Progress Report : Week 9 — Ready or Not?

This is supposed to be our final week of construction, and it should see big changes to the appearance and functionality of our new kitchen.  No matter what happens, we will be returning to our normal work and school routines after the Labour Day weekend, and that means we need a functioning kitchen (even if it’s not completely finished.)  Our list of things still to be completed is long:

• finish painting in front stairwell and back hall, plus touch-ups throughout
• install wall tiles and grout them
• finish installing dishwasher
• finish electrical
• hookup plumbing to dishwasher and fridge
• install faucet
• finish cabinetry details, including platform for stove, hardware on pantry, drawer dividers and rubber mats, and sagging cupboard above fridge/freezer
• install range
• install vent hood
• move out of temporary kitchen and into new kitchen
• move furniture back into living and dining rooms
• unpack boxes for kitchen, living and dining rooms

Too bad a week is only 7 days!  Did I mention that my contractor has gone on vacation, and left me with the phone numbers of his electrician, plumber and tiler?  Let’s hope they return my calls.

We can’t leave grout colour to the installer — that’s like letting the painter choose our paint colours! Mapei’s ‘Pewter’ looks good to us. Thank goodness Lowe’s has enough for our project.

Our first look at the tile with our wall colour and cabinets confirms that it will pull everything together nicely. Love the slate pieces!

Tile goes in on schedule Monday and Tuesday. So glad we used so much — it adds texture and pattern.

Kitchen Court also showed up on Monday to drop off some missing doors, and pick up our pantry doors for hardware installation. Easy come, easy go!

 

Now that the backsplash is almost complete, we turn our attention to coverplates for the electrical outlets. We were thinking of all stainless steel, but that was not available. Then we considered stainless plates around white outlets….they’re okay but not great.

Black outlets with stainless steel plates are much sexier than the white ones! Decision made.

We decided to complete the dishwasher installation ourselves. We were told it required a platform, which it did not. However, leveling it after it was pushed under the countertop and raised to its proper height proved to be a feat of contortion and brute strength. (And included a certain amount of cursing!)

Speaking of washing dishes, we were thrilled to discover that our ‘too big’ sink did indeed fit without removing our soap holders. Hurray! (Our joy was short-lived when we realized that they have been set too high, and our scrubbing sponges get caught when we open the flap. Add that to our list of details to sort out.)

 

The electrician also showed up on schedule, to complete lighting installations and other work. That meant we needed bulbs. Hubby was determined to convert all of our lighting to LED bulbs. Little did he know that sourcing the right wattages in the right colour temperatures would be so complicated. Our choices ranged from warm 2700 K (similar to many incandescents) to 3000K to cool 4000 K (Under-cabinet strips). It involved a lot of testing of trial bulbs in various fixtures in various rooms before we decided which ones we preferred in each. I don’t mind saving energy, but not at the expense of my colours. This week, we finally got the right bulbs installed in every fixture.

Move-in was scheduled for Wednesday, which meant that Tuesday was clean-up day. Time to remove all the cardboard and paper protecting our floors. Look, there’s wood under there! We finally get to see how our wall colours look with our flooring.

Did I mention that I hate moving?

In the midst of our moving day, the plumber was hard at work.

Ta da! We have a faucet. Good thing I poked my head in the kitchen once in a while– the on/off lever was meant to be at the front, but he had it to the side, where it bumped into the backsplash. It was easily fixed at the time, but might have been a bit trickier later on.

Having the furniture upstairs, before we had a functioning kitchen, meant we were still cooking downstairs, but eating upstairs. Logan insisted that we turn on the fireplace, even with the boxes, to add atmosphere while we ate.

Friday saw the return of our pantry doors, with the beautiful new recessed hardware. It’s big and bold, and we love it.

We were finally able to ‘install’ the range on its platform, with a little help from Kitchen Court. Now if we could just get that vent hood up, I could start cooking for real! Unfortunately, grouting has to come first.

Our old fridge and stand-up freezer were to go to a sister, which meant they needed to be emptied before the weekend. Finally, we are moving our food from here……

…. to here.

The catch is, we had to take a break in our unpacking and organizing, to help my Mom move.  My sister benefited because we decided to drop the fridge and freezer off on our way to my Mom’s.  Unfortunately, it was a very long day, in the rain, and it put us behind on our own work.  But you can’t say no to Mom! It’s payback time for all the times she helped me move in and out  during 4 years of out-of-town university.  We may not have finished our move-in completely, but were were able to prepare (if not cook) our first lunch on schedule.

Pizza anyone? The grill works wonders on prepared flatbread with our toppings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Progress Report: Week 8 — Counting Down

Week 8 has seen major progress, and some minor (we hope!) hold-ups.

The week began with the arrival of our appliances, followed shortly thereafter by partial installation.

The Frigidaire all-fridge and all-freezer were the first appliances we selected 6 months ago. They were love at first sight for me!

Ta da! It was worth having Colin give up the closet in his office, to have these beauties in our kitchen.

Check out the inside of our new freezer. I can’t wait to empty out the old one and organize everything in here. No more tumbling blocks of frozen bread falling on my toes when I open the door.

This ought’a hold 2 weeks worth of groceries!

Our GE Profile slide-in range sits in our dining room until countertops are in. It also needs a platform made to boost it up to our 38″ countertop height.

Unfortunately, our plans for installing the stove may be thwarted by the fact that the custom platform hasn’t yet been completed.  There is also a concern that the cutout in the soffit, where the exhaust pipe from our hood will go, is off-centre.  Will the hood cover the hole?   We have been assured that it will.  We hope so!

The pipe is centered. The cutout isn’t centered. Tune in next week to see if the hood will cover everything up….

Our Miele dishwasher will be possibly the most welcome of all the appliances, after 2 months of washing dishes in our laundry sink.

The dishwasher looks great with the front panel on, but there are a few more steps before it’s fully installed.

Right on schedule, our countertops were delivered by York Fabrica, and they fit perfectly.  It’s probably a good thing that we weren’t at home to see them go in.  Besides, coming home to find them completed was more fun than watching them get installed.

Only with the most advanced laser tools for measuring can the countertop come this close to our doorways. Yikes!

Our new LG quartz countertops, in Snow Storm, really brighten up the room.

Having countertops means we have sinks. Can’t wait to see our restaurant-style faucet, and soap dispenser!

Leading up to our countertop fabrication and installation, we had to reselect our sink, as our original choice was too large.  Even so, we were warned that our flip-down cupboard for the soaps and sponges might not fit.  Luckily it still works — hurray!

The view from our front stairs gets better every week.

I’m also enjoying the view inside my drawers. These dividers are a neat freak’s dream come true!

We also had hardware installed on our cabinets this week, and they are like the jewellery on a little black dress.  However, the recessed hardware that will replace the original selection on our pantry wall (to avoid handles banging into the walls which come very close to the end cupboards) could not be installed on site.  Sooooo, those doors will be removed to have the hardware installed in a shop.  Easy come, easy go!

We love this recessed hardware for our pantry wall doors. It was a solution to a problem that has worked out better than the original selection.

The green and blue tape marks where our new hardware will be placed. We’re going all horizontal on this wall.

Next week is crunch time — School starts September 3 whether our kitchen is ready or not.  Will we make it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Survivor: Basement

I’ve never watched the Survivor reality TV series — I’ve always felt that my life had enough reality in it! — but its slogan of “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast” could describe how I feel about moving my living quarters in our basement.  Yes, the time has come to empty the kitchen, dining room, and living room, and move those functions into our ‘lower level’.  Incidentally, our basement already houses a laundry room and office, and is only partially and poorly finished.  With all the extra furnishings, it can now best be described as ‘cozy’.  (Ha! The joke’s on me — I’ve been describing my clients’ small rooms for years as ‘cozy’.)

In the spirit of positive thinking, here are the best things about moving one’s living and cooking quarters into an already cramped basement:

• We no longer fight over the ‘best’ chair for TV watching. Every seat in the ‘living’ area has a great (and close-up) view of the TV.  Just don’t trip over one another getting to your favourite perch.
• The commute from home office to kitchen has never been faster.  If I want to, I can just wheel my chair into the ‘kitchen’ and start dinner.
• My kitchen work triangle has shrunk to the point where I barely need to move my feet in order to reach everything I need to make a meal.   Bonus: tucking in my elbows must be good exercise for some forgotten muscle, right!?

As for Survivor, I’ve never been a lover of camping.  I tried it once in Grade 8, and swore it off right then and there.  The closest I ever got to camping was a bunk in our family’s 25″ trailer.  As it turns out, that may have been the best preparation for living in tight quarters.  Figuring out how to squeeze my 7′ sofa, oversize wing chair, swivel chair, and large ottoman into my office space was child’s play after 20 years of creating floor plans for clients.  The really tough part is going to be working in my temporary ‘kitchen’, which also doubles as my laundry room.

Here’s my temporary kitchen. It even has a window!  Who wouldn’t want to cook in here!?

Here are the key components of the plan to survive a summer in a temporary kitchen:

This is a very good ceramic infrared hotplate, from Salton.  Should you care to give up your stove and make like a student, you can get one of these from Cayne’s Housewares for $59.99.

There was no way to plug in my electric stove in the laundry room, nor space to put it, so we have downshifted from a stove with 4 burners and a warmer, to a single burner.  A hotplate draws too much power to allow for more than one in my overworked laundry room, so we are limited to this single unit.  One has to be very creative (and organized!) in order to plan meals around a single burner, unless you are still living on a diet of Kraft Dinner.

Two slow cookers — yes, 2! — are meant to replace my oven and cooktop.

I’ve owned the pretty one on the left for years, and was never happy with the results of cooking in it.  But necessity breeds invention, and I’m committed to giving the slow cooker another chance.  Thank goodness they’ve become popular again — there are better features on the new ones, like the one on the right, above.  I expected to have a delayed start feature, but rather than encourage the room temperature breeding of food poisoning  bacteria, the new cookers have a timer that turns down the heat after the elapsed cooking time, and keeps food warm for a few hours.   It’s not perfect, but it will have to do.

These 2 books have been tasked with replacing a box full of my favourite cookbooks.

In order to survive my new relationship with slow cookers, I sourced 2 of the best slow-cooker recipe books that I could find.  With Starbucks in hand, Colin and I leafed through dozens of these cook books at Indigo, deciding on tomes from Canadian Living and Best of Bridge.  By far, the Best of Bridge book has the most usable recipes.  I expect to be a slow cooker expert by the end of the summer, so feel free to pick my brain about my best (and worst) meals.  Hopefully, we’ll come out of the experience with a few new favourites to add to our repertoire, although I doubt that we’ll go back to using them every day.

Our first slow-cooker dinner, from Best of Bridge: Turkey Meatball Stroganoff. We gave it a B+ .  Dinner #2 was Sweet Potato Cannelloni, which had A+ flavour, but earned an A- for being a little overcooked at the recommended recipe timing.

We had planned to install new laundry sinks, and rework our kitchen faucet for them, but a previous ‘handyman’ had welded the existing laundry faucet in place, preventing us from changing it, or the sinks, without a major plumber’s bill.  So, we scrubbed up the old sinks, and are making do with new bins that fit in the sink to raise the dishes to a more reachable height.

Our temporary ‘dishwasher’ isn’t that much worse than we had upstairs. After all, the old dishwasher gave out months ago. We plan to burn our dish towels after the renovation!

My sanity saver in the temporary kitchen is the work of art, below.  It’s my inspiration for putting up with my temporary kitchen for the summer.  I think the push pins are a nice touch, don’t you?

The ‘art’ in my temporary kitchen is a Kitchen Court original — elevation drawings of my new kitchen.

Just in case you’re wondering where the rest of my stuff went, here’s a Before-and-After of my recently reorganized storage room in the garage:

BEFORE:  Remember this room from a previous post?  We cleaned it out and reorganized it in preparation for the reno…..

AFTER:  Stuffed to the rafters!  

Needless to say, I’m open to any and all dinner invitations this summer.  Any takers?  Please?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in the Kitchen Appliance category, the winners are….

We did it!  We finally decided on the appliances we want in the new kitchen.  It hasn’t been as easy as I thought it would be.  Who knew that a dishwasher might not come with a delayed start or that all ranges DON’T have a covered element!

We visited several appliance stores, looking for guidance.  Our first stop was Tasco in Richmond Hill, conveniently located below our son’s karate dojo, where Mario was very helpful in directing us to his favourite kitchen appliances to meet our needs.  He’s the one who first introduced us to the all-fridge all-freezer in a quality range other than SubZero.  He also favoured wall oven and separate cooktop over a slide-in or free-standing range, but we never really found out why.  When our dishwasher died, and we were deciding whether or not to replace it before the renovation or not, he was very patient in explaining the differences between various models.  Mario was also very good at giving us his opinion based on the service history of the various brands over his 15 years in the business.  FYI, I like opinionated salespeople — I value their expertise!

We also visited  Ontario newcomer Corbeil Appliances, in Richmond Hill, but were not impressed with the selection or the staff.  Ditto for Caplan’s, in Toronto, where we couldn’t get the salesman to differentiate between the various ranges for love or money.

Ultimately, we ended up at Tasco in Pickering, on a referral from Kitchen Court.  We found manager Bill Verboom, and every staff person we dealt with, to be very professional and knowledgeable.   This is where we will make the big purchase.

Here’s what we chose, and why.

Frigidaire FPRH19D7LF all-fridge plus Frigidaire FPUH19D7LF all-freezer — Finally, a refrigerator that can hold 2 weeks worth of groceries!

I knew from the beginning that I would take the closet space from Colin’s office, and open it to the kitchen, to make room for a humongous fridge and freezer.  As soon as we saw these, I was in love.  Actually, the first ones we saw were from Electrolux, but then we learned that they were offered under the Frigidaire brand at a lower price.  Both are made by the same factory; the Electrolux has a prettier, more ‘designer’ interior, but the Frigidaire’s exterior stainless steel is a better match for our gray cupboards.   The quality of the mechanical parts is the same.

GE Profile PCS968SRSS slide-in electric self-cleaning convection range with warming drawer

Choosing a range was a lot harder that I anticipated.  I knew I wanted electric, rather than gas, and I wanted the largest oven available.   (I bake every Sunday.) We also considered whether to go with an induction cooktop or not, and whether to go free-standing or slide-in.  I was flexible on induction cooking, but I definitely did not want to ever again have food crap in the gap between countertop and cooktop with a free-standing range.  I was originally directed to the GE Cafe range, but it is not available as a slide-in, and it has an exposed element (for quicker pre-heating, I was told.)  I would rather wait for a slower pre-heat time and NOT have gunk baked onto the element.   Although I loved the large pro-style knobs, and the oven size, the Cafe was out.   We then narrowed our selection down to the GE Profile slide-in and the Electrolux.  The Electrolux has an oven drawer  in the bottom while the GE Profile has a warming drawer – we were happy with either.  Luxury-glide racks on the Electrolux are impressive, but they take up too much space in the oven. The other strike against the Electrolux was the all-electronic control panel — without my reading glasses, I couldn’t see it clearly, and that could be frustrating, if not dangerous, in a pinch.  We liked the all-glass interior door on the GE Profile (easiest to clean, with no gasket around the glass window) as well as the combination of knobs and easy-to-read electronic controls.  Unfortunately, we had to rule out the induction model in the Profile because the controls would be all-electronic, with no knobs.

Sirius SU3 vent hood

Our range hood comes from Sirius.  I love the shape, which reflects the curves in the door design on the GE Profile range. David Courtney, at Kitchen Court, suggested several brands other than the popular Vent-a-hood.  In his opinion, the Vent-a-hood products stick out too far and get in the way, especially for tall people like us.   They are also much more expensive than other brands.  Once at Tasco in Pickering, they directed us to Sirius, and we immediately liked the look.

Miele Futura Classic G4225SCi dishwasher

Luckily, we didn’t purchase our new dishwasher when the old one broke down.  Since that fateful week in February, the features have changed on the various models, and there is now a delayed start on the Classic.  Previously, this feature, which I use every day, was only available on pricier models.  As with TV satellite packages, I would have had to pay for features I didn’t want in order to get the delayed start.  I also decided to take the visible control panel, rather than the hidden panel, so that we can see at a glance when the machine is running.  Because it’s so quiet, I’m concerned that one of us will open it when it’s running, then forget to close it again, so hopefully the blinking lights will remind us not to do this.  I do plan to panel the dishwasher with a cupboard door, because it will be visible from the front hall.

There you have it — the all-new kitchen line-up for Team Grier.  Let’s hope they go the distance!

Revenge of the jilted appliances: Part I

Let’s call this a Soap Opera in 2 parts.   Part I stars my old dishwasher.

The day after we first ventured out to begin the research for our renovation, on a holiday Monday in February (i.e. no stores were open), after a day of cooking and baking, I discovered that my dishwasher had died.  Without warning, it had ceased to function.  Coincidence?   I think not!   After less than 5 years, it could fill with water but the motor wasn’t moving the water around.  Now what?!  We were planning to replace all of our kitchen appliances as part of the renovation, but that wouldn’t be completed until August.  What to do about the defective dishwasher in February?

Our old dishwasher has become a dish–storer. We store our dirty dishes in it to keep them out of the way until we are ready to wash them by hand.

Since we moved into our little house, we hadn’t been interested in investing in quality appliances because we didn’t think we would stay as long as we did.  Why leave great appliances behind for someone else to enjoy, when we could save our pennies and buy better quality after we moved?  Whenever an appliance had given out in the past, it had always happened on a weekend, usually between 3:00 and 4:00 pm on a Sunday, just hours before stores would be closing.  Upon realizing that we couldn’t complete the cooking/dishwashing/laundry, we would race out to the local box stores, do a quick survey of the available models and prices, and take home the best appliance that could be taken directly from the store, rather than waiting for delivery later in the week.  After all, we were usually in the middle of cooking/dishwashing/laundry when the offending appliance decided to call it quits.  We needed to get the machine back up and running so we could carry on with our busy family routine of work and school.

Now our ‘process’ was coming back to haunt us.

Luckily, we had been out to look at kitchen appliances during our Sunday research day, and we had discussed dishwashers with a very helpful salesman at Tasco in Richmond Hill.  He suggested that Miele was the one to beat, but at the time, we weren’t planning an imminent purchase.  Now we needed to dig a little deeper, so we returned to Tasco the next evening, straight from the office, in order to get there before they closed.  It turned out that there was a Miele promotion going on, and we needed to order within the week in order to take advantage of it.  (Who hasn’t heard that one before!) We reviewed the various models and their features until my head was swimming.  We were tired and hungry, and we ultimately decided not to decide that evening.

This is likely our next dishwasher, from Miele.

Home we went to make dinner and wash our dishes by hand.  Doing dishes the old-fashioned way definitely allows for discussion time in a way that standing around a dishwasher does not!  I  didn’t like the idea of installing a shiny new dishwasher into our old kitchen, and hubby didn’t like the idea of storing it until we needed it.  After all, it would be just another obstacle that everyone would be tripping over during the renovation work.  We were also concerned that if we purchased the dishwasher at that point, we might regret it later when we might need to trim a ballooning budget.   We also felt that we would likely do better on the total package price of our appliances if we purchased them all at one time, from a single dealer.  By removing the dishwasher from the equation, we would have less room to negotiate when the time came to purchase the rest of the package.  When all was said and done, we  decided that we just weren’t ready to commit to a $2000 to $3000 purchase so early in the process, before we had all the other information we would need to finalize our reno decisions.

The latest in low-tech dishwashing: a collapsible plastic dish drainer that fits into the sink opening. From Starfrit, $30 at Cayne’s Housewares in Thornhill, Ontario.

So, instead of a beautiful new Miele dishwasher, we are now the proud owners of an ingenious dish rack that fits into the sink opening, and a stack of new dish towels.  Yup, we are still doing our dishes the old-fashioned way, until the kitchen reno is complete and our new dishwasher is installed.   I won’t go so far to call it ‘romantic’, but it is kind of nice to have my husband to myself for an extra half hour or so every evening after dinner.

Next week: Part II, starring Washing Machine!