I Might Just Love This Kitchen

This morning we bounced up bright and early and started doing the ceiling tiles.  This moment has been a long time coming and I’m so tickled with how they’re turning out.  The process is pretty straightforward.  We’re using a stage 1 ceramic tile mastic called OmniGrip.  Trowel it on to a thickness of about 1/8 inch, then notch lightly and place the tile.  After I set the tile in, I use a wall-paper seam roller to roll down the flat parts and to really work the seams over.  I’m using a 2″ putty knife and a slightly damp rag to clean up mastic that oozes out between the tiles.  It’s pretty straight-forward, but definitely a workout for the arms.  Each of the tiles is 18″ square and there will be 69 of them (or parts of 69 of them) placed all-in-all.

Jason is rocking at his end of things and this is decidedly a two-person job.  He gets the mastic all over the trowel and keeps the putty knife and roller clean and makes sure they’re within reach when I need them.  He pretty much just reads my mind and hands me shit when I need it.  He’s also responsible for obsessing over the direction in which each tile is placed.  Also, he innovated the fucking brilliant idea of cutting the tiles with the rotary cutter.  Complete genius.

We placed the first 18 tiles before lunch, but then pooped out and decided that the afternoon was really meant for catching up on laundry and cleaning up the garden, which will be another post all its own.  Here are some pictures of the morning’s fun.  Cheers.

Today was another busy one here at Casa Alvarez, what with all of the awesomeness flying around full-tilt.  After a lovely, leisurely breakfast over on Cherokee with my folks, we got down to the business of sanding the mud job in the kitchen.  I’m happy to report that since I’m pretty much the queen of all mudding, sanding took only about an hour.

After we got everything cleaned up from sanding, we did a coat of high-build primer, figuring that would show all the glaring imperfections and then we’d be back to mudding and sanding again.  Luckily, it still looked quite good and we’ve officially closed the door on drywalling/taping/mudding this project.  Woohoo!  It’s so wonderful to go in the kitchen and no longer see bare drywall.  It really feels like we’ve entered a new phase.    On a technical note…we’re huge fans of the Killz high build primer, but our little sprayer just wasn’t beefy enough to finish the job.  When we do the second prime coat after the ceiling tiles are installed, we’re going to bite the bullet and rent a high-pressure airless sprayer from Home Desperate.

Here’s a picture of me testing out the sprayer and of the fully primed walls.  Tomorrow we’re going to start hanging the ceiling tiles.  I’m so very very very excited for this.  Things are happening…

My my my, but haven’t we been a busy little household this weekend.  It hasn’t all been kitchen related, but it has all been much-needed.  My fearless mate and I have accomplished the following:

•  New latch on back gate.
• Tape, fill, and feather coat around the top of the two new walls.  The only mudding that remains to be done is a quick skim coat over this new joint and it’s FINISHED.
• Primed the ceiling - apparently the tile mastic works better that way.
• Picked out sink and faucet.  This project is officially hemorrhaging money.
• Painted first coat on front porch railing - bright white.
• Scraped and caulked all the windows frames.
• Painted 2 window frames.  7 to go.  Also bright white.  I’ll just go right on record as saying that brick houses should have bright white trim.

We also discovered that one of the massive 6×6 sill plates under one of the west windows is rotten.  That’ll be a project for another time, though.  For the time being, it’s HEAVILY caulked and not occupying even a thimble-full of my brainspace.

No pictures to share and updates will probably be scarce for a few weeks, as I’ll be mostly out of town until the 19th or 20th.

Here’s a challenge, gentle reader.  For the next project we’re going to be building a pergola over the back deck and patio, and bricking in much of the back yard.  I’ve got plans sketched out, but I’d love to see pictures of your dream patios for inspiration.  Post links in the comments and enjoy the next couple weeks!

How about we play a little game called you-don’t-ask-me-when-the-kitchen-will-be-finished-and-i-won’t-punch-you-in-the-neck?  It’s totally my favorite game!

The process is slow, but more or less steady.  If we were willing to reign in our social life, turn down projects at work, drop out of school, or sell organs to the Russian mafia it would probably go somewhat faster…but we’re not.  So we go at our own pace, and that means some weeks we don’t get shit done.  We’re super ok with this and you should be, too.

But for a big picture update, here’s where we stand (inshallah, naturally)

• This weekend should see the mudding finished and the ceiling primed.  We may even start putting up ceiling tiles. (Nah, I don’t believe that, either)
• We’ve decided to reface the old cabinets, so tonight I’ll order the doors from Ikea.
• Next weekend is camping with zombie squad, so we’ll be not getting  shit done.
• With any luck the weekend of june 21 will see the ceiling hung.

• If that lucky streak keeps up, the weekend of june 28 will see some painting done.
• 4th of july weekend could see cabinets installed and shelves hung, if the stars all align just so.

• We’ve decided to pour concrete counter tops, maybe.  We’ll think mid-july for that little experiment.   However, if anyone has suggestions for cheap stainless steel counters, I’m all ears!
• Flooring is last and we’re shooting for end of July.

See, wasn’t that a fun game?

Most of you who know me might, if you were kind, concede that I display the smallest little teensy bit of an OCD behavioral pattern. If you were wholly honest, you bastards would probably call me a twitchy, obsessive nutjob. In any case, we’ll grant that I have a tendency to persevorate on things that tickle my fancy.

And boy howdy, is my fancy ever tickled! I am positively in love with mudding and taping drywall. You totally read that right, gentle reader. I love it love it love it! I can think of only an extremely small number of activities in which I’ve ever participated that give me the same deep sense of satisfaction as laying down a perfectly smooth layer of that lovely, lovely stuff.

However, my deep affection for this activity has caused a minor delay in the kitchen progress. Let me go back the beginning and explain. One of my nearly-infinite number of uncles is a trade unionist who knows his way around a mud pan. Uncle Kevin kindly agreed to come by and give us a lesson on the finer points of taping and mudding drywall (and drinking budweiser). We were enthusiastic students on all counts and at the end of evening we had the taping all knocked out and nary a beer could be found on the premises. This was going to be a breeze…

So, fast forward a month, and we really are nearly finished-tape coat, trench coat, and feather coat completed without incident-however, two things have become readily apparent. First of all, my wonderfully patient and long-suffering husband neither cares for or excels at mudding. The second thing is that if you allow a person with some modicum of OCD to weild a mud knife, you are going to have really beautifully finished joints…but it’s going to take a while because of the aforementioned persevoration.

The feather coats looked pretty good…but I finally decided that a skim coat would really take those joints to the next level - and they look fucking sublime at this point, if I do say so myself. I’ve also decided that I really need to do a flat tape job around the top of the walls. This is going to push us out another week or so, but it’s going to allow us to avoid having any kind of molding around the ceiling and will make for a much tidier/crisper transition from the kick ass ceiling panels and the equally ass-kicking walls.

Ok, okokokok…so we get that I’m not the most constant of writers.  However, that doesn’t mean that I’ve been slacking on the kitchen work.  As promised (a month ago?!?), I’m going to talk about our fun with electrical work, and provide some photos of the horror of it all.

At this point I might mention just a few things about our home to bring my gentle reader up to speed.  House was built in 1903 or 4 and electricity has been added to the house piecemeal over the years and it’s got a bit of an eclectic flavor to it.  Also, last year we discovered (via a lake that had formed on our roof) that we had 3 broken roof rafters.  We had to have the roof jacked up 3 inches and the rafters repaired with sister boards.  We had the crew drywall the ceiling when they were finished, but not mud or tape it, as we knew this remodel was coming.

So, my darling, patient, tireless friend Sean (hi, Sean!) enthusiastically volunteered to “help” with the electricity.  In the service of having everything ready to go for him, I had removed all of the cabinets and discovered that the electricity was supplied to the range hood by a line of 14/3 Romex that some fucking nutjob had trenched into the drywall behind the wall cabinets.  That’s all…no conduit or chase…just chiseled out the fucking sheetrock and laid the wire right in.  Smart.  Very smart.  I should have seen this as a harbinger of things to come…but this infernal optimism of mine works to prevent me from realizing just how big an undertaking this kitchen is.

Sean’s assistance began one evening when he came over to help me determine what all had to be done in the realm of the electrical gods.  We discovered that all of the ceiling lighting in the entire house was on one circuit, and that we could simply add the two new fluorescent lights to that circuit.  We also determined that the Romex trenched into the wall for the hood shared a circuit with the dishwasher and the outlet directly behind the stove.  At this point our friend Dave had also come by to have a look and Sean and Dave suggested that the dishwasher should be on its own 20 AMP circuit, and that an additional 15 AMP circuit should be installed for the new outlets and the fluorescent work light above the sink.  We had a plan…

You can see where this is going, right?  That old hack about the best laid plans?  Totally true.  Sean decided we should tackle the lighting first, as it should be a pretty simple matter of installing a new switch, then running a new wire (um, or something…) through the existing box.  Bwahhahahahaha.  What Sean discovered in and around the existing box above the ceiling light was nothing less than pure, abject clusterfuckery.  Over the course of the morning that this was all taking place, we went from expecting a 2 hour job of pulling some more wire and installing a switch to pulling down all of the drywall from the ceiling and gasping in horror at what we saw.  Comically and probably  as a gift from God herself, our friends Dave and Amy  and Katie and Jason all popped by to borrow various tools right about the time we realized the ceiling had to come down.  It was nice to have them there to commiserate.  Thanks, guys.  Sean spent the rest of that day and part of another fixing the insensibility lodged in the kitchen ceiling.  I pretty much owe him an ovary.

About a month after that dark day, Jason and I finally got around to re-installing the drywall on the ceiling.  Let me just say that two people, one of whom is rather shorter than the other, should not attempt to install drywall on a 9ft. ceiling without T-bars or cheaters if they plan to stay married.  After the first (and MOST AWFUL) piece, we called Dave and Amy and the other 4 sheets went up in about 5 minutes.  Thanks guys!

For the other outlets I simply pulled the Romex out of the wall and patched the hell out of that trench.  We replaced the wire and decided that surface mount chases and boxes were the way to go and they went in fairly uneventfully, THANKGOD! 

There are still a few things to be done, like putting the dishwasher on its own circuit and running one more box for the refrigerator…but these things are small and can be done at any time…after the mental scars from the initial shock have worn off, preferably.

At this point we have lines run for both of the 8ft. fluorescent lights, 3 additional outlets in the work area, and a line run off for the range hood.  I am thrilled.

Stay tuned for an update about taping and mudding the walls…