Kitchen Nightmares: Somerville Edition

Jack has been doing a great job blogging and keeping you all up on the day-to-day progress of our kitchen nightmar…I mean, remodel… but he’s not telling you everything. Here’s how it really is.

So, I’m the cook here, and the whole reason we’re doing this is because, as a birthday present, Jack gave me his “endorsement” for redoing the kitchen. Very sweet and romantic, especially since I was all wishy-washy and afraid to spend the money on it (totally ridiculous when you realize that all the major expenses of this project are due to my “tastes”).

Truth is… it’s not very romantic at all. I feel like I’m trapped in a Peter Mayle novel, except that it’s “Two months in Somma-ville” (hopefully not a year), and this is not the Languedoc or Provence. Instead of delicious tales of wine, 3-star Michelin restaurants, and boule tournaments surrounding a home improvement project, we get to eat take-out and play phone tag with tile designers. I keep looking out the window in hopes of seeing quirky Frenchmen tossing balls in the backyard, but they are just not there.

I got on the scale yesterday. Three pounds heavier since the project started. It’s only been a week. Multiply that by six weeks (the estimated project length) and… well, thank goodness I’m not very good at math. I really don’t want to know. This is especially tragic considering I was hoping to wear this slinky top I bought from Chloe Dao herself (Project Runway fans take note) for a few holiday parties. Ummm…maybe next year.

One thing I’ve always loved about being “the cook” in the relationship is that Jack always does the dishes. In fact, he’s so passionate about it that he would criticize my dishwasher loading technique and politely (and sometimes no-so-politely) insists that I leave the room. Bonus for me: first choice of evening TV. Since we have no dishwasher at the moment, Jack’s well… just not that into it.

After a week of piled-up, cemented-on take-out remnants, I just couldn’t take it anymore. So there I was-outfitted in a beautiful dinner dress (who am I becoming, Donna Reed?), lugging pails of glassware and plates up the stairs to the bathroom sink. Scrub scrub in the sink, then rinse rinse in the bathtub. Classy. I had to put the dish drainer on the floor, but as soon as I started lining up the newly sparkling dishes, Ruskin and Clyde huddled close together licking every single one. OK, dishwashing project take two. Now, because there were breakables, I carried glasses down the stairs two at a time to the dining room, then back up…about seven trips total. Maybe I worked off some of those three pounds, but seriously. New house rule: no more glassware.

Look for future posts when I talk about what’s it’s really like to green a kitchen, as well as 21 ways to contain a cat and how to fail miserably at every single one.

Uncategorized commentary, dishes, food

Anne and I decided to write this blog to chronicle the ups and downs of our two-month kitchen project.  We’d heard so many stories, both positive and negative, about other home improvement projects, and we figured that our own project would have a pretty interesting story by the time we were done as well.

We’re now two weeks in and there’s been a lot of progress.  It’s exciting to come home each day and look at what’s been done, even if it’s just new plumbing or electrical wiring.  That excitement offsets the inconvenience of not having a kitchen.  Not all days have the same excitement, however.  Sometimes nothing happens, because of weather or subcontractor schedules or something else out of our control.

Yesterday, we came home and were not happy with the work that had been done.  It was the first time this has happened.  I immediately called George and talked through the issues, and he agreed to go over everything with the electrician to make sure it all gets done the way we want it in the end.  These were not catastrophic issues, just a bump in the road.

It’s easy to read last night’s post and assume that we’re not happy with the people working on the project.  That’s not the case at all.  I wasn’t happy with some assumptions that were made and the process which led to work that will have to be re-done.  We are happy with the project overall and the amount and quality of work done to this point.

I just wanted to clarify some of the sentiments of my last post and mention that the electrical issues are being sorted out.  Rain wiped out the vent installation that was scheduled to happen today, so there’s nothing else to report.  Much more to be done next week.

Uncategorized commentary, electrical

We came home today and had light housings in our ceiling.  This was a surprise, since we had never picked out the light fixtures that we wanted.  The plan was always to have basic recessed lighting, but we expected to have some options: different sizes and styles, different energy-saving properties, etc.  Apparently not.  Three basic six-inch lights had been installed down the middle of the room.

Where did these come from?

Our kitchen is a fairly large room.  The old kitchen had track lighting with three lights across the center of the room, and anyone could see that it produced an inadequate amount of light.  However, the electrician working on the new kitchen seems to think that all we need are three lights, albeit slightly better-placed in that they span the length of the room, rather than the width.  The half of the kitchen with the lower ceiling has exactly one fixture.

The placement of the lights was another surprise.  Even if we were happy with the style of light fixture, they were not where I had asked to have them placed.  I asked for six or eight recessed lights arranged in rectangles around the two sections of the ceiling.  This would produce more light from more angles, reducing shadows and putting more light on the countertops instead of the floor in the middle of the room.  Nothing like what’s actually there now.

Aside from the lighting issues, I look around the kitchen at the wiring job done so far and am perplexed at the number and layout of electrical boxes.  There aren’t nearly enough slots in boxes for the number of outlets and controls that I think we need.  By my count, we need switches for overhead lights, the pendant light above the sink, main wall under-cabinet lighting, other wall under-cabinet lighting, the back porch light, and the disposal, plus two controls for the hood fan and lights and the usual kitchen counter outlets every three feet or so.  If you look at the photos in earlier posts and below, there aren’t nearly that many electrical boxes.  There’s supposed to be an electrical inspection on Monday, but I don’t see how that could possibly happen given the amount of work left to do.  Especially since the electrician isn’t planning to be here tomorrow (Friday).

A counter-height outlet and a connection for under-cabinet lights... but how will we control them?

All of this happened today, but what didn’t happen today is just as frustrating.  At George’s request I went next door at 10:00pm last night to ask our neighbors if the electrician could get into their basement this morning to check out the electrical service coming in from the pole outside.  They agreed, but the electrician never showed up.  He still needs to get access to their basement at some point, but he didn’t bother to go when I arranged for it.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.  It’s just a particularly frustrating day in that we had some work done but a good amount of it is wrong.  At this point it will probably end up setting us back a few days while we try to get the electrician back to redo today’s work.

One light for this half of the room!

Hopefully some better news tomorrow…

Uncategorized electrical, issues, lighting, open walls

The past two days have been all about electrical wiring and outlet box installation.  All necessary, but hardly exciting.  There’s a lot that has to be done: outlets, overhead lighting, under-cabinet lighting, disposal and dishwasher wiring, cooktop hood fan wiring and controls.  At some point we need a 240-volt line for the ovens but I haven’t seen that yet.

One complication with this project is that our house has only 50-amp electrical service.  Apparently most houses now have 100-amp service or even more than that.  To power the ovens and everything else, we need to upgrade to 100 amps.  I really have no idea what that requires, but the electrician has asked for access to the other three basements in our building.  We’re not exactly keen on bothering our neighbors with this, or trying to coordinate access during the day when everyone’s at work.

This is all moving along, but I find myself staring at empty outlet boxes and trying to figure out what’s going to go there.  Where are they going to put switches for under-cabinet lights?  Where will the overhead lights be placed?  Are we going to have enough outlets?  I’m becoming quite the micro-manager as I grill George each day about these kinds of details.

Speaking of George, he gave us one awesome piece of news on the cost front: our semi-complicated tile installation will NOT cost us any extra!  For once something will not add to the cost of this project.  Hooray!

There’s not a whole lot new to look at, but here’s some wiring:

Markup and new electrical wiring

Some yellow wires, some white wires. What does it all mean?

Uncategorized construction, electrical, lighting, open walls

Today was the worst kind of day, a weekday with no progress made on the kitchen.  Where were the plumber and electrician?  Walls still open here!

Actually, it’s not true that no progress was made.  Today we made the most difficult decision we’ve ever had to make.  It’s been eating away at us for weeks, a constant buzz interfering with work, sleep, eating habits, even TV watching schedules.  I stopped speaking to Anne for over a week.  She nearly canceled the whole project.  But today it was all resolved: we decided on tile for the backsplash.

There have been a lot of decisions to make on this project, and most of them have gone smoothly.  Anne had a cabinet line picked out before we even started.  We mostly agreed on wood and finish.  The countertop was a difficult balance of style and environmental concerns, but ultimately soapstone was the right choice.  Appliances were done in a couple of hours at Yale Electric’s showroom.  Then we tried to look for tile.

Turns out Anne and I have strikingly different tastes when it comes to kitchen wall coverings.  I like stone, she likes ceramic.  I like relatively modern, somewhat detailed designs and layouts.  She likes simple, hand-painted, classic French-country tile.  I like to play with colors and textures.  She would prefer a clean, consistent look.  After two contentious visits with tile designers, we were both exhausted.

Finally, we found a line of ceramic tiles whose designer mixes her ceramic with various types of stone.  The result is a look that can be multi-textured but consistently-colored.  We chose a color scheme and design for the basic backsplash.  Then we chose accent pieces to create a more decorative element above the cooktop.  It’s not distinctly French country, nor is it modern, but it has elements of both.  And miraculously enough, we both like it.

That’s it - the last major design decision to be made on the project.  We still need to pick a paint color and other little things, but this was the last big one.  Whew!

Uncategorized design, tile