Paulette

We are getting the floors done this week prior to getting the new kitchen cupboards.  This means all and I really mean all has to be removed from the kitchen & living room.

Luckily we don’t have much furniture so that wasn’t a huge problem.  I had been packing some seldom used kitchen dishes so that brought the work down a little.

Emptying the refrigerator and moving it and the stove were the major events.  Brian helped his Dad move the heavy stuff using carrying straps.  They do work very well (both the guys and the straps!).

Mindy helped a lot by packing the food and moving small items to the garage.

Kat & Hong joined in and helped as well.

Good thing the kids helped.  With all the hands in there we still weren’t finished until 11:00 PM.

We went to Boone plumbing and ordered a sink and taps today.

We decided to go with a single rectangular sink.  We decided that the double sink setup wasn’t working for us.  We typically wash pots & pans in the sink and everything else goes in the dishwasher.  This way we can wash large pans more easily.

The taps we went is a simple modern looking one.  It has the spray in the nozzle and the nozzle pulls out of the handle.

Hopefully it will all look marvelous when it is installed.

Dave finished the floor grills today.  What a job that was.  Cutting into 50 year old floor is not an easy job.  The wood has hardened like cement it seems.

There’s still some work to do before the cabinets arrive in July.  A closet needs to be constructed, some wiring moved.  I also need to buy a new sink and taps so that we have them when the contractor needs to make a template for the counter top.

Good work Dave!

We finalized the deal today with Laurysen kitchens. I made a down payment and signed the papers.

The cabinets will arrive sometime in early July.

Before then we need to build our closet, move the light switches, install 3 more wooden air vents, remove all the old cabinets, have the floors refinished, buy a sink & tap, redo the door trim on the patio door, buy light fixtures for over the island and the dining table…

There’s still so much to do before the new cabinets arrive. I think the 6-8 weeks will go by very fast.

Time for the next phase of our kitchen remodel.

Today we went to Laurysen Kitchens to get a design and estimate. We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted and the design was constrained by certain elements. It doesn’t leave much room for interpretation.

We wanted a modern look with dark cabinets and stainless steel handles. The upper cabinets will be extra tall to take advantage of the wasted space up above. The lower cabinets are all pots and pans drawers. We asked for a few glass doors to add a bit of interest to the design. Throw in upgraded hardware, crown moulding, light valance, panels and furniture style kick for the island and the price just goes up and up and up.

We found a granite that we liked called Chocolate Bordeaux. It goes very well with the Daytona espresso doors.

So how much for all of this? With taxes and installation - $15000 for the cabinets and $5000 for the granite. Yup that’s a lot of money. But I’ve been waiting for a kitchen like this my whole life. This is a one time thing. I’m not going to be redoing this kitchen again.

We have an appointment at another kitchen place next week.

What, me retire? Nah I’d rather have my dream kitchen.

Our new dishwasher is fantastic. It looks pretty basic. It has a simple profile which is what I like. It is nice and shiny like all the other appliances.

It has a lot more space inside than our previous one. It is so quiet you can hardly hear it working. One really nice feature is the cutlery rack.

All the utensils lie flat in their own drawer. You can sort them by type so it makes for very easy handling when the cleaning is done. No more pokes from knives or forks!

The other racks are adjustable and include things like fold down stem holders (for wine glasses). It’s a good purchase and although a little more expensive than more basic models it is very much worth it.

The new appliances arrived.  Just in time too because our old stove pretty much died on Wednesday.  The electrical wiring started to burn up.  That’s not a good sign or smell!

Here it is one last time.  This old stove.  The delivery guys took it away.  It’s gone!

The new stove came with a big sticker on the glass door.   It wouldn’t come off cleanly.  Why do they do that?

Here’s Grimace taking an up close look at it.  You can faintly see me in the reflection taking a picture of the goo.  Grimace just didn’t want to leave.  She seemed to enjoy watching me in the glass door.  It’s not TV silly cat.

I found something that removes goo very well.  It’s called Goo Gone.  I bought it at Canadian Tire a few years back.  I thought I would give it a try.  It is amazing.  It’s just like the commercial says.  Imagine that!

You only need to put enough on to wet the goo and wait a little bit.  It then comes off cleanly and smells like lemons.  You then wash off the lemon oil and it is done.  No scrapping or scratching, just gentle cleaning.

Just like that the goo is gone.

The new stove is almost in place.  The plug on the wall needs to be moved so we can push the stove back.

The fridge didn’t quite fit under the upper cabinet so it is off to the side.  The old fridge is in the living room.  Lovely…

The dishwasher gets installed next week.  It’s near the patio door.

The microwave is in the box.  The hood is in the box.   We’ll get to those later.

I ordered our appliances on Thursday from Universal Appliances. Dave and I had been in a few weeks ago to price them out and decide on the models.

I managed to get our order in while the refrigerator was still on sale (barely). There was also a new “green” promotion for buying GE energy saver appliances. We’ll get a rebate of $200. That was a nice unexpected bonus.

We have never had really nice appliances so this is a real treat. The stove (GE Profile) has so many features. It’s a convection oven, has a probe and is self-cleaning. Our old one has none (well none that work).

The refrigerator is also a GE Profile. We decided on a 1 door vs 2 door refrigerator. The way our kitchen is setup we have plenty of room to walk around the open door. With 2 vs 1 you loose space on the shelves on the doors. We also felt we would end up opening both doors most of the time. This one worked for us. I’m looking forward to the freezer on the bottom, fridge on the top.

I had looked at getting a microwave drawer. They seemed really cool but in the end I couldn’t see how you would clean the interior since the drawer didn’t come out. I went for a Panasonic model that we can build in instead. It’s a microwave/convection oven. It has a tiered rack so you can reheat 2 plates of food at once. That’ll come in handy at our place.

We don’t have a fan hood and we do set off the smoke detector frequently. It’s a running joke that if the smoke detector is screaming that means dinner is ready!

We picked this fan hood by Zephyr. It’s a stand-alone piece. We decided on this because we have an old house with slanted floors/ceiling. We figure this will break up the upper cabinets and it will be less apparent that the ceiling is out from one side to the other. That and it looks really cool.

We also ordered a Miele dishwasher. It is supposed to be the quietest & best quality. It’s all stainless inside with a cutlery tray along the top. I really like that. I forgot to take a picture of that but it’s basically a stainless steel door on the outside with a few buttons and lights.

They should arrive shortly after we get back from our trip.

Once we have them we can order cupboards. I better get my plans ready!

We are tying up loose ends with the new floors. We have a small section of new untreated wood. We need to keep it clean, especially from oils, until we get it refinished.

We took the vinyl flooring from the kitchen and cut strips to fit over the area. Pretty sexy looking, eh?

We removed the hardwood at the front entrance. It will be replaced eventually with ceramic tiles - something a little more suited to our winters.

Until then we installed some plywood and more of the vinyl flooring. It’s amazing how many different applications we managed with one small piece of vinyl.

Dave wired the dishwasher so we no longer have to wash by hand. Yeah!

He added the plug back to the island.

It feels like we are back to normal. As normal as this dysfunctional kitchen can be with it’s 4 different counter tops, drawers that won’t close, etc.