tile.  But we can't do any of that until we create a level base for the plywood.

We were originally going to use self-leveling underlayment, but after doing some research we figured out we could just use some mortar.  So we layed some into the "deep" sections and tried to level it off the best we could.

Now our hearth looks like this:

We put the mortar base down last night, and we can't do anything until it dries.

So now we wait.

Bye bye brick.

So this is our fireplace, complete with dirty, ugly old brick and paleolithic era sconces.  It's one redeeming quality is the mantle.  Eventually, even the mantle will be replaced, but for now, it serves us just fine.



Anyway, we both hate the brick. Eventually we are going to reface the fireplace surround with stacked stone, but for now we just decided to paint it.




Ta da! We painted it a light grey (Timberwolf Grey, or something like that, if you ask Behr) which matches our silvery grey curtains that are opposite the fireplace. It really makes the room feel a lot brighter.



These sconces will be gone soon hopefully. Here's one in all it's broken falling down glory.



The next part of this project was to redo the hearth. I mean look at it. It's stamped concrete that is very dirty and stained. Not to mention the fact that the front is way lower than the back.




It had to go.  We thought it was one solid piece of concrete, but lucky for us, it came up in two parts.

Joe loves when I take pictures of him while he is carrying heavy objects.  He doesn't mind standing there at all.  :)

So this is how we left the hearth.

One step at a time.

*&%$$#!!@&*

Blogger is my enemy.

I swear I keep trying to catch you up on what Joe and I have been up to lately.

Every time I try to upload any pics, it just freezes.

Sigh. 

I will keep trying.

That Home Depot.

So Home Depot prides themselves on selling like a jillion different colors of grout.

What they don't tell you is that they only carry like a handful of said colors.

Pesky little detail.  Since we, of course, wanted a color they did not stock,  we had to special order it.  It was supposed to get delivered to the store today, but when we went to see if it was there, they told us we had to wait for them to call us before we could go pick it up.

?

Fine.  So we have been at a tiny bit of a standstill where the kitchen is concerned.  That did not stop us from starting a project in the living room....

Lights!

Somewhere in this timeline, we got lights in the kitchen! I'm sorry I haven't managed to post all of this in order, but as you can tell my the series of house-related posts, I have been damn busy.

A few weeks ago, our electrician was finally able to hook up the brand new electrical that ran from the kitchen to the panel in the basement. New plugs, new switches, and most importantly, new lights! Pretty blue glass pendants and fancy under cabinet lights.

The under cabinet lights have sort of given us a lot of problems. Two of them malfunctioned immediately after they were installed. One more just had the same malfunction recently. Boo. But for the most part we love them, and they really add a nice touch to the kitchen.

The electrician only installed two pendant lights, at our request, since we didn't want to worry about hitting them as we installed the remained crown molding. Yesterday my dad and I hung the rest of them, so now our kitchen is nice and bright.

Woo hoo!

So here's the dramatic dark shot of one of our pendant lights.



And here's what they look like when you can actually see them. :)



I didn't take any shots of the under cabinet lights because they don't really look like anything in pictures.

Who knew our plates were so big?

Ha. I am laughing already as I type this post. I can't help it really. This story makes Joe laugh, too, but most other people just think we're nuts.

The one thing Joe really wanted in the kitchen was one of those open cabinets that you store your dishes in. So we installed one opposite the dishwasher where it would make Joe happy, but I wouldn't have to look at it as I initially walked into the kitchen (I think they are little too country looking).

We initially installed the cabinet with no problem. Or at least, we didn't think there was a problem...until I went to install the dowels that hold the plates up. They only work in one direction...not the direction we had the cabinet hung. We had it upside down. This meant the dowels, instead of resting securely in place, sort of just loosely sat in the bottom support and just flopped around.

As annoying as this was, it was really good that I figured it out when I did, because at that time- before the molding and the faux panel that later hid the joint on the side of the cabinet- it wasn't a big deal to take the cabinet down and flip it over.

Fast forward to when all the cabinets are hung and almost all of the molding is done, but before we have hardware...

Joe and I started unpacking our kitchen supplies from the attic and the dining room and putting them away in the kitchen where they belonged. We get to the dishes with Joe standing behind me, I attempt to put the first dish into Joe's fancy rack.

ATTEMPT.

I say this because as I tried to put the dish into the rack, it got stuck between the supports that hold the dowels. Our dishes are too tall to fit into the rack.



Joe and I looked at each other...looked at the dish...looked at each other again...and died laughing. We laughed so hard we cried. I almost dropped the dish. If either of us had been drinking milk, it would have shot out of our nose. It was the sort of rediculous last straw that could send an otherwise normal person off the deep end. Just one more exhibit of Murphy's Law, come to curse our shiny new, increasingly dysfunctional kitchen.

For now we just decided to put the bread plates in the rack.



Maybe some day we will go buy new dishes that fit in the rack. Or maybe I will dismantle the dowel supports and modify them to accept our current dishes.

But for now, it just makes us laugh. Really hard.

Shiny Hardware

There were several days during which we had food and supplies in our cabinets, but no way to open the cabinets because we had not yet installed the hardware. :) On most of the cabinets you could just grab the bottom edge and pry the door open. But there was one cabinet on which this method failed...on this particular cabinet, you had to thump on the edge with your fist and try to bounce the door open enough to catch it with your other hand. Ha. This just happened to be the cabinet in which we originally kept the snack food. A very effective dieting measure, I assure you.

But since then we bought a nifty little plastic jig and installed all of the hardware. Well, almost all. There are still two drawers and a pantry that have no handles. But we'll get there. :)

I forgot about the faucet!

Our faucet.



It's beautiful and shiny and elegant and when our plumber went to install it, an improperly soldered factory joint cracked apart.

:P

We had to return it to home depot and have them exchange it for us with the company who makes it. Just one more thing in the kitchen that went wrong. Did I mention that when we initially had the faucet installed (pre-joint breakage) we figured out that the style of handle that is on the faucet does not fit between the faucet body and our back splash? Right. But we had to make an even exchange, so now that we have the new, unbroken faucet, we have to try to contact the manufacturer to see if they will let us exchange our handle for a different handle that is compatible with our faucet and will fit in the allotted space. We know they make one that will work for us, but we have no idea how nice their customer service is. We shall see.

Anyway, we didn't have to wait for our plumber to come back, because my dad helped me install the faucet yesterday (Saturday). Yay for running water in the kitchen!!!

Here's a close-up of the sprayer. Normally I don't like sprayers, because they always seem to be made of cheap plastic and they don't have enough weight to them to counteract the twisting force of the hose that attaches them. But this sprayer is nice and heavy and you don't have to fight the hose at all.



If you're following the timeline of this remodel, you will notice that the faucet was finally installed...and we tiled the kitchen like three hours later. We finally have running water in the kitchen, for the first time in over a year, and we can't even get to it because we cant walk on the tile. It's really enough to make a person crazy, but Joe and I are so far into this project, and have hit SO many snags, that at this point we just laugh. It's better that way. :)

Montauk Black Brazilian Slate

That is what we installed in the kitchen. 12x12 tiles that vary slightly in texture, but are mostly even. So far we have only installed the tiles which did not need to be cut to fit in place. We borrowed a wet tile saw from our plumber, but Joe refuses to let me set it up in the house. We just started laying the tile on Saturday and we couldn't walk on it today because the thinset (mortar) needs 24 hours to set up before you can walk on it or grout. Right now (11pm-ish) is 24 hours, but I'm pretty sure our neighbors would not like us very much if we started sawing tiles in the driveway right about now. :) So hopefully tomorrow we will be able to get all the tiles cut before the sun goes down, and then come in and install them. Another 24 hours later, we will be able to grout the entire kitchen.

I can't wait. Joe and I spent today dancing around the edges of the kitchen in the untiled spots, trying to get the toaster oven, or (more importantly) the oreos. :) It will be nice to walk across the kitchen in a straight line.

Here they are...the full tiles we installed, and the four out of the billion little spacers maintaining the width of the grout lines.

Wonderboard!

For those of you who don't have any idea what I'm talking about, wonderboard is a cement board underlayment which is installed under tile to provide rigidity.

It is made of cement. But it really smells A LOT like Play-Doh. :)

To install it, you simple cut it to shape, lay it out on the floor and screw it to the floor with a million screws. Yes, a million.



Look how excited Joe is. :)



Generally you would also use some sort of mortar under the wonderboard, but we are installing this tile onto a pre-existing hardwood floor. If we used mortar, the wood floor would absorb the water in the mortar and probably warp. As the wood dried out, it would then try to "un-warp" to it's original shape and this would drastically increase the chances of the grout between the tiles cracking. We do not want that! So no mortar in this particular application.

For those of you who ever want to do this yourself, it goes much quicker as a two person operation. One person can go around and get the screws started by tapping them into the surface of the wonderboard with a hammer in a six inch grid.





The second person can then go around with a drill and screw them all in the rest of the way.



Wear work gloves if you have them, because unless you use a drill full time every day, you are probably going to get blisters. We did.

The funniest thing was when Otter walked across the wonderboard...it creaks slightly when it is first layed down. He would take a step and hear the creaking, and get all freaked out. His ears would go back and he would freeze in place. Then he would take another step and have the exact same reaction. I don't think he ever really figured out what was going on, but whenever he walked across the wonderboard he would try to tiptoe to prevent the creaking noise. It was hilarious.

It stayed like this for a few days before we were able to tile.

Crown Molding is not my friend

We finally finished installing all of the crown molding on our cabinets. It took several weekends and oodles of intestinal fortitude. But it's done. We really wanted to quit several times.

I was the one taking all of the measurements and physically installing the pieces of molding. Joe handed me things while I was up on the ladder, and helped me out with some of the cutting. It should have been fairly cut and dry, but when you are trying to install molding in 45 and 90 degree angles, and the corners with which you are dealing are anything but 45 or 90 degrees, it makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. I'm not exaggerating either. Not even a little bit.

And the corners like these? The 22.5 degree angles or whatever they were? The bane of my existence.



Oh, yeah, and did I mention that the profile we established for the tops of the cabinets consisted of five different pieces of molding??? Yeah. We started by building what would be the center (top to bottom) of each piece. To do this we had to cut a length of 1x6 as well as an equal length of dentil molding and nail them together. To the back of this created piece, we had to nail a strip of thin stock which would provide us with a surface into which we could nail the next piece of molding which was brick. (Brick is typically used around doorways, and not on cabinets, but the profile was jut what we were looking for, so we didn't really care.) The brick had to be cut slight shorter to allow for the difference in thickness between the different pieces of molding. Once we had these four pieces assembled, we would nail them to the strips of stock we had previously nailed to the tops of the cabinets. Have I lost you yet? Once we had an entire bank of cabinets fitted with these pieces of molding, we went back to install the final piece, which was traditional crown molding. To make matters more challenging, the 1x6, dentil, and crown were all pre-finished to match our cabinets. This meant that we only had a certain amount available. If we made more mistakes than we had planned for when ordering our molding, we would have had to special order additional pieces and wait four weeks for them to arrive. :| No pressure. The brick was an after thought...we originally thought the molding would reach all the way to the ceiling...but since the ceiling was not remotely level, and the cabinets were PERFECTLY level, the distance between the cabinets and the ceiling varied quite a bit in some areas. The brick was added to ensure there would be no huge gaps at the ceiling. Unfortunately, the brick is only primed, and we now have to go back and paint it all. There is an additional piece we had purchased to paint the same color as our walls and nail to a flat area on the face of the crown, but now we think we might like the molding without that extra piece. We will decide later. Maybe.

The best part about the whole molding-installation debacle was the fact that I got to use the brad nailer Joe had gotten me for Christmas. I LOVE it. I want to put brads in everything. And I figured out that if you disable the safety with your finger, you can shoot brads across the kitchen! Not that I did, though, of course. ;)

Most of the brad holes have been filled in but I still have to fix some small gaps, and caulk the joint where the molding meets the ceiling. The gaps were mostly caused by the fact that the molding is straight, and the walls and ceilings in our 78 year old house are not, so they should be no problem to touch up. Then, with a coat of paint on the brick, we will be done!



Oh, and we also installed triple bead molding along the bottom of each cabinet. That was not nearly as hard or time comsuming.

Countertops!

We finally have countertops! Yee ha!

They are Silestone countertops and they look awesome! They are an awesome blue color, called Stellar Marine, and they have little flecks of mirror in them so when you walk by, you see a zillion little sparkles!!






The color you see in these photos isn't really accurate...in real life they are a dark royal, almost navy. I love them! They are rock star countertops!

We finally got to open all of those boxes...

The cabinets were finally freed from the boxes, and let loose from the dining room they had called home since November.

I don't have any pictures of them actually being hung, but here are the results...

The two cabinets to the far left of this photo were the first ones we hung.

And then rehung, since we mildly screwed up the filler that we put between the cabinets and the wall. :) Once we got that situated, we did the entire wall to the right. By the time we finished that night, nothing was quite straight or flush, so the next night was dedicated to minor adjustments ensuring all of the faces of the cabinets shared the same plane, and all were plumb and level. See that four foot level waaay above the fridge??? It got a LOT of use. The old busted fridge that came with the house looks so tiny and pathetic in the space allotted for the new fridge!



This is the view as you walk into the kitchen from the dining room. That cabinet you see all the way on the bottom left is a mixer stand cabinet. That means my kitchenaid mixer gets to live in that cabinet, and will stay plugged into an outlet built into the wall behind it. When the cabinet is open, the shelf the mixer is on swings out and up and locks into place. Woo hoo! This is my favorite cabinet in the whole kitchen! I can't wait to use my mixer!



This is the view as you walk into the kitchen from the foyer. (Again, to the bottom left is the mixer stand cabinet.) Those giant spaces on the bottom are where our oven and dishwasher will be. That's right, I said dishwasher. Since Joe and I have lived together, he has been the dishwasher. I promised him a long time ago that when we bought a house, I would buy him a brand new shiny dishwasher. I kept my word, and the dishwasher is in the dining room, waiting to be installed. Joe, say goodbye to dish pan hands!



Here's Joe, standing by our sink cabinet. The top of the front should have a little door that opens out with trays inside to hold sponges and stuff. Unfortunately, the screws holding it on weren't doing their jobs and we had to take that piece off so we can fix the holes that screws have to fit into.



I wish those loose screws were our biggest setback...

What you should see to Joe's left, I have cleverly cropped out. That's because there are no cabinets there. There was a measuring snafu between us and Home Depot and the cabinets we had for that space did not fit. Long story short, we have to reframe, re-sheetrock, re-prime, and re-paint the wall around the door that leads to the basement so it will add 3 inches to the wall that somehow became too short for the cabinets we already have.

Sigh. The adventures you face when remodeling your own house.

Setbacks and snafus aside, the kitchen is finally coming together. There is still molding to be installed, not to mention many shiny handles. Then we have to get the countertop installed. We have ordered a sparkly blue Silestone countertop and included in the price is installation. A break for us. :)

Somewhere in there we also have to tile the floor and purchase new appliances.

But we'll get there. And I'll post pictures!

Into every life a little paint must splatter.

Before you paint you must prime. And we did, like good little house painters. We are old hat at this, since before we moved in, we primed and painted every room in the house, barring those slated for remodeling.

We primed the entire kitchen.



When it came to painting, we very carefully cut in and painted edges and areas that would remain exposed after cabinet installation.



Where cabinets were to be installed, we did not paint.



The color is called rolling hills, and looks very different in person.



Joe and I are happy with the color...it looks good with the colors in the adjoining rooms, and the contrast between the white ceiling and green walls is very crisp.



Now we were ready to install the cabinets....

and TAPE! and MUD! and TAPE!

For those of you who have ever hung sheetrock, you know that, while hanging it can be a pain in the ass, taping it and slathering the walls with mud is an even less desirable task.

First, you tape and mud the seams. (By "mud" by the way, I mean joint compound, and enough of it to build a very small fort.

Joe tackled one wall, not looking very excited.



My dad started on the ceiling.



I think the smell of the compound went to Joe's head... ;)



My mom tackled everything she could reach. I'm not quite sure why she was upside down...



I actually spent that day hanging strips of sheetrock to cover the bottom most six inches of all the walls, since sheetrock comes in 4'x8' sheets, and our ceilings are 8 1/2' high. I also spent much time applying tape and mud, though, being the photographer, there is no evidence of this.



Every seam and every screw hole had to be taped. Or covered in joint compound. Or both.



That's EVERY seam, and EVERY screw hole. There were a lot.



What you see here in one post, actually took abut two weeks in real time. That's because when the mud is dry, you have to go around and sand all of those previously mentioned seams and screw holes to a very smooth finish. Not so bad. Except then you have to apply a wider, smoother, second coat of mud, and again, wait for it to dry. Then, yup...you guessed it, sand it to a very smooth finish. Finally, (and do you see a pattern here?) you have to go around and apply a third, watered-down coat very nicely and super smoothly and wait some more for it to dry. Then, one last round of sanding to what kind of finish? Class? Super smooth! Yes!

This, by the way, makes a giant mess. The result mimics what you would expect to see if you decided to dump a container of baby powder in front of a very high powered fan.

We were covered in sheet rock dust just about every night for a week and a half. Joe did most of the ceiling, working mostly right over his head, and this was the result.



When working, always wear safety goggles, so you, too, can take a picture just like this!



I was working on the walls, and therefore managed to stay a little cleaner than Joe.



My feet got the brunt of it. My sheetrock version of a Teva tan.



This got us ready to prime and paint the whole kitchen.

You guessed it...that's for another post.