The Big Dig Continues... Day 18 of no Kitchen Sink... thoughts on Patience

It's been 19 days since my last post....  and 18 days with no running water or kitchen sink in our kitchen. The kitchen itself remains a "work in progress". I am learning that when dealing with insurance companies and contractors that "hurry up and wait" is the normal way of things. Somewhere in my past I had learned this lesson and then blissfully forgotten it, living as most of us do in that happy haze called insured over-confidence. To make matters worse, the amount of the damage now necessitates involving our mortgage company as a co-signer on some of the checks; thus adding their hoops to jump through and further slowing the process. But new cabinets are ordered and SOMETIME in the coming New Year we will have a kitchen again. It will be a new and improved kitchen so perhaps there is a blessing in the saga of the sluggish pipe that has been ongoing for the entire time we've lived in this house. If I can only be patient....

Here is the original incision made in our kitchen and dining room floor.

More of the Big Dig a.k.a the TRENCH!

Here's what a semi-filled trench looks like.. waiting for the tile man.

This is a FAKE sink... actually, it's our OLD sink sitting in the approx location of where the NEW sink will go. We are hoping this arrives before Christmas, but it would be HIGHLY unlikely for that to actually happen! Meanwhile we are getting VERY adept at dishwashing using that big grey pan set up down the hall in our bathtub! And our knees are getting stronger by the day!

And THIS is the DREAM sink... a shotof the approximate color (but not style) of our new cabinetry and the approximate color of our new counter tops.

The Day of the Impending Jack-Hammer!

Today was NOT a good day on Norwich Street! We were getting ready to leave when Ed noticed a wet spot at the base of one of the kitchen cabinets. We were certain our dishwasher had done the inevitable and blown a fill valve. So on the way to work we called our favorite appliance guys to come and check on it. I zipped home to make the 1pm appointment only to have the REAL news hit us square in the wallet!
To make a long story short; a troublesome drainpipe that runs UNDER the concrete that is UNDER our ceramic tiled kitchen floor is a goner and is going to have to be replaced! This means a 24 ft run of pipe and tomorrow at 8am a plumber and his crew will be here to attack my only 3 yr. old floor with a jack-hammer!!! I am beyond upset about this. The stupid drain has been an albatross around our necks for 25 years beginning in the first month we lived here back in 1985! But this exceeds all money-pit behavior up until this point. No rescue rooter, no draino... JUST rip the dang thing out! I am SO bummed. So for one more night, our floor looks like it did in 2007 when we got off our knees from laying it... here's a link to a happier time. So good-bye pretty floor, and maybe even my kitchen cabinets! (that's another story to be revealed tomorrow when we find out how much seeping water the things absorbed underneath that we CAN't see!)
 AHHHH the joys of home-ownership! They just keep coming!

We Made It!

Well, we may never lay another ceramic tile in our lives - but with sore knees we grouted and scrubbed the last of the family room tiles today... then we went swimming. Tomorrow we de-clutter the rooms and put them back together, but it's done! We love it and the whole house seems larger! Can't decide which room seems the most changed... but we're glad we did it!

Here's the dining room!



Here's the kitchen


Here's three different shots of the family room.

Stage Three - Week 2 - Flooring Saga Continues

Okay! So it's crunch time on this big project. We have our grandkids arriving in just 2 days for a week long visit... leaving us just today and tomorrow to finish our project. We got behind a bit over the weekend due to some mechanical snafus with some equipment at the vineyard and also due to the fact that old knees overestimated how long they could hold up under the strain of crawling on them for about 5 continuous days. However... the last tile will be on the floor by 2:30 today and the grouting will begin in the kitchen tonight. (with time out in between for Ed to go spray the vineyard.) That being done, we'll have tomorrow to grout and seal the sunroom and start to put the house back together. (It presently looks like a bomb went off in just about every room of the place because we keep moving things to work on flooring!) We shall succeed... we think... provided the boys don't arrive too much before noon on Wednesday.... hey, but if they do, we'll teach 'em how to scrub floors!!! My assessment: Ty what's-his-name on Extreme Home Makeover has NOTHING on the Staude's... we need a TV Show!


This is our kitchen floor with NO flooring.. pretty scary! I say it looks like an Jackson Pollack "dark mood" painting.


Kitchen with new tiles down extended into the garage entryway. Are you in awe of our skills yet?


Ed doing his best impression of a floor "elf" from Harry Potter.... behold the man with bionic knees!


Sunroom tile VERY near completion at approx 2pm this afternoon.

Ceramic Tile is Fun! (or Stage 3 )

Well, we tackled the fearsome foe.... ceramic tile! Last night with the dining room parquet wood flooring GONE for good... we tackled the TILE! And actually it was pretty fun! The difference was dramatic! Still have to grout it, but you can see what it will look like. Tonight, the tile will creep onward into the kitchen and then beyond that into the sunroom! Can't wait... no more ugly grey indoor/outdoor carpet in the ol' sunroom! YAHOO!
Oh yes... we also put a new lighting fixture in the dining room.

Two views of the dining room.



Closeup of the ceramic sans grouting.

The "project" Continues!

What is it about summertime and projects? Maybe I just watched too much HG tv while on vacation, but we suddenly found ourselves all fired up to tackle phase 2 and 3 of the big kitchen/dining room/sunroom remodel. First a stop at Lowes... I love Lowes; everything you've ever wanted to do to your home all under one roof! Came home with paint (phase 2) and ceramic tile (phase 3) and a whole lot of other things too... like new lighting and outlet/switch covers and valances for the dining room. Fun!
So here at last is phase 2 - the paint. The color is called Apricot....but it's really a spicey warm color that hearkens to Tuscany... which is the look we're going for. The dining room got the deeper color and the kitchen is a lighter tone of the same hue. Today we start the tile.... so it'll be a bit before the stage 3 photos are posted because we have to lay it down, wait 24 hrs., then grout it and wait 24 hours, and then seal it, and then wait 24 hrs. - 3 days per room.... across three rooms so we're figuring on 5 days total to complete all the rooms on a "rotation" of steps basis. We'll see! After this we'll be ready to be ON HG tv!


These are the "before" and the stage one (cabinet refinishing) shots. We did this last April.


After the painting... stage 2 shot! Note the new lighting fixture too!


The view from the dining room through to the kitchen. Lots of "work tool clutter" in here for now... but it will vanish soon!

Our Latest "Project" - Stage One

For awhile now, we've been feeling the urge to do something with our rather dated and tired looking kitchen. After pricing various options (and recovering from the sticker shock involved) we recently decided there was a LOT we could do ourselves. After all, we built the entire apartment out at the winery, and while we aren't exactly ready to go on "This Old House", we felt pretty competent to do a lot of the work ourselves. So we've broken the project into "stages". Stage ONE is the cabinetry. We didn't want to buy new ones which were not as of a high quality wood as our old ones... so we decided to refinish our cabinets and change all the hardware. Ed has been sanding and stripping them down and discovered some really beautiful wood under that old reddish finish. The old copper strap hinges are gone as are the worn copper door pulls and in their place are some lovely new shiny nickel plated ones. Also added was some much needed undercabinet counter spot lighting. The result - a VERY new looking and MUCH brighter kitchen! STAGE ONE is a SUCCESS! The next stage... new flooring! Stay tuned as we rip up parquet wood, old vinyl and carpet and run slate from the dining room clear through to the sunroom! Oh, and don't call "Hometime" or "This Old House" - if it doesn't go well... we'll call Ty at "Extreme Home Makeover" ourselves!