We got the wall oven (a Dacor) as a floor model, and once we started putting it in, I realized we were missing a few screws that we needed for installation. Here is what I had to do to track down the screws, and why it's taken like three weeks (and I don't have them yet -- they still have to be special-ordered and shipped).

1. Call the appliance store. they recommend a couple of local parts stores.
2. Try one, they don't even carry Dacor parts.
3. Call Dacor, who gives me the number of Reliable Parts, who can sell me the parts.
4. Call Reliable, who tell me they have no idea what I'm talking about, but maybe if I could get a parts number from Dacor.
5. Email Dacor asking for the part numbers (and asking, can't you just send me the damn screws?).
6. Get a reply the next day, at 2:00 am (who does customer service at 2:00 am?) giving me numbers for Reliable and other parts suppliers.
7. Send another email explaining that I already tried that and need part numbers.
8. Get a response saying she can't find those parts but will contact the parts department for me.
9. Get another email three days later with the parts numbers.
10. Search for the parts at Reliable's web site; not found.
11. Email Reliable to ask about the parts.
12. Get back an email saying yes they have them, you can buy them on the web site or by phone.
13. Try the web site again for fun; not found.
14. Call Reliable. Wait while they try to figure out why they're not on the web site. Finally get them to take the order by phone.
15. Now, I wait for the delivery and hope it's the right screws.

Multiply this by the million other things you also need for any remodel, and you'll see why the bulk of the remodeling time is spent not doing big important things like putting in floors and cabinets, but looking up things on the internet, calling people, and going to home depot repeatedly.

The process for getting the Corian countertops is basically: (1) go to home depot, give them the approximate measurements, and pay; (2) someone comes out and makes a precise template, and any payment adjustments are made; (3) they come back and install your completed countertops, including attaching your sink and whatever. The whole thing is supposed to take around three weeks.

Yesterday I did step one, which I figured would be fairly quick, since I had a sketch and all my measurements and knew the color and all the options I wanted. But unfortunately, the kitchen lady I got was completely clueless and I ended up having to teach her how to do her job. There was a nice discount (yay!) but neither she nor two other people could figure out how to apply it to the order, which resulted in someone "going in the back" to work it out with some mysterious other people, while I waited around for like half an hour (good thing I brought a book). Anyway, it's finally taken care of, and now I'm just waiting the call for the template appointment. Fortunately, if we screwed anything up in the plan yesterday, it will be fixed by the template people, who are the actual experts here. In the meantime, I have my lovely plywood countertops.

(this cookie recipe)

Sealed behind the crown molding of my kitchen, for inspiration and spiritual protection, is one of these guys:

If there's been one constant theme of this kitchen remodel, it's that big things (floor, cabinets) are fairly easy and go quickly while little things (moldings, tiny bits of plumbing) take much time, many tries, and multiple trips to home depot. Accordingly, we expected to spend most of today trying to connect the vent opening from the range hood to the ventilation duct above it (and, of course, offset by an annoying several inches in each dimension). After finishing that, we hoped to do the crown molding over the newly installed cabinets (a straight line, so no compound angle cuts to screw up) and run a duct from the heating vent behind some of the cabinets to a grill we'd install into the toe kick.

I'd like to share some hard-gained wisdom with you about ducts. Now, the ventilation duct going into the ceiling is rectangular. And the hood came with both rectangular and circular opening attachments you could put on it. We figured it made sense to match rectangular with rectangular. Logical, right? No! See, it is easy to buy circular-to-rectangular adaptors, and circular ducts come in all kinds of angles and bendy bits and who-knows-what to satisfy your every awkward angle attachment need. Rectangular ducts, however, come in one type of piece: long and straight. Unfortunately, by the time this dawned on us, the hood was already irreversibly screwed into place, rectangular vent hole proudly jutting forth. We had a couple of pieces of duct (they come in right angles that you clip together to make a solid rectangle) and were busily trying to estimate the angles we'd need to connect them, when Nick had a light bulb: let's do it in cardboard first! So we cut out some cardboard duct pieces and got them to fit, then used them as templates to fit the ducts and, again, it worked as planned. amazing. add about a nautical mile of duct tape, and what you have my friends is a piece of ducting that wouldn't be out of place on the set of Brazil.

While Nick finished up the duct-taping, I took my duct-related confidence and started on the heating vent. Basically I just needed to run a bit of ducting straight back from the front of the cabinet and into the wall vent. I made the top piece enough longer to go into the vent and form a decent right-angle, then drilled a hole in the toe kick and crammed in a wall vent. Again, more or less as planned. Here are some pictures of our ductwork.



And would you believe it, the crown molding went up basically as planned as well. We even got around a non-straight 8-foot piece of wood with some heavy clamping and lots of nails. Nick fashioned a nice front for the gap at the end using a piece of counter facing left over from the oven frame, and the result is all pretty nice. Here are some pictures of all the crown molding, from last week and this.



Trips to home depot: one for more ducts and some tin snips, plus one to home depot and one to lowe's earlier in the week.

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they had just finally chosen and purchased an oven, cooktop, and vent hood. They had also learned of the missing half inch -- and arranged with Best Buy to swap the new fridge for a slightly smaller one that would fit with the cabinets. Today pretty much all of that was going to be dealt with, and the kitchen would be much closer to full functional.

The first order of business was to get the oven in place and installed. We decided to use the old range plug, so we added a plug to the oven cable, and swapped the jack in the wall for a lower-profile one. Next we put the base cabinets in place, drilled holes for all the wires running around, and attached them to the wall. We then had to lift the oven into place and cut frame pieces to go around the front. That all went pretty well -- almost entirely according to plan, which was a pleasant surprise. Getting the vent hood up was another matter. The electrical connections were hidden way in the back where you couldn't get at them with hands or tools, and the thing was awfully heavy to be holding way up in the air while trying to drive screws into the overhead cabinets. Still, when it was all hooked up it looked very impressive. Here's the cabinets, oven, and hood in place.



You may notice the refrigerator doesn't look the same. The original one was a side-by-side but was a little too wide (the space is supposed to be 96" wide, which would have worked, but the walls are uneven and we were about half an inch short at the bottom). Fortunately, Best Buy was willing to just pick up the old one and deliver a new one. I'm actually glad we switched to a bottom-freezer fridge. it's just easier to get into and seems a better use of the space. The water dispenser thing was kind of overwhelming, so I don't miss that either.

It would be fair to say that coming to a decision about the oven and cooktop has been difficult. Here are some of the different decisions we have come to:
- replace the old electric range with one of those new ones with a sealed top
- hey let's get one of them new-fangled induction cooktops! but no one makes an induction range, so maybe we could do a cooktop set into the counters and a wall oven in the cabinet
- E really prefers cooking with gas, but my house has no gas line. let's find out about getting gas to the house
- PSE says there's already a line, so we'd just have to hook it up! let's get a range with a gas cooktop!
- the range only fits in the corner, and gas cooktops require some clearance on all sides. let's get a gas cooktop and wall oven, and move the cooktop to the other wall
- moving the ventilation ducting over there would be a pain, what about putting an induction cooktop in the original location
- or hey, screw it let's just get an electric goddam range and saving like 2000 goddam dollars
- how about changing to a wider base cabinet and putting a 30" gas cooktop in it, with enough clearance, and a wall oven below, losing some workspace but what the hey

The big lingering question with that last idea was whether the cooktop and oven would really fit in the same cabinet. You can get the installation measurements for the various pieces online, but I was skeptical it would really work. So on Saturday, we all went to the appliance store and looked at a lot of stuff and measured everything and found a cooktop/oven combo we think will work. The oven is a bit smaller than some we looked at, but it's a nice Dacor convection oven. The cooktop is a Jenn-air that's very simple and attractive. Plus we got a ventilation hood. It cost a fair amount of money (but all along I've been saying: if we're going to really splurge on one thing, it should be the stuff we actually cook with) and a lot of time hanging out there measuring stuff (though we did score cookies from the Dacor rep who was demonstrating the ovens with baked goods). And you won't believe how hard it was getting that damn oven up my stairs; it's large and heavy and has no good handholds.

Anyway, Nick and I also managed to get some stuff done in the actual kitchen, primarily the crown molding above the cabinets, which looks pretty good. We realized halfway through putting them up that we could have done our design much more simply and better, but oh well. It's up and it looks nice.

With the plumbing finally cleared up and the sink, disposal, and dishwasher connected and working, we felt like we could finally finish up all the cabinet work on that side of the kitchen. In contrast with things like plumbing and electrical where we had to deal with my 1940 house's weird quirks, the cabinets just went together as advertised, with no unpleasant surprises. We assembled the drawers (and the lazy susan for the corner cabinet), added the side pieces, made templates and put on the cabinet handles, and mounted the doors. Here's how the cabinets look (check out that double-hinged door on the corner cabinet; I love that thing) along with the working sink (check the pushbutton for the disposal) and the new fridge:



We did have a couple of additional projects to do. One was to make a small cubbyhole cabinet, to fill in five inches of space next to the dishwasher; we figure it will be good for baking sheets and so on. We made a simple box of plywood, and put the Ikea cabinet legs on it, with a front stained to (sort of) match the cabinet doors. You can see it (without the front yet) in the first picture above. We also had to build a soffit over the sink to hold a light fixture. We ended up building a frame out of 2x2s to attach to the cabinets (which, surprisingly, pretty much fit on the first try) that we'd attach drywall to to form the box. The drywall was an adventure in itself: we went to Home Depot for it, and though we only needed a bit had to get a 4'x8' sheet. It cracked a bit as we were mounting it on Nick's car, then halfway home a large piece of it broke off and blew away, disintegrating somewhere on Aurora. We managed to get it reattached and inch home without more incidents (and without the rain starting again -- rain is not good for drywall). Anyway, here are pictures of the us making the cabinet box, the soffit frame being hung, the drywall attached, and our half-destroyed sheet of drywall.



After the frustrations of the plumbing, it's nice to have something that looks like a kitchen, where many things actually work. What's left? sorting out the oven/cooktop (still under discussion), countertops (which the Corian people will do, once we're ready for them), and tiling the backsplash (I'm currently doodling tiling patterns). Oh, and there's the difficult question of the missing half inch -- it's not clear if the cabinets will even fit alongside the fridge; we're half an inch short.

You may recall from previous remodeling days that there were plumbing issues that we decided we should get a professional to fix. Friday I managed to line up a proper plumber to come and try to move the drain pipe so we could get everything hooked up. My plumber Mike was a friendly guy who was happy to see that I was doing my own kitchen and enjoyed showing me things like how to use the Sawzall to cut through an entire wall (I got to try it myself!). Anyway, Mike opened up the wall and found the pipe and cut out a section with the Sawzalll, put in a T-junction, and ran it right into the sink cabinet pretty as you please. So by the time he left (5-6 hours later, somehow) I had a fully working sink, disposal, and dishwasher and was out a bunch of money. But everything works!

Here's the final result:

Between the frustrations of day seven and the depredations of staying up late for E's birthday party, day eight was made a vacation from kitchen work. (and the next weekend E and I would be in SF for her birthday, so no kitchen work then either).

Trips to Home Depot: NONE.

The goals for today were to finish the plumbing and get the dishwasher and disposal wired up -- finishing those two things would essentially finish the sink area (at least until the countertops come later and the sink is in place for real, instead of in a plywood countertop). Unfortunately, it was mostly a day of frustration. We got the disposal hooked up to the sink and so on, but then realized that the drain outlet from the old sink was too high. Basically, it was just below the level of the old sink, and of course the disposal outlet is 8-10" lower. Which means, of course, that the disposal will never drain properly. Since this is the huge pipe going into the wall, it didn't seem like something we could move. So we decided to just get a regular drain and forget about the disposal, but after hooking that up (you would think we would have thought of this sooner) we realized that even the drain is a little higher than the outlet pipe, and there'd always be a bit of water standing in it. At that point, we decided we'd have to get a professional plumber to come in and move the pipe, since it seemed too much of a job for us to manage ourselves.

We figured we could still get the electrical wired up though. This mostly consisted of drilling a hole through the floor and running wires to junction boxes in the basement to connect to the dishwasher and the outlet that would supply the disposal. My circuit box, unfortunately, is somewhat poorly labeled, and the basement ceiling is pretty much a labyrinth of wires and boxes. However, after some trial and error with the circuit breakers, we found two reasonable circuits and traced their boxes. Unfortunately, one of them had a tiny box in the ceiling under the kitchen which was already stuffed full of wires. So we ended up going back to Home Depot, buying a bigger box, and replacing and rewiring the whole thing. Similarly with the other box, though it had fewer connections and didn't take as long. The whole thing was kind of a pain, but after the plumbing fiasco it was rewarding to finish and actually have the power working properly. And I labeled everything so that next time I'll be able to find the circuits. But doing these seemingly simple things took most of the day.

We still had a bit of time left in the day, so we decided to connect the water line for the fridge (did I mention the fridge came?). This should have been easy: drill a hole in the floor, run a long rubber hose through it, and connect it to the existing water line with this handy thingy that basically clamps on then drills a little hole into the pipe. But we carefully measured the hole, drilled it, and passed the hose through -- only to find no sign of it at all when we went down to the basement. Turned out it went into one of the heating ducts, a large one that was basically below that entire corner of the kitchen. However, we noticed the ducts are already kind of criss-crossed with other pipes going in and out of them. And while this seems like a bad sign for the efficiency of my heating system, it meant we could just lift up a corner of the ductwork (seriously, parts of it are kind of just taped on; I think this is a project for another day). So we actually got the water line working and started the ice maker going.

So accomplishments for the day: one plumbing fiasco, two things wired up (that I can't run because the plumbing doesn't work), and the ice maker working.

Home Depot trips: (1) for plumbing things; (2) for different plumbing things and some electrical stuff; and (3) for more electrical stuff. A new record!

During the week I put in a little quality time assembling some more of the cabinets. Basically, we've been assembling just the frames, figuring it's easier to handle them that way and put on the doors and drawers later. The Ikea cabinets are great -- they all assemble in exactly the same way, and after you've done one you can do them with your eyes closed (or at least with your eyes on episodes of South Park). The one annoying part is nailing on the backs with dozens of tiny nails, but Nick solved that problem by bringing his nail gun. We put all the cabinets in the basement and have been assembling then we have some spare time. Here's the cabinet staging area.



Trips to Home Depot: (1) plumber's putty and an angled quarter-turn sink valve.

Our original plan for today was to do as many of the cabinets as we could. But we ended up deciding we should put the couple of cabinets around the sink-plumbing in place and then work out all the plumbing for the new sink as well as the built-in dishwasher and disposal we were adding. We didn't really finish it, but it somehow ended up taking the entire day.

The first big job was getting the sink cabinet in place around the plumbing connections. We first got the corner cabinet in place, leveled, and attached to the wall, and then started on figuring out how to get the sink cabinet in. There are two pipes that supply water coming up through the floor, and a big pipe for the drain in the wall, so you can picture the tetris-like acumen involved in getting everything lined up. We finally figured out what to cut (two holes for the supply pipes, and a long slot for the drain pipe so we could sort of slide the cabinet over and then drop it straight down) and made the cuts -- and of course they were off. We went through several cycles of modifying the holes, putting the cabinet in place, and finding it didn't fit yet before it finally worked -- at which point the holes were really large and ugly (solution: getting bigger metal plates to cover the holes).

Next we had to find all the correct connections for the various plumbing bits. Since neither of us is a plumbing expert, we spent an inordinate amount of time at Home Depot wandering up and down the aisles, eyeballing valves and tubes and who-knows-what trying to figure out what we needed. With all that stuff in hand, it was time to get the sink in place by making a temporary plywood countertop (for various reasons, it will be a while before I get the real countertop in) and cutting a sink-shaped hole in it. After the experience with the supply-line holes, we managed to get this one right on the first try and put the sink in place. We hooked everything up on the supply side and actually had water running out of the faucet with no leaks anywhere -- but draining into a bucket because we hadn't done the drain or disposal yet. We had all the hookups ready to go but had forgotten plumber's putty to seal the drain to the sink. It was late in the day though, and we'd already spent enough time at Home Depot, so we just left it for next time.

Trips to Home Depot: (1) to buy sink, faucet, plumbing doodads, plywood, and electrical supplies; and (2) to buy more plywood, more plumbing supplies, and shims.

The big project for today was the floor. I'd settled on a natural-color bamboo product from Home Depot that had a layer of bamboo on top then two layers of wood. It has a click-together design, so it can be installed without gluing or nailing, and at $3/sqft it was pretty inexpensive. I was leaning for a while toward a dark finish, which I thought would like super elegant, but we finally concluded the kitchen was just too small and dark for that to work well.

The stuff comes in planks, with tongue-and-groove joints on the short ends and the click-lock stuff on the long ends. Basically you just lay them down and lock them together, pounding them into place where necessary. Working through the main part of the floor is easy, at least if you have a nice saw (as Nick does, of course). You just keep working your way across, cutting the pieces on the ends and using them in the next row, making sure to stagger the joints semi-randomly and watching a little to make sure planks next to each other aren't too different in color. Here are some pictures of us in the process of laying the planks, and how it looked at the end.



The one difficult part to the whole thing is the bits around doorways and water connections, where you have to cut the pieces carefully to fit (we had a fair bit of trial-and-error there) and figure out how to wedge them in. The last corner was the roughest, and we ended up cutting these little pieces to go around the doorframes and sliding them in sideways, then cutting one last piece to fill the remaining hole and nailing it down. Here are some photos of a lot of the detailed bits we had to do.



All the detail work probably took half of the total time (and there are a few gaps and stuff, but whatever), but the floor looks great now that it's done.

Trips to Home Depot: none.

E and I spent another night this week doing some more painting. Doing walls is fairly easy, but we had to do the ceiling this time, which was a royal pain. Plus, we were both wearing goggles and goofy headwear to keep paint out of eyes and hair (mostly). I also realized about halfway through taking down the masking tape around the green section that we needed another coat of green. So we ended up masking everything the other way, doing the ceiling and retouching the walls, waiting for it to dry, then having to mask everything back again and redo the green. Oh well. Next time I'll know. The only things left to paint are the doorframes and baseboards (which we'll do later) and the crown moldings that will go on top of the cabinets. Next up: floor, cabinets, and plumbing the dishwasher.

Trips to Home Depot: none.

Sunday was all about the painting. By the time day one was done, we'd removed all the cabinets and gotten all the way down to the original floor. The next step was to do some repair of the walls (especially some plaster spots) and paint. The old wall color was a sort of medium gray-blue, dark enough to make the kitchen feel smaller and darker. We decided to go with a near-white color on most of the walls, with one wall in a nice mossy green for excitement. So we figured we'd need a couple coats of primer and then a couple of paint to overcome the old color. Here's a couple more pictures of the original floor, and the room after some primering.



After that, we started putting on coats of the green and near-white (a slightly warm tint called "opaline"). While waiting for it to dry, we played some wii and started on the floor. We're putting in a floating bamboo floor, and you're supposed to put down a layer of moisture barrier (i.e. plastic) and foam, to even out any irregularities. The plastic came in a giant 10'x12' sheet, and the foam in big rolls. Here are pictures of the walls painted green and opaline, of the blue plastic layer, and the green foam layer.



Home Depot trips for today: (1) extra painting supplies, flooring plastic and foam; (2) bamboo flooring.

Our first day was all about demolishing the existing cabinets. The cabinets that were in there were ugly, but very very sturdy. It was all made of real wood (not like today's crappy fiberboard!) and nailed together and nailed to the wall by someone who was not shy about nail use. We ended up having to saw them up into pieces in a few key spots just to get enough leverage to get in there and crowbar them apart. Nick's large crowbar is huge and heavy, and when we started on the overhead cabinets and I had to lift that thing over my head, I thought there was no way I was going to last the day. But I got better at it over time and we managed to get the cabinets pulled apart in a few hours. And of course, a bit of wanton destruction can be fun, even if it's tiring. The part where I had to just knock some stuff apart by just bashing it repeatedly was especially satisfying. Here are a few pictures after getting the cabinets out:



Then we started in on the floor, which was this vinyl stuff. We figured we'd just start prying and it would all peel off, but of course it wasn't that easy. Below the top layer of vinyl was another layer (if possible, even more ugly and dated than the top layer) and below that was a layer of plywood. Which, of course, had been nailed down with unremitting enthusiasm. We decided to pull up the plywood as well and just putting the new floor over the original wood (which would prevent the kitchen floor from being over an inch higher than everything else, with the plywood and bamboo). But trying to pry up this triple layer was nearly impossible, since the plywood and vinyl just reinforced each other. So we ended up using a saw to cut a grid of lines and prying up the flooring concoction one square at a time. This involved sort of crouching on the floor and kind of ramming the crowbar underneath repeatedly, and then prying up a bit until you got all the nails for that square and it popped off. You just can't imagine how many nails there were under there. I was exhausted by the time we had our end-of-day pizza. But very hungry. Here are a couple pictures of the kitchen down to the original floor, and the resulting pile of detritus outside on the deck.



Home Depot trips for today: (1) to buy plaster, a bucket, and some assorted supplies; (2) to buy a lot more plaster.

I've been thinking for a while (ever since I bought the house, really, four years ago) about remodeling the kitchen. My friend Nick, who has a personal mission to show people that a kitchen remodel need not cost tens of thousands of dollars, convinced me that we could do it ourselves, and we finally got started this weekend. The plan is:

1. demolish the existing cabinets, countertops, and floor
2. repair any wall damage and paint
3. lay down new floor (bamboo)
4. put in new cabinets
5. new appliances

None of which is actually that hard, at least if you have Nick with his experience and collection of tools on your side. We expect the whole thing to take about four weekends (during which I'll be doing a lot of grilling, microwaving, takeout, and enjoying care packages from my girlfriend's kitchen). Here's how the kitchen looked last week, after E and I moved just about everything out in preparation for demolition.



I'll add more updates and pictures as we go. Next up: crowbar time!

Here it is, done:



before picture below the cut. you can see how crappy the shingles were getting. I guess I have to replace this user picture!
( more... )

I've been eating, sleeping, and breathing siding the last few weeks while trying to figure out what to do with my house's warped and cracked wood shingle siding. finally today I signed the contract and made the down payment with my chosen siders. with luck it will go smoothly and in a couple of weeks my house will look like a recently botoxed starlet. I haven't made the final decision on colors, but I'm leaning toward a sort of sage green to replace the slatey blue I currently have. I'll do more of an update when it's actually done; at the moment, I'm just relieved to have the major decision-part of the process done with.