Saturday, June 12, 2010

Rehab 4470 - The Kitchen Is Done

I’ve been remiss lately in posting our progress to the blog. With travel and so much time away over the past few months seems like there’s not much free time. However we have made great progress on the entire house will the tile and hardwood completed – yahoo for my back! The kitchen has turned out really nice and we just have a little plumbing to complete in the next few days to finish it off.

I still question ripping up the 12 x 12 tile and putting in the 18 x 18 tile. It was a lot work. The new tile however turned out great and installation was easier than the last job even though the floors had bits of old grout even though we basically jack hammered the old floor out.

Mark did a great job on the cabinet installation and claims he’ll beat any bid. So if you need a cabinet guy I’d suggest you give him a call. As much as I would have liked to try to install them myself this time when there’s a guy like Mark I can focus on stuff that really needs to get done. He also did both bathroom vanities. Mark can be reached at 941-232-5631.
Granite from Johny exceeded our expectations and looks great. We had the same granite installed in the bathrooms. The large slab concept we added where we removed the wall turned out great and gave the desired effect we were looking for. We do regret not installing a couple of hanging lights over the large slab.  Check a previous blog for Johny's contact info.

Lou did marvels with the electric as always. Even he questioned what some of the wires were for when he saw the mess when we took down the side wall between the kitchen and the dining room. It was just a matter of moving the switches to adjacent walls and running new wire down the pillar that ran to ceiling. With vaulted ceiling there was not too much room to work in for Lou. He does great work at a fair price.  Send me a note if you need an electrician

We opted not to install a granite backsplash and tiled the backsplash with sheets of 2” travertine looking tiles. We found 12 x 12 sheets at Lowes on Clearance for around $3.50 / sheet. They fit almost perfectly and we used the same grout we used for the floor. Jan did all the grouting and switched out all the electric receptacles (great job honey – now I gotta teach you how to lay tile! I’ll stick to laying wood). We also reused the old under counter lights and just had to replace the light bulbs so all the light colors looked the same. The new bulbs made by GE for kitchens and baths actually bring out the backsplash color quite a bit.

Appliances were another story. After Lowes delivered a white stove with the stainless frig, dishwasher and microwave they delivered a stainless steel stove that did not work. Turns out it was discontinued and they had no others. They actually tried to get us to pay more – their argument was they had to give us a better stove because they had none of the ones we ordered. My argument was I wasn’t going to live there and didn’t care how nice it was. They finally delivered a current year model that matched all the others appliances – needless to say we got an $850 stove for $500. I almost want to replace our Kitchenaid unit at home it’s so nice. Give it to Lowes – they made it right as they always do.

A few more weekends of small stuff and this place is ready to be on the market!