These installers are terrific. They finished quickly and there's a lot of pride in their work evident. Today they placed the trim on the cabinets, finished attaching all the doors, and applied the laminate countertops. Other than fine-tuning (a couple pull-out drawers are missing) and finishing (which will be done by the painters), the cabinet installation is complete. And it looks great too, I'm very happy.
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Oh I've been waiting for this. The custom kitchen cabinets, utility room cabinets, and vanities got delivered a couple weeks ago and have been sitting in the garage. To protect the finish they stacked them with the cabinet doors facing in, so I haven't even got much of a look at them. So I'm unbelievably excited to see my kitchen cabinets come in out of the garage. These are custom cabinets, made by Shamrock Cabinets here in the Kansas City area. They did a terrific job from working with us on the design to executing and installing the cabinets. Particularly the construction of thes cabinets, even the utility ones are really well-made cabinetry.
We did a "kitchen design" with the people in the Home Depot and at Lowe's and got a bid on thir mid-grade, semi-custom cabinets. The custom cabinets from Shamrock were more cost-effective and definitely better constructed in my opinion. Plus they were installed by Shamrock, not a third-party contractor. I'm very high on craftsmanship, and I have to say from that perspective, I'm really pleased with our cabinets from Shamrock.
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Well, the hardwood floors aren't 100% complete, but they are about 95%. The cabinet installers can now come at least, and that's the important part. All that remains is a couple strips need to be ripped down and applied to little gaps here and there. Finishing touches if you will.
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Really, not too much hardwood floor actually got installed today. One big section of the boards that were laid out in the kitchen and dining rooms are now installed.
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The installer came today and laid out the boards for the installation. There's an asphalt-coated felt that goes down under the hardwood. The material I picked is called "character" and is a white oak flooring that comes in 3-inch and 5-inch widths. I'm having the installer alternate rows of the two widths, which looks great (at least it looked great in the showroom).
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Eventually the trim carpenters left. But not before almost finishing the house. I say almost because the cabinets aren't installed, and they needed to have them in to do the baseboards along a couple walls. But there are so many stylish trim details, I better get right on with the pictures and show you what's up.
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Our stairs have all got their risers and treads. The trim on the bookcases is fixed to our satisfaction. The trim carpenters came back and applied a little more trim to the bench, making it go from being really nice to spectacularly nice. It's amazing how little details can really carry something over like that. And the fireplace surround is done.
Plus: our electrical service is in! No more generators. The meter isn't here yet, but that's not big deal, the drop is installed and we're just waiting on them to shove a meter in the box.
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Now we're talking. The trim carpenters got lots of cool stuff got done Monday. Staircases are getting worked on, and there's a built-in bench with storage inside in the mud room. Plus they did a row of storage cubbyholes, which is finished nicely with a face frame detail that makes it look great. A lot of teh trim details that will make our house distinctive are beginning to become visible at last. It's really cool to see things come to life that you've only seen on the architectural drawings.
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Not as much progress Friday, it rained significantly, and I think they must have worked about a half day. But the trim carpenters did finish the baseboards and closets, and get the sills in place on several windows in the second story. I was disappointed more wasn't done.
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Who would have thought: people using Google to find pictures of cows find my site on almost a daily basis. I never dreamed that there was such a demand for pictures of cows. Well, I'm a firm believer in giving the people what they want. So I am pleased to present the cow compendium, a collection of high-resolution pictures of cows, (and a couple pictures of a bull) free for your use.
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More of the same from day 1, plus a couple scheduling surprises. All the doors are hung now, and the baseboard is in place almost everywhere. Work got started on trimming the windows, but only a couple are done, which is good, because they're not doing exactly what I wanted with the trim.
The surprise was that the kitchen cabinets, vanities, and utility room cabinets got delivered Thursday too. They're stacked in the garage, and placed with the faces inward so I couldn't really get a great look, but what I did see looked outstanding.
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Schedule change: the trim carpenters are here, and no sign of the hardwood floor guy. So the next 4 days or so will be trim carpentry, and the floor guy is pushed back to about next Tuesday so he won't be in the way. Cabinets will get delivered and installed right after that.
So there's four trim carpenters working (Amy and I spent all day at the site cleaning up trash, so we met them) on our house. They do some very very pretty work, as you'll see in the pics. The thing that was a nice surprise was the shelving details in the closets. They do a nice setup that makes a lot more space usable than just a shelf+rod sort of arrangement. The doors are all hung on the first floor, and only two remain on the second floor. They set the height of the baseboard above the floor according to the different type of flooring in each room.
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Today's big event is that the material for interior trim carpentry got delivered. This is all the millwork: baseboards, door and window casing, interior doors, cove molding, railings, and stock to make shelves in the closets. Lots of wood stacked neatly in the garage on a rack. We decded to use paint-grade moldings, so these are finger-jointed poplar. The closet shelves are particle board and will get painted too.
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Also on Monday, the roofers installed the shingles on the back porch roof. It's not a huge step forward, but it had been delayed for quite a while.
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We picked out some beautiful flooring--white oak in alternating 3-inch and 5-inch widths. This will be installed in the kitchen, dining room, "music room" and entry foyer. We selected a dark walnut stain which looked really great in the showroom. But Monday the material was delivered and we got our first real look at the stuff, and I'm really impressed with how nice this looks. Standard hardwood floor material is 2-1/4 inch width, so this 3-5 pattern is a real custom look.
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We spent a good chunk of Sunday with a wheelbarrow collecting trash and putting it into our burn pit. We worked about three hours and got the site pretty well policed--only about another hour's worth of cleanup work remains to do before we can say the site is free of debris and ready for final grade. What precipitated this is one fo the subs dumping out our (full, of course) trash barrel, causing papers and trash to blow everywhere.
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The main thing that got done was that the drywall crew sprayed a texture onto my ceilings, my garage walls, and inside my closets. this is a "knockdown" ceiling texture, so the height of it is very shallow, maybe 1/16 inch or so. It's a bit larger and more random of a pattern than I've seen before, with a fair bit of open space in it, but I like it just fine. It will add a good deal of visual interest to the ceilings wihtout drawing attention to itself, and it won't be a maintenance headache like a "popcorn" ceiling texture.
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