Kitchen Remodel
Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 1:25 pm
Well the great kitchen remodel is close to finished!!!!!! Just some molding and some undercabinet lighting (main wiring is in place).
What an adventure! I was going to take pictures and post but I still don't have a digital camera and none of my brat Grandchildren would let their dear grandfather have their cameras. After this remodel there is no chance I will have the money to buy myself one soon.
Raised the ceiling it was a 12" drop down with florescent light behind panels. Raising the ceiling should have been easy except I discovered a beam made of 3 2x12 which carried the valley rafters. The beam hung from the wall instead of setting atop it so it could be fixed. Decided to get a contractor since if I ooops it my insurance would have said you shouldn't have done that let us know how you make out. The contractor had oops insurance so I figured why chance it. He installed a lam-beam which was 2 2x12 glue up made of many many plies. He then cut the valley support beams to sit in buckets on either side and by doing this everything was now above normal ceiling height. Since I had him in to do that work I had him do the ceiling dry wall and to remove a wall between our family room and utility room. This made our utility see like a pantry to the new kitchen.
Since the removed walls had wall paper on them I had to remove all the wall paper in the utility room, family room, dinning room, and living room. Of course the dry wasn't painted or sized properly before the wall was first applies so it ruined a lot of dry wall.
I sanded all the dry wall, skim coated it, sanded it, skim coated it and did a final sanding. I then had to prime it all and paint it. 10 gallons of dry wall mud which turned into zillions of particles of dust.
The contractor had his electrician come in and do the electrical work, in today's economy it was cheaper for him to do than for me to go buy the material and do it myself. That is not totally true but the difference was not much more than $150 and my time.
The cabinets arrived and totally filled my two car garage. Kraftmaid had a sale on their cabinets which cut the price in half over the same thing a year ago. Yeah!!!!!!
I was going to install them when my wife said I was shot from the wallpaper drywall mess and that she had found a guy to install them for less than a third normal cost. Yeah!!!
I closely superivised and the guy was right on, did a great job and frankly he was worth it. By the way he used a CMS and one of those Dewalt bench table top saws. I was impressed with the cut of the table top saw. It had a Dewalt blade and every cut looked almost burnished. He actually cut a 4x8 sheet of cabinet grade finished ply on it. I was nervous since the sheet carried a replacement cost of $200+.
Next came the tile floor. We had tile down but changing the cabinets and tearing out the walls made us retile. First off the old tile had to be taken up. I was all set to do this when our tile guy said, you don't know what your in for, let me do it. He then gave me a price I couldn't refuse. Boy am I glad I used wisdom on this one. I think taking up the old tiles would have done me in.
Long story short while he was taking up the tile the wife decided she wanted the stone surrounding the fireplace in the family room down. The strone covered the whole wall. The tile guy had a trailer to haul away the 600 sq ft+ of old tiles so I asked if I could throw my stone in his trailer. He said sure I could throw the stone, cement in but not the dry wall. The plan was I would knock down the rock and my wife would separate the rock and cement for the dry wall. My guess 500 to 1000 lbs of stone and at least that much in cement. All placed in a 5 gal bucket and carried two at a time to the trailer and dumped. That one almost got me!
Then came the new tile but not after the dust first from the demolation, then the dry wall and then the tile and fireplace plugged up the air conditioners drain line solid. One full day of messing around to clean it out, finally after many many tries I blew a semi hard cement/drywall dust/insulation plug about 5 inches long out of the line.
Oh also the thermostat stopped working from all the dust. I hgad to blow out the dust from it before it would work again. You have never seen so much dust in your life. I you ever consider remodeling go buy a bag of the finest sand you can and throw it on youself and wife and think about living in it for about 6 weeks. That might take the edge off the hurry to do the remodel. DUST DUST DUST!!!!!
Long story cut short. The kitchen is in, looks fantastic with new granite counter top, tile floor, raised ceiling and all. Oh and I'm now in the poor house. I know we managed to get this done for less than half what it would have cost 2 years ago but it was still expensive.
The contractor that did the job (a friend of mine) normally has about 40 1/2 million dollar houses in construction. Now he has none and is scrounging for remodel work to keep him and his key men working.
The plumber is the only guy still working for a company that once had 18 guys. The electrician was happy to have work as was the cabinet guy, and tile man.
Times are tough and there is no way I would have been able to do this project if we hadn't been planning it for 5 years. As it worked out we saved money and we were able to help in a very small way some really nice people through some tough times. Now I hope I don't have to eat cabinets to survive.
What an adventure! I was going to take pictures and post but I still don't have a digital camera and none of my brat Grandchildren would let their dear grandfather have their cameras. After this remodel there is no chance I will have the money to buy myself one soon.
Raised the ceiling it was a 12" drop down with florescent light behind panels. Raising the ceiling should have been easy except I discovered a beam made of 3 2x12 which carried the valley rafters. The beam hung from the wall instead of setting atop it so it could be fixed. Decided to get a contractor since if I ooops it my insurance would have said you shouldn't have done that let us know how you make out. The contractor had oops insurance so I figured why chance it. He installed a lam-beam which was 2 2x12 glue up made of many many plies. He then cut the valley support beams to sit in buckets on either side and by doing this everything was now above normal ceiling height. Since I had him in to do that work I had him do the ceiling dry wall and to remove a wall between our family room and utility room. This made our utility see like a pantry to the new kitchen.
Since the removed walls had wall paper on them I had to remove all the wall paper in the utility room, family room, dinning room, and living room. Of course the dry wasn't painted or sized properly before the wall was first applies so it ruined a lot of dry wall.
I sanded all the dry wall, skim coated it, sanded it, skim coated it and did a final sanding. I then had to prime it all and paint it. 10 gallons of dry wall mud which turned into zillions of particles of dust.
The contractor had his electrician come in and do the electrical work, in today's economy it was cheaper for him to do than for me to go buy the material and do it myself. That is not totally true but the difference was not much more than $150 and my time.
The cabinets arrived and totally filled my two car garage. Kraftmaid had a sale on their cabinets which cut the price in half over the same thing a year ago. Yeah!!!!!!
I was going to install them when my wife said I was shot from the wallpaper drywall mess and that she had found a guy to install them for less than a third normal cost. Yeah!!!
I closely superivised and the guy was right on, did a great job and frankly he was worth it. By the way he used a CMS and one of those Dewalt bench table top saws. I was impressed with the cut of the table top saw. It had a Dewalt blade and every cut looked almost burnished. He actually cut a 4x8 sheet of cabinet grade finished ply on it. I was nervous since the sheet carried a replacement cost of $200+.
Next came the tile floor. We had tile down but changing the cabinets and tearing out the walls made us retile. First off the old tile had to be taken up. I was all set to do this when our tile guy said, you don't know what your in for, let me do it. He then gave me a price I couldn't refuse. Boy am I glad I used wisdom on this one. I think taking up the old tiles would have done me in.
Long story short while he was taking up the tile the wife decided she wanted the stone surrounding the fireplace in the family room down. The strone covered the whole wall. The tile guy had a trailer to haul away the 600 sq ft+ of old tiles so I asked if I could throw my stone in his trailer. He said sure I could throw the stone, cement in but not the dry wall. The plan was I would knock down the rock and my wife would separate the rock and cement for the dry wall. My guess 500 to 1000 lbs of stone and at least that much in cement. All placed in a 5 gal bucket and carried two at a time to the trailer and dumped. That one almost got me!
Then came the new tile but not after the dust first from the demolation, then the dry wall and then the tile and fireplace plugged up the air conditioners drain line solid. One full day of messing around to clean it out, finally after many many tries I blew a semi hard cement/drywall dust/insulation plug about 5 inches long out of the line.
Oh also the thermostat stopped working from all the dust. I hgad to blow out the dust from it before it would work again. You have never seen so much dust in your life. I you ever consider remodeling go buy a bag of the finest sand you can and throw it on youself and wife and think about living in it for about 6 weeks. That might take the edge off the hurry to do the remodel. DUST DUST DUST!!!!!
Long story cut short. The kitchen is in, looks fantastic with new granite counter top, tile floor, raised ceiling and all. Oh and I'm now in the poor house. I know we managed to get this done for less than half what it would have cost 2 years ago but it was still expensive.
The contractor that did the job (a friend of mine) normally has about 40 1/2 million dollar houses in construction. Now he has none and is scrounging for remodel work to keep him and his key men working.
The plumber is the only guy still working for a company that once had 18 guys. The electrician was happy to have work as was the cabinet guy, and tile man.
Times are tough and there is no way I would have been able to do this project if we hadn't been planning it for 5 years. As it worked out we saved money and we were able to help in a very small way some really nice people through some tough times. Now I hope I don't have to eat cabinets to survive.