Dave’s Good Stuff

We got the counters in. They don’t fit. We’ve been without a fully functional kitchen since mid-February. This is well into sucking now. We’re frustrated, burnt out on home improvement projects, and sick of coming home to a house half in disrepair.

I’m expecting a call now for someone to come out and template the installed cabinets, which *should* have been done to begin with. It wasn’t, and they don’t fit. Two more weeks without a kitchen. Two more weeks with the appliances in the dining room, and the dining room in the living room.

Bah.

Well… they started the installation yesterday, but didn’t quite finish, in spite of giving it a valiant effort and staying until 6:00pm.

We were short on hardware (drawer pulls and knobs) by 4. No big deal. They were overlooked in the order to begin with (though we’d picked them out by hand with the designer) so it was merely a matter of picking four more up.

The hinges that the manufacturer packed with the cabinets came in two styles. I’m not sure why there were two styles, only that there were two styles. That would be fine, except that one of the styles didn’t work. Those doors installed with the non-worky style didn’t shut without grinding against each other. Since there were no extras of the worky style, there was nothing further to do.

There’s two pieces of finished molding yet to put down. One next to the refrigerator and one next to the dishwasher.

The countertop… well, it’s supposed to be here tomorrow, but there’s good reason to believe it won’t fit. We were told that we could go ahead and order it on the measurements already taken and the design layout. Thing is, anyone who’s been through this knows that there are unknowns and variables in any sort of installation like this. In our case, the unknowns and variables could have/should have been known, but weren’t caught. So a few adjustments in the install to make room for this and that, and now we’re looking at countertops that are probably too short on one side, and too long on the other. We’ll have to wait and see, but it could be another few weeks w/o a kitchen for us… Fah *spit*

Everything else looks really good though. What was installed was done with care and consideration. Overall, I’m pleased with the performance and would go with these guys again, albiet a little wiser.

I’ll move a couple outlets and replace some switches, and then we’ll get the floor installed. With that done, we’ll feel a lot better about things. The floor is nasty, and I would LOVE to get something else in place.

I’ve been wanting to commute to work on my bicycle for some time now. It’s only about 10 miles, but it’s through some potentially nasty traffic. If I’m going to do this, I need to spend some time Saturday driving the roads between to find a decent route that will minimize my interaction with the rest of the traffic. I’m comfortable riding in traffic, but rush hour is a different kind of beast.

Aside from my own close call experiences in Lawrence, the countless close call stories from others, and the general common sense aspect, I witnessed this morning another example of why one should fear riding around moving cars.

I’m heading south on Metcalf I come to College. There’s a bike commuter heading west to east on the south side of the intersection. He *almost* makes it all the way when some asshat heading north in a Sebring-type vehicle just pulls right out in front of him to make a right turn on College. Biker endo’s over the hood. Fortunately, he gets up apparently unhurt and picks up his bike to wheel it to the sidewalk. The driver, to his credit, gets out. While it’s impossible to tell what attitude the driver carries with him this morning, it looked like he was concerned, rather than indignant. I certainly hope so, given that from my point of view he was entirely at fault.

I wonder if car insurance covers cycling… or if there’s anything else for it. If cyclists are required to act like vehicles according to the law, I wonder why we’re not required to be insured like them…

The kitchen crew is in right now installing the kitchen cabinets. We’ve been without cabinets for two to four weeks now, depending on if you count from the first demo day or the last. It’s been… unpleasant. But today, that all changes. While we won’t have the countertops for a couple of days, at least we’ll have cabinets!

The countertops will arrive on Wednesday, when we’ll pick them up and install them all ourselves.

It’s been an interesting couple of days. Yesterday we did the final demo on the sink side base cabinets. That meant yanking out the dishwasher as well. The water shut off valves beneath the sink were so old that the hot water valve simply did not work. Having previously been unsuccessful in finding the water shut-off valve for the house, and not knowing where or how to shut it off at the street (yes… home owners 101 level here), we called a plumber. That worked out b/c we got a few issues straightened out that have been on the back burner for a few months now, at a price that really wasn’t too bad.

That done, I finished the demo on the base cabinets. Right now, the stainless steel sink is on the brick patio in the backyard, half full of skanky rain water, mud, leaves and maple-tree helicopters. We’ll reuse it when the counter tops come in, but it’s kinda sad to see it out there in the rain like some discarded thing.

The final step, and as it turns out, the most costly, was moving the electrical line from one side of the sink to the other to accommodate the new location of the dishwasher. What should have been a quick and easy splice to add length to the line turned into a 3 hour, extremely wet, nightmare. I added the new length to the existing line, taped up the end and started feeding it through the joist holes I’d drilled. No, I didn’t turn off the breaker. What… you think I’m smart? There had to be a gap in the tape job I’d done, b/c as I’m feeding it through I hear a POP! and water starts spraying me in the face. Apparently, I’d brushed the copper line with the wire and the resulting spark punched a hole in the pressurized line leading up to the kitchen sink. DOH!

I rush around trying to find some pliers (channel locks will work) to shut off the water at the street. I’m pretty sure that plumber was out there earlier today *just* so I’d know where it was and how to do it. The water now merely a trickle as the line drains, I head on over to the neighbor’s house to ask for some tools and/or help. My neighbor, being who he is, jumps right in and does the job for me (I’m not complaining… he knew what he was doing, I watched and learned). A couple of cuts, a copper fitting, a torch and some solder and a couple hours later we’re back in business. The worst part, and the reason it took so long to fix, was the location… up in the basement ceiling and at an extremely awkward angle between joists and behind ceiling tile support boards.

That might just count as one of my most homeowner n00bish moments ever.

But, today, with leakless pipes, the kitchen cabinets are being installed. Later we’ll get the flooring supplies to carry the floor from the dining room into the kitchen, a new over-the-stove microwave, and yet more electrical tools to move an outlet for the refrigerator and install a couple of lights in the ceiling.

It’s been a lot of work, but I think the new kitchen will be worth it.