Kitchen Nightmares: Somerville Edition

The past two days have been a total roller-coaster.  First we find out that we might not have a countertop until late February.  Then one of George’s contacts comes through with a good slab that can be installed next week.  Lessons were learned, disasters were averted, and ultimately we stay on schedule - I think.

Last week we checked in with Vermont Soapstone, which we’d always thought would be our vendor of choice for our soapstone countertop.  The sample we got from them months ago was great.  We got their quote and were happy with it, so we figured we’d go with them.  Unlike most stone vendors, they bring an entire slab of stone to your house and fabricate on-site - pretty hardcore.

Then we asked when they could be here.  February 16 - about 4 weeks after we’d hoped to have completely wrapped up this project.  It seems that we’d lost touch with them around the holidays.  We assumed that we could get them here to install a countertop on schedule, but in fact we lost all awareness of their lead time.  Suddenly we were left without a stone vendor who could deliver on our timeline.

Enter Matrix Stone, a referral from George.  They got us a quote yesterday and said that they could complete the entire template and fabrication process by this coming Monday or Tuesday.  Their shop is near our office, in Everett, MA, and they work with suppliers in Braintree and Westwood.

Anne and I both ended up losing most of an afternoon of work while we went south to check out slabs of stone.  The first one we saw was not promising: lots of quartz veining, and lots of spots which mottled the nice smooth soapstone texture we were looking for.  The second stop was much better.  We saw slabs from two lots of stone, with varying degrees of veining.  One of the options was particularly nice and we decided to go with it.  Problem solved.

Matrix will come to template tomorrow and will install the finished countertop on Monday or Tuesday, all for a very reasonable price.  We hope that our estimation of quality is accurate; the stone certainly looked nice in the warehouse this afternoon, but we are hardly stone experts.  This situation all worked out well, but we would have liked to have had more options, including Vermont Soapstone and other companies, like Green Mountain Soapstone and the supplier recommended by our designer at Kitchen Interiors.  Waiting until this late in the process really limited us, and while I think we will end up with a good result, it would definitely make us feel better if we had more options.

In the meantime, the rest of the refrigerator enclosure was built:

Refrigerator in its enclosure

The dishwasher was moved into place:

Dishwasher in place

And the enormous double oven was unwrapped:

Double oven before mounting in its cabinet

For some perspective, here’s the whole kitchen as it looks from the hallway:

The whole room so far

Tomorrow we hope to have some more details on the little side project that’s tagging along with the kitchen, a small dry-bar/built-in that will occupy the closet space that’s held our wine refrigerator in the dining room for a long time.  We decided to finish that off during the kitchen project because we’d already have the electrical and carpentry talents of various contractors at our disposal.  More info on that when we have it.

Anne and I grabbed dinner tonight at West Side Lounge on Mass Ave. in Cambridge.  Such a good place that we almost never go to.  Their cocktails are excellent, and the food is very good.  Anne had a burger and I had roast chicken - simple stuff that was very well done.  I had what they called a “Crimson Manhattan,” made up of rye whiskey, yellow chartreuse, orange bitters, and a splash of pomegranate juice.  Very tasty.

Uncategorized cabinets, construction, countertop, dishwasher, oven, refrigerator

A couple of days ago, Yale called to let us know that our appliances would be delivered today between noon and 3pm.  This was easily doable since I planned to be home all day anyway.  Then, at about 7am, while Anne and I were still fast asleep, the doorbell rang.  They showed up eight hours early!

The dining room was promptly filled with a refrigerator and several enormous boxes.  The Wolf cooktop, complete with wooden pallet, plus the double oven, dishwasher, blower fan, and hood insert occupied almost as much space as the cabinets had before, essentially keeping us from using the room we had just gotten back when the cabinets moved into place.  Thankfully, it was only for one day this time.  By tonight most of them had moved into the kitchen.

Wolf cooktop, packaged and on a shipping pallet

Double oven in a box

Refrigerator in place in the kitchen

George and his helper George (very confusing) arrived shortly afterward to continue hanging and assembling cabinets.  Most of the upper cabinets are now on the walls, and the fridge space has started to take shape.  We’re now getting a sense of how much space we’ll have in the room now that we’re using both walls.  It’s a lot smaller than it used to be.  Not necessarily in a bad way, but it will take some getting used to.

More upper cabinets alongside fridge enclosure

Vent fan hood with more wall cabinets

One thing we realized is that the fridge and the cabinet above it will make it so that the window isn’t visible from most of the room.  Both are, I think, 24 inches deep and are placed directly to the right of the window, effectively shading the front of the room from any window light.  This will definitely take some getting used to, even with the window in the back door providing natural light to the whole room.

Can't see the window. There will be another cabinet above the fridge as well.

Tonight’s dinner was at Stone Hearth Pizza in Belmont.  Their food is excellent and all locally sourced.  We don’t get there often enough because Belmont Center is a little out of the way for us, and unfortunately they don’t deliver.  We were on our way back from Expo Design Center (fancy Home Depot) in Burlington, where we finally picked up cabinet hardware - simple brushed nickel knobs and drawer pulls that still ran us over three hundred bucks.  Nothing comes cheaply on this project.

Next up, we need to pick out a faucet and a pendant lamp for above the sink.  Both of those are quickly becoming tile-esque chores.

We took a trip down to Yale this afternoon to look at lighting.  It turns out that we should have done this a long time ago.  Some pendants rely on a transformer in the ceiling, which requires a larger electrical box than is standard.  We could have had a larger box installed, but that becomes much harder now that the walls are closed up.  It’s a minor issue that can certainly be worked out, but still, we’d hoped to avoid any more surprises.

Uncategorized cabinets, construction, issues, lighting, oven, refrigerator, stove

Happy New Year!

The kitchen is really starting to take shape.  We got back from our night in Stowe and found that the wall cabinets in the sink corner had been hung, and almost all the other cabinets are sitting in place (or close to it) in the kitchen.

It looks like George decided to start building from the sink corner, which has a big cabinet piece where the sink will go diagonally.  To the right is a regular cabinet and drawer, and to the left is a small vertical cabinet for storing cutting boards, pizza stones, etc. - flat things that can be stored vertically.  That cabinet provides some standing space between the sink and the dishwasher, which will be just to the left of it.

Above all of that, wall cabinets extend as far as tolerable toward the corner, and a set of shallower shelves take over and extend all the way into the corner itself.  The pendant lamp will hang down in front of the shelves directly above the sink.  We just have to figure out how far down the lamp should hang; we envisioned the shelves as being primarily decorative, so it’ll be ok that the light ends up directly in front of them.  We’ll just work it into whatever we decide to put there.

Wall cabinets and corner sink unit

The large pantry cabinet which was blocking our hallway is also in place in the corner next to the door.  It has three large drawers on the bottom and plenty of space for food on the top.

Pantry cabinet between door and window

Everything’s being built to a 96-inch design height, so the pantry and oven cabinets are each 8 feet tall.  All of the wall cabinets go up to 8 feet off the floor as well.  That should give us a ridiculous amount of storage, which we will proceed to fill within a couple of months.

With crown molding, the upper cabinets will touch the lower ceiling

Other pieces have been moved into place and unwrapped:

The full cooktop/vent hood assembly

Window (cat) seat with cat food and dish drawers

More cabinet work is scheduled to be done tomorrow.  All of our appliances should arrive tomorrow afternoon as well.  They get to live in the dining room while cabinet installation is finished.

This weekend we plan to get our cabinet hardware, faucet, and maybe the pendant lamp.  These are the last visual/functional elements we haven’t decided on and it’s getting to be that time.  Whee!

Uncategorized cabinets, construction, design

Merry Christmas everyone!

So we just got back from our trip and found the kitchen fully plastered.  Gone is the dark gray drywall and now we have a shiny coat of white all over the room.  It’s so much bigger and brighter now.

Supposedly there was going to be a first coat of paint applied on Friday, but we can’t tell if that happened.  I’ll have to ask George in the morning.  I’m hoping we can move straight into cabinet installation to get some of them out of our useful spaces.  Plus, I really want to see what the cabinets look like in the room.

On to the pictures:

White, white, and more white

New walls joined up with old walls

Lowered ceiling with recessed lighting

Nicely finished off ceiling/wall transition in the hallway

If there were a coat of paint applied, it would have been only a white primer that in some places is still shiny like plaster.  Still, I’m hoping that we can see some cabinet progress tomorrow as originally planned.

After the long drive back, we placed a Dining In order from Jose’s in Cambridge.  I had never eaten there before but their enchiladas were very good.  I guess they’re over on Sherman Street, kind of far from everywhere we usually go.  That’s why Dining In is the best thing ever.

One cat-related note before ending: while we were away, we confined Ruskin and Clyde to the bedroom with their litterbox, food, and water so that there was no chance of them getting downstairs while work was going on in the kitchen.  When we got home, the bedroom smelled awful and they had covered every conceivable surface with fur and litter.  Not unexpected I suppose, but totally gross.  I’m off to close the windows now that we’ve had a chance to air out the entire upstairs.  There’s just no good solution for what to do with them during this project.

Uncategorized construction, drywall

As of early this afternoon, there are no more open walls.  While the cabinets were being piled up in the dining room and hallway, drywall guys were at work in the kitchen covering the walls in dark-grey sheet rock.  So now we’ve gone from finished white walls to no walls and dark wood to dark grey unfinished walls.

Note the white splotches in the picture below.  They only appeared when I took a picture with the flash.  I think there were lots of fine reflective dust particles in the air.  We couldn’t see them, but they really had a dramatic effect on the photos.  Makes me wonder how much of that we breathed in.  Note to self: save photos for future class-action lung-disease lawsuit.

New drywall. Also, apparently, it's snowing.

I think Ruskin likes the simplicity of the gray monotone.

Tomorrow the walls get a few coats of plaster and will be back to white and ready for paint after Christmas.

Also, here’s Anne reheating pizza in what space is left in the dining room:

Cramped quarters

And peeking over the stacked-up cabinets:

Can't get there from here

Uncategorized construction, drywall