Things Are Looking Up!

Well, our renovation celebrated a birthday sometime last month. Yes, we've been at this for over a year now. It's been a long process, but we're pretty pleased with how things are coming out.

With the kitchen cabinets and counters installed, it was time to get to work on the tongue and groove ceiling. We did have some more drywall to finish up, including the ridge beam. We decided to put a fixture for a ceiling fan in the center of the beam.

Drywalling the ridge beam

We also decided that we would update the fireplace by refacing it and extending it up to the roof line. We still haven't picked out what kind of brick or stone we will use on it. Julie, our interior designer recommended that we wait until the flooring is installed so that we can bring home some samples and see what we would like best.

Framing the new fireplace

I had to install the first few rows of the tongue and groove ceiling before I hung the cabinets on the wall because I wouldn't have been able to nail the boards in with the cabinets up. I hung a chain from the pendant fixtures over the counter to see how they would hang. Unfortunately, I had to end up moving them a bit because the last cabinet door would have ended up hitting the light.

 

Well, that's not going to work.

Once the pendant fixtures were relocated, it was time to continue on with the tongue and groove ceiling. What made that challenging is that, since I was dealing with 8- and 16-foot lengths of board, I couldn't do it alone. Thankfully, I had the help of Maura, my neighbor, Eddie, and my friends, Tim and Steve (not all at the same time, but each of them helped at some points).

Things went pretty smoothly since I had purchased a pneumatic brad nailer. It came with the set that I purchased for installing the hardwood flooring. The worst part was doing the cutouts around the light fixtures (18 of them).

Getting back into the groove

Things are starting to take shape.

When we rewired the kitchen, my brother-in-law, Andy, left pigtails under each cabinet for the under-cabinet lighting. I bought the LED units from Lowe's and installed them myself. Since two of our cabinets have glass doors, we wanted to light those, as well. I bought some LED strips and ran them along the inside front edges of the cabinets and tied them in directly to the under-cabinet lights with a couple of transformers that I mounted to the bottom of those cabinets. We really like how the lighting came out, but I'll probably install a dimmer switch.

Under-cabinet (and in-cabinet) lighting

 

Kitchen and dining room ceiling installed!

Once we finished installing the drywall, including the beam, we arranged for Camille and his crew from Plaster & Drywall Systems, Inc. to come back in and plaster the dining area, living room, and beam. Once again, they did a great job for a more than reasonable price. 
 

Plastering completed!

With the plastering done, it was time to move on to the living room ceiling. That went faster than the kitchen and dining room since it wasn't as big. The room is 15'-10" wide, so I was able to use full pieces of the 16-foot tongue and groove boards. No seems in the living room.

And the living room ceiling is done!

You'll also notice that the trim is installed on the kitchen and dining area side and that we have painted the window and door trim white. It's coming together. We have been trying to keep things moving along so that we can get to installing the floor. We were shooting to have done before Thanksgiving, but it will be tight.

Still need to buy and install vent hood fan and backsplash.

Trim finished on kitchen and dining area side

Skylight trimmed and painted

Ceiling fan hung

I was originally thinking of getting a white ceiling fan, but Julie convinced us to get a nice-looking, dark one that would match the cabinets and stand out a little. We bought the Hunter Willowcrest with an 18-inch down-rod. Maura thinks it might be too low, so I might switch the down-rod out to a shorter one.

We're coming into the home stretch now. We still have some painting and trim work to be done in the living room. We're looking forward to getting the flooring installed!

Kitchen Counters

We weren't sure what type of counters to go with, but after going over our options with Joe, we decided on quartz over granite because it's no-maintenance. We ended up going with Lincolnshire from Cambria's Cambrian Collection.

Lincolnshire

I left the installation of the counters to the professionals. Once I was done installing the cabinets, I called Joe to have his guys--Joseph and company from Proline Services, Inc.--come in and make the templates. Joseph was great. After making the templates (three large pieces), he was back about a week later to do the installation.

Kitchen counters - three pieces, plus the backsplash trim

What do you think? We were very pleased with how the counters came out!

Installing the Cabinets

If you recall, we donated our old cabinets to Habitat for Humanity, and they picked them up a couple of days before Christmas. So we had been without kitchen cabinets for over three months! With the kitchen walls plastered, we had to paint them so that we could finally take delivery of our cabinets.

Here's the color paint we decided on for the kitchen, dining room, and living room.

Paisley doesn't know what to think about the cabinet delivery.

That's a lot of boxes!

Did I mention that the appliances arrived shortly after the cabinets?

We originally had a deeper refrigerator, but Julie and Joe both recommended that we exchange it for a counter-depth refrigerator so that it wouldn't stick out too much past the counters.

That's not going to work! Guess we'll move the switches to the other side of the wall.

Going to have to cut the cabinet so that the microwave drawer will fit!

I had to install a couple of strips of the tongue & groove ceiling above the kitchen window so that I could hang the cabinets on that wall.

Yes, the television above the refrigerator is temporary.

The microwave fits in the cabinet after trimming a little off the left and right sides.

The new gas range plugged in temporarily since its dedicated outlet wasn't wired yet.

We saved a bunch of money again since I installed the cabinets myself. It's really not that difficult, as long as you can use a level, tape measure, drill, and screw gun. Empty cabinets are pretty light. It's not even that bad hanging the upper cabinets alone because of the temporary boards that you tack to the wall to rest the cabinet on while screwing them in. Hang the upper cabinets before installing the base cabinets. The wires sticking out under the cabinets will be for hard-wired under-cabinet lighting, which will all be controlled with a single switch.

These pictures take us through the very beginning of May. Note that we finally had to remove the old sink so that we could install the base cabinets in preparation for the template for the counters. Stay tuned for the next update!

Dry-walling the Kitchen

In my last blog post, I said I was overdue, but it's been over three months (May) since I've updated this blog. And the pictures from that post were three months prior to that (February)! Fear not--there has been a lot of work going on at the house! Since I have some catching up to do, this post will contain pictures from as far back as March. Then I'll have to do some more posts to get caught up.

Had to open up some of the old drywall to run wiring for the under-cabinet lights and range hood.

How about that spice rack?

Color samples taped to the kitchen wall.

So much work left to do!

Back to dry-walling--old and new.

Ready for the plasterers!

I hung the drywall myself, which wasn't bad. The 4'x8' sheets just fit, width-wise, in the back of the Durango and only hung out a few inches, so I just had to tie down the tailgate. After watching some YouTube videos on plastering, I decided that it would be worth hiring professionals. Our kitchen designer, Joe Ricardi, had told us that he would send his plastering crew if we wanted, and he gave us a great deal. Well worth it! Camille and his assistant came out and plastered the kitchen in half a day. They did a great job!

Glad we decided to hire professional plasterers!

Plastering in progress.

Kitchen plastered!

Plaster dried.

Getting there!

Stay tuned. The next post will be coming soon!

What Do You Mean I Can't Pull My Own Electrical Permit?

I'm overdue for a blog post, so here's what went on after the demolition. I needed to build up the walls above the original ceiling up to the rafters. This was happening in the middle of winter, and I had to get things ready so that my brother-in-law could do the wiring. I had heard that the homeowner could pull the electrical permit in some instances, but it didn't turn out to be the case in our town. Looking back on it, I'm very happy that we had a licensed electrician (and family member) do the wiring. Andy is very thorough and does great work!

Before Andy arrived, I first concentrated on the upper walls of the kitchen, mostly because that was the most work, plus it isn't much fun living in a house with a functional kitchen. Okay, our kitchen was technically functional. After we got rid of the cabinets, my wonderful neighbor (retired plumber) hooked my sink back up for me. I supported it with some 2x4 and 2x6 pieces, and that temporary sink served us well from a few days before Christmas until the end of April. It was a good thing that it was just Maura, me, and our dog, Paisley, living at home during the bulk of this renovation. It helped that Gabe and Carly were away at school. Keep in mind that the pictures in this entry were taken in February. Thank goodness it wasn't a bad winter!

First part of the upper-wall studded.

Old bank of switches (and the previous owner was an electrician!).

New bank of switches (much nicer job done by Andy).

More of the new wiring (and our old sink temporarily hooked up).

New LED recessed lights!

These 10-watt lights are bright!

We'll need to install dimmers.

Still hadn't taken down the living room ceiling joists at this point.

The scaffolding was a great purchase!

Getting ready to close up the old kitchen entry.