Kitchen Nightmares: Somerville Edition

Today - February 23 - exactly 12 weeks to the day after demolition, the chief building inspector for Somerville came by and signed off on the kitchen project.  I happened to be home waiting for a delivery and I can tell you that the “final inspection” consists of about 120 seconds of glancing around the room, followed by a signature on the building permit, and that’s it.  It does mean that we can take the ‘S’ placard out of the front window and consider the project officially complete.

Except, of course, for the tile.  If you’ve read the blog all along you may remember all of the issues that we had with tile, first choosing it, then finding an installer at an acceptable price.  We ended up taking the tile backsplash out of the original project, but we did go ahead and order the tile that we had chosen, just so we would have it when we found someone to install it.  That’s the delivery that I was waiting for today - coincidentally it arrived precisely on the last day of the “renovation” part of the project.

And, we actually have a meeting with a tile installer tomorrow.  If all goes well, we’ll be scheduling installation on that ASAP.  Then the kitchen will truly be done the way we envisioned it back in August.  Yes, we’ve been at this since August.  June if you count the initial search for a designer.

Below are some photos taken tonight, after all the little details were completed and we’d been using the kitchen for a couple of weeks.  Nothing too different from the last set.  At some point I’ll put together some direct before/after comparisons from different angles and post them here or in Picasa.

Thanks everyone for reading and for all of your interest in our little project.  I’ll probably post one or two more times when the tile is done and maybe some before/after pictures.

Main wall

Second wall

Main wall other way

Back corner with pantry cabinet and window seat

Coffee central

Sink corner

Prized sleeping spot

Populated dry bar cabinet

Open dry bar with lighting

Uncategorized after, commentary, inspections

After 10 epic weeks without a kitchen, we finally got to move our stuff back in this past weekend.  The floor was refinished on Friday and the whole room got a cleaning on Saturday afternoon, after which Anne and I went into an unpacking frenzy.  By Sunday night we were ready for our first meal at home!  But there are still a few final details to finish up…

It’s been over a week since I posted so I’ll fill in the gaps.  Despite protective efforts, the kitchen floor looked pretty bad by the end.  George had planned to have it buffed and coated with polyurethane after all of the major construction was done.  Friday night the fumes were awful so we were happy to get out of the house for an amazing dinner at Salts.  Of course, Clyde managed to run briefly into the kitchen while the finish was still wet, so now we have startled kitty streaks right inside the doorway.  Tomorrow there will be another coat, hopefully fewer kitty streaks, and some fresh fumes.

Shiny floor

The dry bar has glass shelves, wood-and-glass doors, and LED lighting.  It’s looking pretty good but still needs a few last details, like stoppers to keep the doors from folding into the cabinet.

Dry bar cabinet with doors and shelves

LED light strips inside dry bar cabinet

A cleaning crew spent two hours on Saturday vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing every surface in the kitchen.  By 5pm we were able to pull boxes from the basement and start putting stuff away.  By 10pm we were exhausted.

Sunday it was time to remove the thick layer of construction dust from all of the glassware in the dining room.  By mid-afternoon we were slouched in the living room watching High School Musical 2 on ABC Family.  But then… it was time for the first meal: Trader Joe’s carne asada, rice, refried beans, and tortillas.  Not as gourmet as some of Anne’s past creations, but most of those didn’t follow two days of lifting and cleaning.

Yay!

Still, there are some things left: the vent to outside, some crown molding, details on the dry bar, a mountain of trash in the back yard.  Plus we’ve got a new project.  Our hot water heater has decided to die a slow and leaky death while we wrap up the kitchen work.  Anyone know anything about on-demand water heaters?

Uncategorized after, carne asada, dry bar, floor, trim

It was exactly two months ago today that the old kitchen was dismantled and carted away.  Our expectation was six to eight weeks, so we’re not horribly behind schedule.  But there was definitely some hope that by Super Bowl Sunday, we’d have our new kitchen all to ourselves.

I put a ton of pictures from the whole project up on Picasa if anyone’s interested in seeing more:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jacksteadman/KitchenTwoMonthAlbum

It’s looking pretty close to done, with the first coat of finish paint going up on Friday and the last couple of cabinets being bolted in on Thursday.  Still, there’s a decent list of small details still to come along with a couple of not-so-insignificant details like an upgrade to our electrical service and installation of the vent cap on the outside of the house.

First coat of paint

Pantry with molding and window seat

Ruskin’s already enjoying the new window seat.  I think he spent about 12 hours there today.

Ruskin's new favorite spot

Tomorrow we expect another coat of paint and maybe some more detail work to be completed.  Later in the week the floors will be buffed and re-finished.  More pictures in the next few days…

Uncategorized cats, commentary, paint