Merry Christmas and Happy New Years! I hope everyone had wonderful holidays!
Yikes! As I have been politely reminded, I haven't posted updates in a couple of months and friends are waiting! Honestly, I didn't realize it had been that long. Between the remodel, Thanksgiving and Christmas travels, and visitors (none of which I would give up!), time slipped away and the blog kept getting put off. The good news is, with all the work put in, Thanksgiving happened, Christmas happened, and the kitchen has been completed! Yes, I said it. It's done! Now to catch everyone up on the process. I'll try and pretend it isn't done and not give things away!
After the demo was complete, we began by prepping the area for cabinets. That included adding a new water line to the refrigerator and patching the drywall. We have hard water so I suspected it needed to be changed out. That's easiest done without the cabinets and backsplash installed. I'm so glad we did! It fixed the problems with the icemaker and we now have much stronger water pressure! Yay! I was about to replace the refrigerator, so it was money well spent. It's the little things that make a huge difference.
The guys had a lot of "help" from the home team, but they were good sports offering head rubs, wind machines, and laser shows!
Not everything was fun and games, though. Unfortunately, as cabinets were installed, we came across more parts that were cut incorrectly. The guys made adjustments on site where they could, but more parts had to be remade and shipped. Let me repeat.. I don't advise using Conestoga cabinets for your remodel. While they're good quality if sent correctly, the company is clearly having issues on their production floor right now. This delayed our project significantly.
Pictures of the cabinets going up:
Once the base cabinets were complete enough for a substrate, it was time for the countertops to be templated, fabricated, and installed!
This was the smoothest part of the project due to the professionalism of the guys at The Marble Yard and their installer, Hugo.
Once the templating is done, Dale and his team do something unique that I greatly appreciate. They had me out to the shop to approve the template layout. I ended up moving a few of the pieces to avoid as many of the fissures as possible. (The slabs I selected had quite a few, but the price was right and the color and veining was beautiful and exactly what I wanted!) Typically, the fabricator places them then comes to install the pieces. Here's how they ended up. As you can see, we used most of the slabs so avoiding all of the veins was impossible. In hindsight I would have made a few more changes, but you learn with each job you do and it turned out beautifully!
Here's what it looks like installed. I'm not showing it all because I want to show progress on the rest of the cabinets separately. If only I could really capture the beauty of this stone on camera! The second picture is my best attempt with my iphone. Maybe I'll get out my good camera for the final pics! Like I said previously, you can choose to backlight this stone and it glows!
If you remember, I also had them install this stone as my backsplash. It's gorgeous. However, I did have one "oops" moment. Typically a backsplash goes anywhere there are countertops. Unfortunately, when they put up one section I really didn't like it. After debating over it a few hours, I pulled it off the wall. It's better done before the glue dries. There was minimal drywall repair and texturing to do, but I don't regret it! Take a look. What do you think? Backsplash or no backsplash?
Coming up: The rest of the kitchen!