Kitchen part 8

Today had some pretty big progress: countertops!

I woke up with a snow alert:

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and I was worried that this would impact the rest of this remodel, what with big trucks and awful streets and hills. Fortunately the snow didn’t stick to the ground or ice over, so everything was able to proceed today. Thursday and Friday might be a bit iffy per the current forecast, though.

Anyway, today they installed the countertops, which was Quite Involved:

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They also installed the sink, and I ended up having to run to Home Depot to buy a new garbage disposal since the old one was way too big. I bought the physically smallest one they sell. Honestly I’m glad to have done this; the old one was huge and way overpowered (and I don’t even use the disposal much since I compost), and took up a lot of useful cabinet space. Maybe now I’ll be able to fit a trash can under the sink after all!

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We also figured out the plan for the next few days. If all goes well, tomorrow will be tiling the backsplash and installing the spice cabinet (they were going to do that today but they accidentally left it at the shop, oops) and maybe the baseboards. They gave me an assignment to pick out and buy various trims at Home Depot (for the stove cabinet and the front door threshold), and asked me to empty out my fridge and freezer before they have to move the fridge back into place because they’re finding too heavy. Fortunately I have some coolers in the basement and it’s also literally freezing cold outside, so that isn’t too big a deal.

Oh, also, tomorrow my new dishwasher gets delivered! If it weren’t for that they actually wouldn’t have installed the stove before they left (since they need to move it again to be able to access the spice cabinet hole) but it was blocking the delivery folks' path, and my experience with Home Depot folks is that they’ll use any excuse they can to abort a delivery.

Oliver is also not quite sure how he’s going to handle the stone for the window sill. Personally I don’t think it’s that necessary but it’ll be a nice little accent if he can pull it off; the problem is that the stone is a little too thick for the window’s lower lip, so he’ll probably have to mill it down. Certainly doable but gosh that sounds time-consuming and un-fun.

I feel like Oliver is getting frustrated with the duration of this project, and things seem to be taking a bit longer than he’s expecting (or maybe he thinks I’m getting impatient, when I absolutely am not). But he’s remaining ever-diligent, and is doing amazing work. So far the only “wrong” thing Oliver’s done was to cut the slabs for the countertops differently than Gil had specified and I’d signed off on, because he was worried about the aesthetics, and this made the installation much more difficult. I think it would have been fine either way. Oliver’s just like… a perfectionist, I think, and unlike the crew leader the last time around he’s actually focusing on the right details, things that I’d have never considered!

Gil came by to check on progress today, as well, and I made sure to let him know how good a job Oliver was doing, and complimented him on managing to find such an amazing kitchen renovation crew.

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Oh, also, Oliver was visibly annoyed when he realized that the backsplash tile I got was glass. That definitely makes a lot more work for him. But the end result will be very nice, and I am totally fine with paying him for the extra time it’ll take (especially since we’re still not doing the extra work that we’d originally planned in the laundry room). He was also concerned that I might not have enough tile with the extra breakage that’s likely to occur but we re-measured and we only need 22 square feet and I have 35, so we should be fine.

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