Kitchen Remodeling 2006

Remodeling my kitchen was the biggest project I had ever tackled up til then. It actually started with replacing the 45-year-old galvanized steel piping with copper throughout the house and proceeded from there. I have no regrets over doing it myself, but it was a LOT of work!

Here's what my kitchen looked like before starting in May 2006:

Mar. 17, 2007


Mar. 12, 2007


I did have to get a new dishwasher after all. The new one is quieter and much lighter than the old one, being made mostly of plastic. I also installed miniblinds on the windows. That pretty much does it for the kitchen. On to the bathroom!

Mar. 7, 2007


The kitchen is finished! Well, almost. After I re-installed the dishwasher, I discovered that it wouldn't run. Maybe all those months in the dusty garage took their toll. I'll see what I can do. If I have to get a new one, it won't be hard to swap in since all the plumbing and electrical is there.

Mar. 3, 2007


I installed and finished a new, fire-rated solid-core door with self-closing hinges and finished the other two doorways in the kitchen. There was a lot of mortising for the hinges, lockset, and deadbolt. Typical of the care I've taken during this project, I carefully fit the stair step nose to the door frame.

Feb. 17, 2007


Installing the laminate floor went fairly smoothly. What took time was figuring out a tile arrangement which avoided obvious patterns. Sorting the tiles helped a lot. Actually installing the tiles took about 12 hours. I still need to install wall base moulding and a new door, but both of those have to be ordered.

Feb. 5, 2007


Having installed the cabinet base moulding, I completed the cabinet installation almost without realizing it. The laminate flooring is on order and should arrive any day now.

Jan. 29, 2007


After coming back from 3 weeks in Japan, I started on the kitchen again, installing the undercabinet lighting and the last of the cabinet trim.

Dec. 24


With the holiday season progress has slowed somewhat, but I managed to get all the handles attached and finished the upper trim on the cabinets. It will be a month before I can resume work on the kitchen and bathroom.

Dec. 9


The kitchen is functional again! No more cooking in the family room and washing dishes in the small bathroom sink. Having running water nearby makes everything a lot easier, like cleaning the hood before reinstalling it. There's still a lot to do, but day-to-day living will be a lot easier.

Dec. 6


The granite is in! That means I'm pretty close to having a usable kitchen again. I've already installed the cooktop and sink fixtures. Next comes the sink drains, and then probably the stove hood. I still need to finish the cabinet trim and figure out what to do with the drawer which used to go where the cooktop sits now.

Nov. 28


I've been installing various trim pieces around the cabinets. Every piece had to be cut to fit, and some of the assemblies were fairly complex. The cabinet company provided all of the raw materials, but I still had to cut, assemble, and install them. It was like a big model kit without instructions! As usual, I learned by making various mistakes along the way.

There's still additional moulding near the ceiling and under the wall cabinets. Hopefully I've gotten good enough that that will go much faster.

Nov. 17


I've been taking a breather this week, but this evening I decided to get something accomplished so I installed the oven. Meanwhile, the granite is in the hands of the fabricator, Borgo Marble and Granite in Redwood City. Those are my templates on the granite (out on the sidewalk in the rain).

Nov. 8


I had to install plywood underlayment before the granite fabricators come to make templates. I hadn't planned on doing so, but I'm glad I did because as usual, I could take much more care in doing a good job. I reinforced some areas with steel angle iron. I also positioned the sink and fixtures exactly where I wanted them.

Nov. 5


The cabinet installation is done, aside from moulding and trim. The last two cabinets, which form a peninsula, took the longest time because they went together in a non-conventional way (back to side) and each cabinet had an electrical outlet inside of it.

I also took some extra measures to make sure they wouldn't move around during an earthquake (since they aren't attached to any walls).

Nov. 2


The cabinet installation is going well. I should be able to finish this weekend, which means I can have the granite fabricator come out next week to make the templates for the countertops.

Oct. 29

I installed the wall cabinets this weekend. Using a machine called a cabinet jack, rented for $30 per day, I could easily lift and attach the cabinets by myself.

Cabinet Jack
Special Cabinet Cutouts
Of course, doing it myself, I could take the time to do things carefully, like this cabinet which the hood will mount to.

My friend Ed also helped me move cabinets out of the garage and into the house, so I can finally park both of my cars in the garage again. As the cabinets go into the kitchen, they free up a lot of space in other parts of my house.

Oct. 27

Here's the kitchen after priming and painting.

I used Wagner's PaintMate Plus, which makes roller painting extremely easy. It was extensively improved over the original PaintMate which was already easy to use. Now I'm ready to install the cabinets!

Oct. 22

I finally finished taping the drywall. I used about 100 lbs. of the premixed joint compound.

I used a technique called "wet sanding" which uses a damp sponge instead of sandpaper to smooth the joint compound after it dries. This takes more time than sanding, but there's no dust! The physics of wet sanding are interesting; they naturally favor a smooth surface.

Oct. 10

I had the drywall installed in the kitchen this morning. Although the guys were super fast and finished the whole job in 3 hours, I was not impressed by the quality of the work. I'm sure I could have done a better job, although it would have taken much longer. Even though most of their defects will be hidden during the taping operation, the perfectionist in me still dislikes seeing shoddy workmanship.

Oct. 7


Above

Below
It took about 3 days to put the insulation in the walls and ceiling. I reused the insulation that used to be in the ceiling for the walls since ceilings now require R-30 and I had R-19, which is still good enough for the walls (R-13). As usual, I learned some tricks for efficiently fitting the insulation around various obstacles like wiring and running boards. I'm sure glad I bought a staple gun because I ended using about 900 staples.

Oct. 1


I finally finished the bulk of the electrical wiring today. It doesn't look like much from looking at the photo, but wiring took a lot more time, effort, and planning than expected. There were lots of parts to assemble, and routing the wire required bending it, drilling holes, and fastening it down with cable staples. It took a while to build up my hand strength! I used over 500 feet of cable wiring the kitchen and other parts of my house.

Sept. 25

I installed the second Sun Tunnel and recessed lighting this weekend (including a day off on Friday).

Before

After

There are two sets of recessed compact fluorescent lights, each set controlled by 3-way switches. The lights use electronic ballasts so there is no flickering and the lights come up to full intensity quickly.

By the way, I've been using my family room as the interim kitchen. It's not as bad as I thought it might be although I can't cook as much as I used to.

Sept. 17

I installed the first of two Sun Tunnels this weekend. Actually it took only about 3 hours and some of that was due to their unclear instructions. Sun Tunnels bring light in, but without the view provided by skylights. But how often do you actually look through a skylight?

Sept. 1

After 2 1/2 days here, the electrician finished installing a new 200 amp main panel and a 125 amp subpanel in the garage.

New main electrical panel with inspector's seal of approval.
Electrician's tools and supplies.
Subpanel in garage.

Seeing what he did, I'm glad I hired someone to do the work. Working with large electrical conduit requires equipment I don't have and am not familiar with. Besides, I have my hands full just wiring the branch circuits. The electrical work is going more slowly than I expected. I am still rerouting and removing existing circuits to keep things running while the kitchen is under construction. Then there are the inevitable problems of dealing with old parts which are broken or need repair. Electrical work appears to require a greater variety of tools and parts than plumbing. It is also physically demanding, although it's usually not as uncomfortable as crawling under the house. But working in a 110 deg attic is no fun either!

Aug. 28

I pulled up the flooring in the kitchen today. As usual, it took a little experimentation to get the right technique (ram a large crowbar under the floor to lift it without breaking it).

Flooring removed.
"Sea of Nails"
What's left after this operation is what I call the "Sea of Nails." I've seen it before, when I remodelled my family room. I estimate there were about 700 nails, which I pulled out one by one.

Aug. 27

I installed a new greenhouse window today (with help from my sister, her husband, and my friend Ed). It took much longer than expected (as usual) because the new window was slightly larger on the outside than the old one and the old window sill was far from level.

Aug. 26

With my friends Ed and Wendy, I tore out the kitchen. We did a pretty good job of filling the debris box. There's just enough room for the flooring I think.

Tearing out sheetrock is extremely dusty and dirty. In addition there was lots of dust on top of the sheetrock in the ceiling. I cut the sheetrock from above and then stomped on it to loosen it. The temperature in the attic was probably over 100. Here's the kitchen with all sheetrock removed. The ceiling joists aren't really curved like that. That's an artifact of stiching together a panorama.

Aug. 25

The debris box arrived this morning at 7:30am. This is the smallest one available and holds 16 cubic yards or 3 tons. Actually it's not quite as big as I imagined; I can still park a car on the driveway!

Aug. 20

The kitchen prior to being completely torn out.

I've been busy searching for granite and getting an electrician to upgrade my main panel and install a subpanel near the kitchen.

July 27

My cabinets arrived today on an 18-wheeler from the Brookhaven factory in Pennsylvania. The cabinets were much heavier and bulkier than I expected. Meanwhile, indoors, I'm gradually stripping the kitchen in preparation for the next phase: electrical wiring.

July 7

With help from my friend Ed, I took out the rattling, home-made window installed by previous owners in 1979 (as evidenced by newspaper used as insulation) and installed a double-pane, aluminum frame casement window. Finally, ventillation in the kitchen! (July 7, 2006).

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