SonicChicken blog

Louie, who did our gutters, came by yesterday and installed the last of our downspouts. Rick was also out yesterday afternoon and got the kitchen tiled, including all the appliance bays. Lots of finicky corner- and edge cuts, plus he had to deal with the floor transition. When Barb and I got home, we spent some time discussing tile designs for the entryway with him. Between the fiddly tile work, the time we spent talking, and the fact that we didn’t come to a decision on the design, the entry didn’t get tiled last night.

No worries, though. Rick is going to have one of his guys out today to grout the floor tile that’s been installed so far, (about 90% of the total). Priority areas are:

1. Laundry/utility room — We really want to be able to do laundry at home again!

2. Bathroom — One of the chores that’s beginning to annoy me is dumping the water from our condensing furnace. Once the bathroom tile is grouted, we’ll be able to install the vanity, and then we’ll be able to plumb the condensation line into the drain system. No more hauling 5-gallon buckets of water, hooray!
   

3. Kitchen — We’ll be able to install some of our appliances once the kitchen floor is grouted, although we’ll still have to wait for the backsplash grout before we can bring in the new range.

Looks like we’ve got a busy weekend coming up. We’ll be putting in baseboard behind some of the appliances (like the refrigerator), and installing as many of the appliances as possible. If the backsplash in the kitchen is grouted by Friday, we should have or kitchen up-and-running over the weekend. w00t!

Our tile setter came by this afternoon and finished installing the floor tile in the laundry room and the bathroom. The kitchen counter is done, too. He did some prep work on the floor between the front of the house and the kitchen, so we can’t walk through that area. Fortunately, we can still get into the kitchen via the garage.

Rick, our tile setter, had his crew at our place bright and early on Saturday morning. There wasn’t much that we were able to help with, and those guys were moving so fast that there was no place we could work without being in their way. We hung around for a while and took some pictures before we went out to run errands for a few hours. (It felt weird not working on the house!) Here are a few pictures from tile installation day #1 photoset on Flickr:

There were a couple of problems with the cabinets, one of which I’ll have to fix: The peninsula outlets were centered on the backsplash frame, so the bottom of the outlet box barely cleared the tile (picture) once the mortar bed and tile were laid down.

At the end of day #1, the shower/bath surround is all tiled, including the quarter-round trim. The granite countertops are all laid, although the bar top has yet to be done. The backsplash over the baking center is tiled, except for the quarter-round trim (which won’t arrive until mid-week). The Hardiebacker has been “glued” to the floor in the bathroom, laundry/utility room, hallway, and part of the nook and entry.

Rick and his guys will be back tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see how far they can get, since they don’t have to spend a lot of time setting up tomorrow.

We did more prep work for our tile setter last night, mostly on the kitchen counters and backsplash. We could have avoided most of this if we’d had the foresight to get our tile and cabinet people together before the cabinets were finished. Yet another “20/20 hindsight” moment on this project…

The plywood tops of our peninsula cabinets didn’t extend to the wall or the end of the bar, leaving a gap of almost 2″ on either end. Our tile setter needed the gaps closed up (or nearly so), in order to lay down a bed of mortar for the tile. We had a piece of 2×6 laying around, so we ripped it in half and screwed a piece of 2×3 into place through the top of the cabinet.

We had to pull the scribe pieces off the upper cabinets flanking our range and hood. These were installed to cover the joint where the cabinets meet the drywall, but we’re going to install backsplash tile over the drywall. We’ll re-install the scribe to cover the cabinet/tile joint once the backsplash is in place.

We trimmed 5/8″ from the tops of the lower cabinets on either side of the range to allow for the countertop tile to wrap over the ends. This was a bit nerve wracking, since I didn’t want to nick the cherry face frame with my circular saw. Careful depth adjustment and a steady hand did the trick, though. I couldn’t find my hand saw to finish the cut at the wall, so once again the Sawzall came to the rescue.

Finally, we cut the hole for the kitchen sink. This is one of the least finicky things we did, but when we remodeled the kitchen in our last house this is the one thing we really screwed up. So we took a lot more care than was necessary in placing and cutting the sink opening. Hopefully we didn’t overcompensate for our mistake of six years ago! So far it looks good, but you never really know until the tile is in, the sink and faucet are installed, and the cabinet doors/drawers are opened. We’ll see…

Probably the most annoying thing about all this prep work is that we had to shut down our laundry and kitchen again. Our washer and dryer are parked in the untiled part of the hallway, and our kitchen facilities are now limited to the faucet (but no sink), toaster, coffee pot (gotta have it!), microwave, and refrigerator (standing in the middle of the kitchen)–No sink, disposal, dishwasher, or range. The old faucet will be removed on Thursday, and on Friday night I have to disconnect the three electrical outlets I had hooked up in the kitchen. But the good news is: we should be able to commence the finishing work on our kitchen Sunday afternoon/evening!