kitchen – Page 4 – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Hiring carpenters

So i know everyone (all 3 readers) are dying to know how it went hiring carpenters after our completely failed attempt to hire exterior painters!

It went great, but we knew it would because we’d hired these guys before. Mostly it’s one guy and he has a roommate that he likes to have help him. From what i can tell the roommate does all the grunt work but the main guy is the brains and the meticulous one. Works well for us. Just waiting on the bill to see what this costs us.

What did they do Wed-Fri? Well they got us the rest of the way prepped for drywall. Wednesday they supported the floor joist that had been hacked to pieces when the upstairs bathroom was originally put in. It’s not wonderful but it’s WAY better than it was and really eased my mind! Then they built the bumpout wall around the plumbing that Ryan had gotten the sill plate in for.

Hard to see, but that new lumber is the supported floor joist

They also cleaned out the old pipes (gas pipes, we had gotten the plumbing pipes out) and got all ready to do firring strips thursday (so they removed all the old drywall screws etc).

Thursday they flattened/leveled (not really level but made it flat as possible), the ceiling and added new firring strips where the old had been cut or removed for plumbing.

new firring strips and all firring is now ‘flat’ for ceiling

They leveled out the walls for cabinets which included planing some wood down and firring other wood out. I must not have taken a picture of that.

Next they took out the old arch that we decided to remove and rebuild because we needed to extend the one wall (and hence both walls to make it even). So they did demo and cut the cement board and dry fit it to put in Friday morning. They also cleaned up the back hallway, removing the doorway to the basement (new door will go in there as well).

back hallway cleaned up and doorway removed (ceiling cleaned up)

dry fit of cement board outside bathroom

And back friday with some lumber they got the cement board all laid down and screwed (and glued) down. Just about a foot left of the kitchen floor to go for that (plus the back hallway). Next up they built the archway!

new arch, should match the height of the front entry one

And now that lunch is over they are starting on the back hallway. One corner needs a nailer/firring strip added so they are going to clean up the plaster that’s there and add that (i cleaned out that bookcase so they can move it). Then they’re going to take up that back floor and put down the cement board for the rest.

So tonight I just have to finish up the electrical! Oh and get some glue for the cement board, we’ll probably have to finish it ourselves since we ran out of glue but if it’s dry fit it will go fast. Drywall should be here in about half an hour (storing it on the porch) so tonight our list is:

Electrical (3 recessed lights, some switches, pendant light boxes and 2 center light boxes), all mapped out, (outlets for fridge and microwave).
Home depot for glue and insulation (this happens during my grocery shopping trip)
Glue down floor pieces that aren’t done yet/screw them down
Cleanup
Move cabinets around to make room to fit drywall in the front door – ugg!
Insulate the ceilings for sound if i buy insulation i like (i dont’ like fiberglass) not a real requirement here

With all this prep, drywall should be a breeze with Dad coming out to help. Hopefully we’ll get the seams all taped too while he’s here. Coming together!!!

A little this a little that

This renovation weekend was one of those problem weekends with MULTIPLE unplanned trips to home depot that really bite into the schedule. We’ve really gotten to the point where we rarely need to go to home depot unplanned, we usually know what we need and can plan to go at a convenient time. However fate was working against us.

In the morning Ryan started with putting the base to the new wall around the bumpout in. This involved first taking out some more pipe and some wires, then fixing the subfloor and finally putting in a new bumpout base, it’s a causeway for the plumbing and it bumps out enough to match the cabinets.

Once that was done and Alex had napped we all went out to the dump and our first trip to home depot (planned), we needed cement board to finish up the kitchen floor, a new hardi blade for the saw and Alex was along for the trip. Plus we had a burned out drill (brand new) that we decided to replace. So off to the store we go and it was uneventful, unless you count Alex having a blast sitting up in the cart for the first time uneventful!

come on – look at that face – she was LOVIN IT!

Then things went down hill. First, I bought the wrong blade, it was too big for the saw so Ryan had to run back to get the correct blade. Then he got his piece cut and went to install it and our ‘new’ drill was actually one someone had replaced (it was very obviously used) AND it was the wrong model, someone had stuck their OLD model in the new box and scammed homedepot. Not cool. So back to home depot ryan went to get a new drill.

Finally he was able to make some progress on cement board and got most of the floor in. We have the last foot of the kitchen to do (all cut pieces), the one piece that will go under the fridge – currently the wire for the stove comes up there and I was hesitant to remove it because we are temporarily using said stove still. And the pieces by the bathroom need to be put in (one is cut but not screwed in).

So that was the floor. I’m pretty sure some other small stuff got done but I was occupied with a little someone so I missed it.

Then came sunday, up early, out to breakfast, out to home depot (planned) for some duct work to put in a vent for the stove hood. It’s a 7″ (ridiculous) because we went with the GE Cafe series stove and hood. First, home depot had plenty of 7″ everything EXCEPT for the piece that goes on the outside and downconverting it to 6″ kind of defeats the purpose of using all 7″ duct work. So then we saw the 3×12 or whatever the square version is, so we went with that for the outside and first piece, then a converter piece to the 7″ round. Anyone that has done duct work knows you need some crimp tool to make the pieces fit together if they are not pre-crimped. We did not have said tool but most of the pieces were crimped – we made it work when it wasn’t.

Then we got to our round duct, cut it to length, put it together and oops – it doesn’t fit!???!! Turns out they had 6″ round in the bin for 7″ and since it’s not put together we didn’t notice it. So back to home depot to get 7″ round … ugg! This wasn’t easy, they had the 7″ hidden in the back and I needed help to get it, the bin was full of 6″ though. Finally we got the duct in the ceiling, just popping down a bit so we can drywall around it (the 90 degree bend pops down). It all just barely fits up there in our 8″ floor joists.

With that done we got one firring strip in (ryan had to rip a 2×4 down to match the width of the old firring strips). We have a number that need to be replaced. Over the years one floor joist was basically removed for plumbing and firring strips were hacked around said missing joist. So we are trying to clean it up so our ceiling will lie flat and we can do crown later.

Again, more work may have been done that I missed but due to all the running around this weekend it felt slow. Ryan also had work to do Sunday and we had a baby to play with.

The good news is that even though there’s some work left before sheetrock, we decided to call ‘our’ carpenter and he can come out Wednesday and work on the rest. He’ll build out the walls that need it and fix the rest of the firring strips and maybe install some new doors for us if we have time to buy said doors (new back porch door and basement door – insulated). So we’re still planning on sheetrocking this coming weekend (drywall is on order and hopefully coming friday!). Then cabinets the following weekend. It will be nice to see it come back together finally. Too much of my house is down to the studs!

Catch-up

Wow, been a little bad about blogging lately! I will try to remember everything that we did since the last post. We have since had a weekend to work on the house, then I took thanksgiving week off and the first part of the week worked on the house then back to NY to visit family for thanksgiving. Finally ending in a Sunday at home relaxing (out to breakfast!) and during a late 2 hour nap we went through all our cabinets to make sure they were all in good shape (they weren’t, so they are express ordering 3 of them – 1 of which was broken and 2 had minor issues).

Anyway so back to the weekend of the 17th. Ryan finished the upstairs bathroom floor (patching in some subfloor, then laying down new cement board). So the upstairs bathrooms are all ready for plumbing rough-in when Jason can come out (this week).

Then it was on to the kitchen floor – it was a lot of work but Ryan got up the old kitchen floor layers and then we started putting down cement board (2 pieces) 🙂 Our drill does not like this kind of work evidently and it was over heating (it’s new because our old one burned out the batteries and we have to take them someplace to get replaced – no time yet!) – we may be replacing this new one though).

kitchen floor removed and 2 pieces of cement board glued and screwed down.

a view from the other side of the kitchen

Once the weekend was over Alli went off to daycare per usual but I was home to work on the house! I actually don’t remember what day I did what but I ran to the dump every day (monday through wednesday). I caulked the new siding and windows on the driveway side of the house (it was crazy cold on my poor little finger!). I moved everything in the attic over to the small section we are not having insulated yet for storage reasons. I cleaned up the basement really well (the kitchen demo did a number on the basement below).

I also demo’d most of the outside wall in the hidden section off the kitchen (old stair well). This way they can insulate that section for us.

Hidden stair well – with wall demo’d for insulation

After that i finished up the outside wall electrical, running a cable/ethernet drop, the feed for the outlet run, a feed and wires for the disposal and dishwasher, the recessed lights over the sink and counter. I also put down 2 more pieces of cement board in the kitchen but wasn’t able to get the saw to cut the other pieces I needed to install so that kind of halted.

dishwasher and disposal lines (the disposal is on a switch), both run under the sink.

I’m pretty sure that’s all I did other than pack and get ready to head out Wednesday night to NY. I don’t have recent pictures of the kitchen – I’ll get some before insulation goes in on thursday. Jason is also coming out thursday to rough in the upstairs bathroom and laundry room plumbing so we can drywall the kitchen as our next project.

We realized this past weekend that another driving factor for getting the cabinets installed before xmas (besides the major one of wanting a working kitchen again) is that we can’t put up a xmas tree in our cupola until the cabinets are out of the way and it’s Alli’s first xmas – we need a tree!!!

Weekend Update

Weekend plans went a little wonky this past weekend. We were supposed to go back to NY originally to celebrate Aimee’s birthday. Then Ryan decided he needed to stay home to make progress on the house so we can still get this kitchen done in time (there’s been more work upstairs than we had hoped before we can finish said kitchen). So it was going to be Alex and I driving back.

Then Aimee’s back which had been really bad all week wasn’t getting better (worse?) so we considered getting together in CT instead for just a day trip, then PJ couldn’t make the trip and my cold that started thursday actually got worse for the weekend. So we cancelled the whole thing.

So Saturday Ryan got up and started the dump runs (since the dump is only open till 1 on saturday we usually have a couple of runs to do with last weekend’s demo). By the second (or third?) trip, Alex had finished her nap and we decided to hit home depot all together and get cement board and 2x4s. The rest of the day included Ryan taking down the bathroom walls, putting in new sill plates for the new walls and cutting out tons of piping (cast iron drains/vents). The good thing about only using a single bathroom in our house is that the only plumbing that needs to be on is that single bathroom.

The upstairs is mostly done for now (on hold till the kitchen is done) but we do need to finish the sub floor (patch it and then add cement board). Ryan also framed in the old pantry door (into a wall) in the kitchen so we can now run the rest of the outlet circuit around that corner and finish it up.

The final project was getting some stain on our new railings, they needed a nice final sanding and then the stain to match the deck:

cedar railings with red semi-transparent stain

Don’t be fooled by little I have to report for the weekend, taking those pipes out took quite a while, as did the floor prep up to this point. What is left in the upstairs is minor. One more weekend before thanksgiving and then insulation. The kitchen is almost ready for insulation (just a bit more electrical) and the upstairs needs very little prep (some nails pulled). I took the whole week off for thanksgiving so I can work up in the attic to prep that for insulation on monday and tuesday. That’s where the real work is at this point.

Once insulation is in, we just have to finish the kitchen electrical, then drywall and put in cabinets (that’s all?!) not really, but those are the big ones.

Cabinets are here

Before I get to the weekend update (I haven’t take pics yet), I figured I’d show the cabinets. On friday our stove, hood and cabinets all arrived. We now can barely walk through our front livingroom and diningroom. Not quite sure how we plan to get drywall into the kitchen… future problem.

I opened the wall corner cabinet up to take some pics. These are Martha Stuart (from Home Depot), in maidstone style – finish pictured here.

And here is a view from our kitchen – the diningroom and livingroom are packed…

coming soon… how we spent our weekend

Kitchen Demo

The plan this weekend was to do demo, lots of demo. Mom came out to watch Alex on saturday so I could help out a lot more than normal lately. Ryan got the rest of the kitchen and back hallway all demo’d so we’re ready to start putting it back together. He got 3 trips to the dump before it closed but with Obama coming to Nashua it took forever to take each trip.

With that in mind we decided to wait on demolishing the upstairs bathroom because we have no place to put all the debris. As it is the truck is loaded and we have a huge pile of wood and bags. Probably 3 more loads just to get rid of the kitchen debris. Next weekend we’ll have to demo the upstairs which means the electrical we planned on doing next weekend needed to get started this weekend.

So Ryan got the holes drilled for the electrical and so far the outlet boxes have been put in on the exterior wall. I’ll get the outlet wires run tonight or some night this week. Then we have to get the recessed lights up.

the hidden staircase to no where… nothing interesting hiding back here except for some old wallpaper 🙂

kitchen view from the diningroom (see the staircase to no where)

The exterior wall is a jig saw puzzle with a cut header. The kitchen was remodeled at some point maybe 50 years ago and it wasn’t well done.

So we have next weekend to get the upstairs demo done and the electrical done (at least the outside wall and lights). Then the 17/18th we have to get the kitchen floor up and the range hood vent installed out the side. Any other prep for insulation. We hope to get insulation the week after thanksgiving then on to drywall the first weekend in december and cabinets the weekend after that.

Ambitious – absolutely. Let’s hope we can manage this so we have a usable kitchen by xmas!

Cabinets ordered

Well they cost a small fortune (especially after we added some more to our design) but both cabinets and counters have been ordered! (Home Depot was having a 10% off sale!). It took 2 trips to home depot (our first appt started late then we got booted so I had to go back over to finish up and order the cabinets).

We went with Martha Stewart cabinets from HD in their ‘Maidstone’ style with Maple cabinets in ground nutmeg with rum highlights for coloring. They come standard with slow close doors, drawers and full extension hidden drawer hardware. We got pull out drawers/shelves for 3 of the base cabinets.

So on Friday (actually thursday night this started) we were discussing final plans and looking at fridges. We decided to look into counter depth fridges, not loving that a standard fridge would stick out so far. They are significantly more expensive though but we actually found a really nice one on craigslist on sale for less than 1/2 it’s original price and barely used. We’ve never actually purchased anything off of craigslist but this seemed like an okay scenario (ryan talked to the woman). So friday night, after Alex’s bath we put her to ‘bed’ in her carseat and headed up to Epping, NH where we got a new (to us) fridge! We also got some lights she was willing to sell pretty cheap since she was trying to clear out a bunch of stuff.

What fridge did we end up with? This monster: Kenmore Elite Fridge/Freezer combo with trim kit. It’s a full size fridge and next to it a full size freezer. So it looks like a side/by/side but it’s 6 feet long 🙂 So a little kitchen re-design was needed, plus we wanted to make it look fully built-in so we’re doing floor to ceiling cabinets around the fridge on that wall. It’s large but awesome. Ryan even managed to clean out the fridge good last night so we are already using the fridge!

So this weekend we bought a fridge and some lights, then we bought cabinets and a counter. Work wise I’ve been working on painting windows since we had some decent weather. First I primed the inside of all the window sashes (4 windows), then I got 2 coats of exterior paint on them. The nursery windows got a coat of interior paint on them as well.

Windows are ready for winter now and attention can be refocused back to the kitchen!

A very busy weekend

(This is from LAST weekend, finally have pictures but it’s written from last week’s point of view).

Aimee, Jason, Jason and mom all came out this weekend. Jason came to work, the rest to play with the kids. So while Ryan and Jason worked (although I did do some electrical and cleanup), Aimee, Mom and I played with Little Jason and Alli-boo.

So while we played with the kids, some actual house work got done. Jason did the rough in for all the drains for the new master bathroom we’ll be putting in as well as got ready to do the little bathroom upstairs (we have to demo it before it can be done completely) and the laundry room next to that.

New drain on the left, the drains on the right will go away once we demo the little bathroom.

While Jason did the plumbing, Ryan put in the new kitchen window (which is where i light was so i had to put in a quick temporary light over head but at least we have a switch now!). The window is smaller overall but before it was 2 small windows with separation, now it’s just 2 casements together same amount of light.

While they worked, the carpenter was here and finished up the siding on the driveway side of the house so it’s ready to be painted!

One side of the house has all ‘new’ siding!

It’s nice having work get done while you’re doing other things. We like this carpenter, he does good work and after our horrible experience with the painters, it’s nice working with someone who knows how to work. FYI the painters haven’t shown up in weeks or stopped by when promised.

Plans

I’m still working on the post about last weekend (we got a lot done!) but I haven’t taken pictures yet so I will hold off on that. Hopefully tomorrow i’ll take pictures since this weekend we’ll be making more progress!

In the mean time we’ve been getting things ready for this weekend, doing plans, finalizing decisions because this weekend we will be making at least 2 of our huge purchases. Appliances (the 10% off sale ends monday) and Cabinets (10% off sale ends Wed).

So the kitchen layout has changed a bit, we fit in more cabinets and we’ll find out this Sunday how much these changes will cost us! Then I also planned out the electrical because this weekend we hope to get the lights installed (recessed and boxes for pendant lights etc). I can also get the electrical outlets for the fridge and microwave installed since that wall is demo’d. Actually the fridge outlet will be what is currently the microwave outlet, just shifted a bit.

For fun I also grabbed some 3D shots from the program i’m using for these layouts. Keep in mind the cabinets are generic and appliances are not accurate looks wise, just size wise.

KitchenCabinets — Kitchen Cabinet layout with details for ordering the cabinets.

KitchenElectrical — The electrical layouts (for lights/switches) in the kitchen.

3DKitchen_From_Backhallway — The kitchen as viewed from the back of the house ‘entrance’ hallway

3DKitchen_From_diningroom — The kitchen as viewed from the diningroom

3DKitchen_From_livingroom — The kitchen and diningroom as viewed from the livingroom – a very open layout.

We actually haven’t finalized on our cabinet look yet. We are going with Home Depot/Martha Stuart cabinets but are going back and forth between ‘painted’ cabinets (they use a shrink wrap, not a paint which is making us very wary) and stained cabinets. If we go with stained we’ll do a tile floor, if painted we’ll probably refinish the wood but there’s some major patching between kitching/diningroom that will have to be done that won’t be fun. Decision will be made on Sunday!

Demolition Kitchen Part 1

This past weekend was quite productive! First and foremost we got lots of play time with Alli boo who also took some great naps (although only an hour long, she did a great job putting herself to sleep for most of them and in the crib no less!). Baby girl is definitely growing up!

On Saturday I started the day by moving our open shelving from the kitchen into the gym (our temporary pantry) and Ryan hung up the tvroom doors. Our neighbor came over to play with Alex after she woke from nap number 1 and Ryan got to work removing the wall between the kitchen and diningroom. I helped as much as I could and we worked almost straight through till 1 when the dump closes (ryan had a quick dump run). Alex and I spent the rest of the afternoon together while Ryan continued taking down the kitchen ceiling (no plaster/lathe!) and cleaning up. It went pretty well and the cleanup wasn’t bad considering it’s a kitchen we still need to use!

The kitchen was vacuumed but still needed major cleaning so on Sunday Ryan spent his time with Alli while I mopped down the kitchen and everything that was left in it that got dusty. Then we took measurements of the kitchen and played around with our kitchen layout/design that we’ve been working on with home depot so we can order cabinets soon (4 week lead time).

I also have been working on the layout for the upstairs master bathroom, bathroom and laundry room because that’s the plumbing that’s going in this weekend so layout needs to be finalized. So items need to be chosen (like tubs) so we know measurements and where everything can go. Luckily we have PUNCH 3d home architect (we’ve had it for years) so that works reasonably well for designing this all out!

Here are the layouts i’ve been working on (click for larger view):