Where’s one if the reasons i went with this general contractor is that i couldn’t find an electrician who was willing to schedule me at all.
We decided to do a bunch of stuff at once, and make it a general contractor job, but the things at the top of my list are mostly stuff a decent electrician could have done. (Looking at how much work it was to do the under cabinet lights, that couldn’t have been done well without a lot of other work.)
I’m in Michigan and what I will need is an awesome plumber rec, anticipating a complete house repipe in the next few years. From galvanized to pex.
Our neighbor recently sold their house to a rental company who lists it on Airbnb. They hired some questionable characters to install a steel roof. For weeks they’d do a bit of work here and there hang out at the house, then quit and go back home to Detroit. A few weeks ago they were shoveling snow off the roof preparing to go at it again. We were walking by and heard someone yelling bloody murder and saw this big middle aged dude in a harness dangling over the side of the roof. Arms and legs flailing. Shocked we were about to assist when a much older dude jumps out of the idling parked truck and goes to get him down. They lowered him and about 5 ft from the ground they let him drop ooof.
Such a spectacle. Well those guys pulled the plug on the job and kept the large down payment and ghosted the owners. So for the last several weeks there had been all this roofing underlainment, getting torn and blasted by wind and flapping in the breeze. Power cords left up there and trash in the yard. Looked like crap. Finally they got a real roofing company out there and in one day they applied new shingles over the old.
:: bump ::
We are getting to the tail end here! The tile was installed yesterday, and the painter was back today for touchups and to clean up some paint that whoever painted (very sloppily) before we bought the house got all over the wood trim. Tomorrow will be plumbing hookup and grouting. There was a minor communication kerfluffle between the cabinet/countertop vendor and our contractor; the contractor had lef the dishwasher in its final location so that the countertop people would know where to locate holes for the dishwasher installation clips to be screwed in. But the cabinet/countertop guy overlooked the clips and assumed that the dishwasher needed to be reinstalled by attaching it to the cabinets on either side, which he said is standard now for newer dishwashers (ours is only 3 - 4 years old). He said that current practice is not to drill holes into the countertop because of the risk that the vibration from the dishwasher will create cracks over time, which makes sense, but we were in a bit of a standoff about who was going to remedy the issue, and how. In the end, Tom_Scud went out and bought the recommended $15 bracket to attach it to the cabinets. Hopefully that settles it.
Woohoo! With any luck, after tomorrow we won’t have to do dishes in the bathtub anymore! Then it’s just installation of toe kicks, and touching up the stain on the wood trim, which needs some love. Hopefully it will look halfway decent without having to strip and re-stain everything. If it looks nice, maybe the trim in the rest of the house will happen soon. But not too soon - we need a break! And it probably makes more sense to figure out whether to restore the rest of the windows first, or replace them (they are original, 100+ years old, and VERY leaky). Have to do some more research on that, but that’s a whole different thread.
Also, we have way too much tile - almost half of it is left (partly because the seller gave us tiles that were 25% taller than the ones we ordered because she was out of the ones we ordered). We have 40-some left, and we should probably save a few for future repairs, but not almost half of what we bought! Any local folks want to buy some off of us? They are 20 cm x 25 cm.
Ooh, very nice.
We are also nearly done. The tile got grouted this morning, and the plumber hooked up the stove. The electricians are back tomorrow to finish up the outlets and switches. And the GC is going to put some insulation in the wall, and cover it with a piece of cement board behind the stove. (The rest of the walls have been sealed up.) Then he’ll re-install the microwave over the stove. And then we’ll be done.
I have all the lights on in the kitchen, and it’s nice and bright. And I have outlets where I need them. And I’m really glad I went with the dark brown grout – it highlights the interesting geometry of the tiles and brings out the browns in the glass tiles.
My only issue is that the edges of the tiles are surprisingly sharp, and the grout doesn’t cover that. I hope we don’t lose bits of sponge to them. It looks really nice, though.
We could have had everything but the final electrical work done yesterday, but the contractor didn’t think to order the grout in advance. I guess common colors are just in stock. This was an unusual color, and it took a couple of days to get it.
On the plus side, I now have the contact information of a really good appliance repair guy.
The finished product! Tomorrow the contractor will come back and do a final test run of the plumbing, after the adhesive cures.
Then we just have to line the drawers and put everything back where it belongs! Woohoo! The new runner arrives Monday, and now I have to find some nice comfy cushions for the counter stools. Any recommendations?
And we’re done! Except the electricians ran wires to the under cabinet lights in a way that prevents the paper towel dispenser from being reattached. But i think a couple of bits of 1/4" plywood on either side of the wire will fix that.
I’m cooking supper tonight!
And washing everything that was in the cabinets next to the stove. Turns out, they have no side wall, the stuff just nestles up to the exterior of the stove. So even though the carpenter taped up some plastic, everything in those cabinets is dusty. And the dust is likely to be laced with asbestos. (The old wallboard isn’t like modern wallboard, according to one of the electricians. And asbestos would have been common in wallboard in 1959, when the place was built.)
OMG, it’s beautiful! So happy for you guys.
It’s like we’re grownups or something, isn’t it? I should post a Before photo. Here’s one.
I was going to comment on how I loved the casing around the window, but it looks like it was original. Oops!
It is original, and we had to stop the crew from painting over it! They did have to chop part of it off to replace the window and install the counter and backsplash. (The old window went down probably a foot below counter level - the sink wasn’t there originally, and probably there was very little in the way of cabinetry in the original 1906 kitchen.) We did have them touch up the stain on the window trim, which is now making me think we should just re-stain the rest of the trim and windowsills and doors in the house. Some of them are pretty beat to hell.
Not today, though! Maybe after we replace the rest of the windows…
I just got word that my kitchen remodel will start on April 3rd. My garage is stuffed full of my future cabinets and appliances. Countertop and backsplash tile and plumbing stuff will be here shortly. I think it will take about six weeks.
Our daughter had a lot of work done on her house, part of which involved tearing the kitchen right back to the bare walls (this being England, the walls are brick, and even the internals are lightweight blocks.)
They had a designer draw up some plans and were having trouble imagining it. I suggested that they bought some cheap ply and made a mock-up of the units etc. That confirmed their thoughts about movement around what is a fairly small space. The designer agreed and they are very happy with the result.
The point about electrics is well made. The mock-up enabled them to accurately set out the positions of multiple outlets so the electrician could do the wiring before the plasterers arrived.
That looks super sharp! I think the taller tile worked out very well too.
Consider using some of the extra tile in another area of the house? Make a trivet?
Our granite guy had an extra slab that was a cut off from our project. We had him fit it over a ledge that spanned a wall in our stair well.
We have almost half of the tile left! That is unfortunately not quite enough to do anything significant in the rest of the house, or an awful lot of trivets (40-something, although we should save a few tiles in case of repairs). My sisters-in-law have expressed interest in having a few to use as trivets; anyone have ideas on how to make them into trivets, or know a local woodworker who would make some into trays? That’s another common thing to do with them (here’s an example).
So many possibilities! Trays, trivets, side table, plant stands.
Getting carried away one could investigate using in any area that needs prettying up- for light switch covers, line an open shelf, create a border in the garage/laundry area.
Smash em gently and create a mosaic.
Congratulations on the finished kitchen, Enjoy!
Buy a cork sheet, cut out a piece and glue it to the bottom of the tile.
That’s probably what I will do with the pieces that were cut around the outlets, windowsill, below the cabinets, etc. Still thinking what exactly to do. My mom has a mosaic table that she made that way. I’d need to find the right table first, though. Seems like the kind of thing that I might find on Craigslist.
Kitchen looks great. Good job all around.
Ha ha. I know what you mean. When I was in my late teens, I bought a vacuum cleaner. Not beer. And it signaled to me that I was a ‘grownup’. Should start a thread about such epiphanies.
What I noticed after our kitchen remodel, is that we are much more apt to keep things looking sharp and clean. It’s easier too.
We redid one entry way too. Big enough for a guest room now. Or office space. We do both. We have two main entrances to the house. But my tools keep creeping into that space.
The laundry room that we redid is still a bit of a disaster area though… It is also the mechanical room for the house and stores our recycling.
And I may offer George Carlins words of wisdom… Try not to get too much stuff, or you will need a bigger place for more stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLoge6QzcGY
@Eva_Luna and @puzzlegal, congratulations on your remodels! This thread is making me itch to redo my kitchen, which is sorely in need of a lot of repairs it would be silly to do separately (the cabinet doors are falling apart, and the upper cabinets, which oddly don’t quite match the lower ones, are cheaply built in general), but I’m completely daunted by the practical details of getting it done. Maybe I’ll be inspired enough to take action?
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This prompted a sudden and vivid memory: my mom gave me a new vacuum cleaner for my 30th birthday, and it depressed the hell out of me. It shouldn’t have. My dad had given me my first new vacuum as a wedding gift ten years earlier (yes, I was barely 20, shut up) and I was delighted to have it. There was just something about a gift so practical on that particular birthday that really brought it home to me that I was irretrievably a Grownup.
My remodel starts on Monday! They just published the schedule and it’s supposed to be done on May 15th. I am really tired of people telling me that it will definitely be overbudget and take more time. The same outfit did my guest bath last year and they were completely on point. Everything is moved out and ready for demo.