Kitchen Completed

I have not posted in a while because there really wasn't very much to post on, but now that the kitchen is completed it's a good opportunity to bring everyone up to date.

The Hood
The hood is finally in but it took quite a while to do. The appliance place where we ordered the hood from took a very long time to get it in. This, by the way, the contractor wanted in before the walls were closed up. We did however have the specs so the contractor could use them instead. All seemed good and on target, that was until it was actually delivered.

About half way through the job the hood was delivered, but it was the wrong hood. Then we waited until the correct one was delivered. Unfortunately the correct hood was delivered after the job was completed, and the workers had moved on to their next job, and here in lies the problem.

I have no doubt that if the hood was in while the workers were there then they would have hung it. But since they were gone, the contractor said the hood was not part of the contract and as such he would not be hanging it. He did however give us some people who could do the job.

Fine, we had these guys in, they gave us some quotes and we were shocked. One wanted $2000 to hang the hood, the other wanted about $1500. At this point I was looking at the instructions myself. I figured, what the hell, how hard could it actually be. Fortunately for me, my wife found someone from the appliance place who does this for all the appliance place's hoods and he would only charge $250. So $250 it would be. The hood was in in less than 3 hours.

Radient Floor Heating
Late in the job we tested the radiant heat, and it looked like the controller was broken, and we would need to get the electrician to take a look at it. I didn't particularly care, since all this was included in the work so it was the contractor's problem to take care of it.

What we found out is it was hooked up incorrectly and a new line would need to be run to the boiler. This of course would have been much easier if the floor and walls weren't in, but still, not my problem.

This took the poor bastard the better part of the day, and one of my walls looked like a jigsaw puzzle. Also, not my problem, since all the wallboard and mudding is the contractor's problem.

With the heating finally hooked up and working nice and toasty the contractor sent his guys over to finish the walls off.

All of this leads me to belive there should be a contracting service that takes care of the last 5% of the job as their specialty, just to get the job done.

Kitchen Video

98% completed.

Over the past few months a great deal of progress has been made in the kitchen. A blog that started as a daily occurrance has trickled down to a few posts a month.

Most of the work has been completed, the granite countertops are in, the fixtures have been installed and all the appliances are working.

We just had the floors done in the last couple of weeks which involved moving all the items out of the dining room and living room so the floors could be done. This was a bit of a problem because of the amount of stuff to be moved out of the way.

This process requires a number of days to complete. Starting with sanding the floors, which includes the new wood and the existing wood so they match in height and color. Then the floor is swept to get all the sawdust out of the way. Then the floors are stained. My wife chose the stain she wanted by buying multiple options and staining extra pieces of floorboards to choose.

The one that was picked was a oil based stain.

Oil based stains take longer to dry than water based, and the floor guy wanted to use water because it would be easier to him, but oil stain will wear better in a high traffic area.

After the stain is put on they needed to let it dry and then put 2 coat of polyurathane, that then has to dry. This whole process took about 4 days. It was another 2 days before we put the stuff into the dining/living room.


The items outstanding include the hood over the island, which was just delivered and some finish painting (that's my job) and an outlet box for the heat on the main floor. The electrician came by on Wednesday last week and was prepared to install the temperature gauge but there was no outlet box, so he didn't do it.