We’ve been really busy since last weekend. After work on Monday, we filled the gaps in the floor with a cream-colored grout. After almost two years with a black and white floor that advertised every speck of dirt, we wanted to go with something a little more low maintenance. I had never done this before, so I was a little intimidated. It wasn’t so much the work that worried me as the time sensitivity. Thanks to a few YouTube tutorials, we managed to do an okay job:
Getting the grout haze up is a pain, but it goes away quickly if you wipe it with a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water.
As usual, we spent the next couple of days applying more mud to the walls and sanding and painting. I put up another coat of red and my wife painted the built-ins with bright white primer. The electrician came out on Friday to finish the wiring and put in our lights. We used to have this light fixture in our bathroom. It was probably a bargain bin item the previous owners bought just before moving:
It didn’t fit with the white and chrome accessories we have in the room, but it matches the faucet and hardware we’re putting in the kitchen. We decided to move it to the kitchen and I replaced it with this fixture. Naturally, it hangs too low now, so I’ll need to move it up the wall a bit. That means I get to do more mudwork in the bathroom when the kitchen is finished!
Here, you can see that we flipped the light upside-down and hung it over the window:
In a perfect world, I’d hang a similar light with 4 bulbs that’s about the same width as the window, but you just can’t argue with free. The electrician also installed this ceiling fan:
It hung low enough that we were very aware of fan blades spinning right above our heads. What’s worse, it didn’t put out very much light. We returned it on Saturday morning and I installed a new fan/light combo.
I must say that from my experience, Lowe’s will take anything back. All I did was remove the fan blades and throw everything back in the box (more like on top of the box). After a quick inspection by the electrical department manager, they gave us our money back. In an age where it seems like all retailers are trying to outsource complaint resolution and nickel-and-dime their customers to death, it’s nice to see a big box store be so accommodating. We’d tried to go there over Home Depot as much as possible after that.
I mounted the new fan higher than the old one and we bought frosted globes to match the globes on the light above the window. The rest of the day, we sealed the grout, painted all the trim a glossy white and painted the shelf space above the refrigerator inset. As usual, I put on a couple more coats of mud. I think this should just about do it. This isn’t a new house and the walls will never look perfect. I just want to mask the more obvious imperfections:
I also constructed a transition piece to cover the step up from the dining room to the kitchen. It’s made of laminate, so it’s not an exact match with our authentic, honey oak floors. Still, we had to get a little creative to make something that’s the right height and still maintains a low profile. I glued it with liquid nails:
It came out pretty good, I think. I keep reminding myself that the point is not to make something that looks so good that people notice it. The point is to make something that looks so typical that no one notices it:
This is how the room looked at the end of the day on Saturday. We think the new fan looks great:
On Sunday, we had a bunch of finish work to do. I trudged down to the crawl space to drill a hole through the subfloor and into the mock wall behind the refrigerator. I had always suspected that the rear of the room had been extended on top of an old concrete stoop, kind of like a smaller version of our front porch. After drilling a 5/8” hole through 5 inches of concrete, I confirmed that suspicion.
Boring that hole wrecked me. I don’t have a hammer drill, so I was hunched over in an area barely big enough to squat, pushing up on my drill with all of my strength. I was showered with concrete dust the whole time and had to take a couple of breaks just to catch my breath. The hole is for the water line to the refrigerator and a cable wire. We decided it would be nice to put a little flat screen tv above the refrigerator so we can watch the news while cooking. It’ll come in very handy during football season when we cook for guests.
I also replaced the dryer vent. When we bought the house, the inspector specifically pointed to the vent as an example of shoddy upkeep. I ripped out layers of caulk and put in a modern unit that will keep pests out of the house.
To finish the interior of the built-ins, we needed to hide a horizontal support beam and the framing for our faux wall above the cabinets. I angled some thin plywood to make a hollow beam that ties it all together. This is the view from inside the cabinet where the washer and dryer will go:
Since we’re stacking the units in such a small space, we needed to be able to plug in the dryer before stacking it. And since the longest cord you can buy is a 6-footer, I had to make my own with 9 feet of cord. It was tough work, but we got the washer into place. We failed several times to get the dryer into the closet. The pesky culprit was the dryer vent tube, which kept popping off when we lifted the unit. Luckily, my wife is just small enough to squeeze through that gap on the right, and we eventually got the units stacked. This is how the room looked at the end of the day on Sunday:
I think I’m finally done with the mudwork, at least as long as the cabinet installers don’t chip the plaster.
My wife wanted to make sure the units don’t rock during the spin cycle, so she ate her dinner on the kitchen floor. It’s odd, but we’ve gotten to the point where it’s enthralling just to watch an appliance in action. It reminds me of the scene in The Money Pit where Walter Fielding (Tom Hanks) starts crying because they finally have stairs.
UPDATE: Kitchen Remodel 6: Cabinets
Remodelling home has become a headache for many. Have you finished it yet? how much was your estimate?