Kitchen Nightmares: Somerville Edition

In the waning days of this project, I have to admit that it’s harder to get excited about blogging every night, or even every other night.  There are just so many little details that progress isn’t that dramatic day-to-day.  I look forward to finally posting some before and after comparisons once we’re completely finished.  For now, just a few updates.

The dry bar’s getting all trimmed after being wired for electricity the other day.

Dry bar trim making it look more like a built-in

Soon there will doors and lighting, and then paint, and then shelving.  Removing the old trim as well as part of the chair rail and baseboards has exposed some really ancient plaster.  Nasty stuff.

The last electrical work in the kitchen was finished.  A couple more under-cabinet fixtures, plus dishwasher and oven hookup.  The blower fan is in place but still not hooked up to the vent.

Anne and I went over to the office building where our company is moving this weekend.  It looks nice, but it also looks like there’s still a ton to do before we can move in and start working.  I feel the same way about the kitchen.  Both projects should be done by the end of the week, but it’s hard to see how that will happen.  Oh well, that’s for the professionals to figure out.

Tonight we ate at The Independent in Union Square.  It’s one place that’s never crowded, to the point that we sometimes wonder how they stay in business.  But the food is great, and the beer list is extensive.  At least you know you can always get a table.

Uncategorized dry bar, electrical, lighting, trim

Even if sometimes it still feels like we’re in the same situation as we were a month ago, when the kitchen didn’t even have walls, the project really has come a long way.  There’s a functioning refrigerator, complete with cold filtered water and ice maker; a working sink, running water, and garbage disposal; and this morning we fired up the Wolf for the first time.  No actual cooking happened, but the thing works.

Fire!

So technically, we could store food, cook it, eat a meal, and wash the dishes.  The problem is that neither of us is really interested in moving into a 90% complete kitchen.  There are still cabinet adjustments to be made.  Shelves for the cabinets are still sitting in the dining room.  The dishwasher probably works but isn’t securely mounted under the counter.  We can’t leave anything on the counters, because inevitably a contractor or two will need to push it out of the way.  Plus there’s the issue of dust.  A good amount of it still gets kicked up during the work day, even though most of the sawing is done outside.  It’s just not worth the hassle of trying to use the kitchen as-is, even if home-cooked meals sound really good right now.

The ovens moved into place the other day:

Double oven in its cabinet

As far as I know, we still don’t have adequate electrical service to the house to run these.  Still nice that they aren’t blocking the path from the living room to the kitchen any more.

Some of the under-cabinet lighting is installed:

Fluorescent fixtures under cabinets

A few more small fixtures need to go in, and we definitely need to get warmer tubes.  This is way too white, especially with the stark-white walls (which of course will go away).

George was here today (Saturday!) trying to catch up on door and window trim along with baseboards, light rail, the dry bar, and other details.  I think he’s as anxious to finish the project as we are.  We are really close, and it looks awesome.  Dare I hope that next weekend we’ll be moving our stuff back in?

Uncategorized electrical, lighting, oven, stove, trim

In the past couple of days our home has zipped through the 19th and into the 20th century with the re-addition of running water and refrigeration.  The kitchen sink works, as does the fridge including water filter and ice maker, which means that plumbing is done.

Insert angelic chorus here

Today it was the electrician’s turn to finish some things off.  Recessed lights got new collars (cats were jealous) and some of the outlets and switches were installed, but most interestingly, the pendant lamp was hung over the sink.  Finally some light in the corner!

Bright spot in the corner

More stuff happened with the cabinets too.  A lot more of the crown molding is in, as you can see on the far-right cabinet in the photo above.  For a better view, here’s a close-up of the upper cabinets above the laptop station (along with the finished-off recessed light):

Finished crown molding and light fixture

Tomorrow more cabinetry work will be done, including hopefully some of the finish work on the dry bar.  Thursday and Friday should be the last days for the electrician, after which all of the appliances should work.  I am pretty excited to have a dishwasher again.

Tonight I really wanted Chinese food, which is just a terrible idea if you have to eat out every night.  We should be focused on healthy options because most take-out is decidedly unhealthy.  But we’re not.  I got General Gau’s Chicken.  When this is all over we’ll have a brand-new kitchen but eat nothing by salads for a month.

Uncategorized cabinets, electrical, lighting, plumbing, refrigerator, sink

It’s already Sunday and I haven’t posted anything about Thursday and Friday’s progress.  Whoops… On Thursday, the last pieces of soapstone were delivered and installed, and the first coat of mineral oil was applied to help them oxidize consistently.  As a result, they look much darker than before.

Darkened segment of countertop

Darkened top of laptop station

On Friday, the faucet was installed, one of the first really final finishing touches to be done.  It’s stainless steel, like all of the appliances and most of the other decorative accents.

Decorative faucet and matching sprayer

Also on Friday, the insert and part of the blower fan were installed in the vent hood.  It’s not too interesting to look at, so I won’t post any pictures.  It’s yet another appliance to be installed though.  This week it’ll be hooked up to the vent duct, which will also be cut and capped off outside.

A lot of work was done last week on the crown molding around the top of the room.  I’ll post pictures of that when more of it is done, there’s not too much to look at right now.  Most of the finishing boards around the bottom, underneath the lower cabinets, are done as well.

The last thing to report on is the dry bar: the frame that was sitting in the middle of the dining room in my last post has moved into the space and had its countertop installed.

Dry bar frame and countertop

Next steps will include removal of the existing trim, installation of new trim to cover the frame, electrical work to support the wine fridge, lighting, and an internal electrical outlet, and addition of glass doors.  The goal is to use very low-wattage LED lighting in the dry bar; we would have used it more throughout the kitchen, but complications and misunderstandings about what it requires made it impossible.  Specifically, you can’t get LEDs which run on line voltage.  Instead, you need to install large transformers to lower the voltage between the main electrical wiring and the LED fixtures.  The transformers need to be planned for before wiring.  Since we didn’t know that up front, we couldn’t plan ahead.

Work continues tomorrow despite the holiday.  Plumbing work will be completed and finish electrical work will begin.  All of the new wiring will get routed to the panel downstairs, outlets and switches will be installed, and the pendant lamp will be hung.  It’s conceivable that we would have a functional kitchen by the end of the week, but there’s still a lot to do and I’m not getting my hopes up.  Still, we are very close.  It’s hard not to be really impatient.

Uncategorized cabinets, countertop, dry bar, lighting, plumbing

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