Thanks!

Charleston, SC.

Pulls are in. The local place can do the interior and exterior doors but I know nothing about price yet...

We've decided on white for the ceiling planking in the family room. Ideally I'll be able to buy it primed to save a ton of time dealing with that. A local lumber yard carries it in stock but I'm not sure of the finish.

Anyway here are the pulls...

GOSH, what a marvelous transformation! I was really getting anxious for some visible changes and there they are.

Thanks! My big three things that are left are
- Ceiling planking - will order tomorrow with baseboards from local lumber place. It will be painted white so I'd like to buy it primed.
- Doors - sending in sizes today to a local place who can do it along with a drawing for the front door design
- Countertops - Going in around the 7th.

Other than that things are slowly falling into place. They're things like finishing the last pantry shelf, wallpaper, sliding pantry doors, toe kick, pantry, pendant and breakfast area lighting. Since almost all of it depends on me ordering things the project as a whole is slowing a bit.

Half of the toe kick lighting is in. I can cut and install the channel for the other side of the room but can't finish up until the dishwasher is in.

The ceiling planking will be in on Monday. Were going with white now, the wife warmed up to it after seeing it in a few places. My plans for the dies have changed, both inside and out. For the front door I will reuse the existing jamb and make my own from a solid one from Home Depot. Really, I am just cutting out three rectangular windows so this shouldn't be that hard. Between exterior door jamb stock and brick mold I can handle the side light separately. Interior doors will have to be ordered online. Shipping will be high but for these there are no other options.

Locally all you can get is ornate, inlaid stuff. Modern is very difficult to do here in Charleston.

Here's the lighting...

Love the lighting!

I love the toe kick lighting in your kitchen but I wouldn't mess with it in mine. I love your place and how you have transformed it.

Thanks!

One of the other things I've realized is that I've become really disorganized about how to move forward and wrap things up. It's nothing a list can't take care of so I'm going to try and stick to thing on that instead of trying to think of what's ready to do next. Next week should be pretty easy once the ceiling material shows up because that should be pretty obvious. The only thing I'm really not sure of is where I'll paint it.

We bought a roll of plastic and some 2x4's.

Lay the plastic, wood, then your planks and spray them outside.

That would probably work... the weather here has been very uncooperative for doing anything out there though. Drying is also a challenge because the dew point is in the high 70s. The pieces are supposed to be up to about 16' long, so maybe I'd be alright if I kicked one of the cars out of the garage and then used the dining room to dry them.

Drain hose + 5 gallon bucket = we have a dishwasher for the first time in 11 months. I'm putting it to the test now. The dishes in there now have been sitting mostly since around... April? I'm not expecting much but we'll see.

I worked for a few evenings on it, and the vent hood is finally in. The fact that it weighs 70lbs didn't help any, or that I had to build pieces for it to actually attach to. There was some of the cabinet material in the front and nothing in the back so it took some creativity and the table saw to turn it into something that I could screw this thing into.



The wood for the family room ceiling came in today too. Nice big bevel - the opposite of how I like A&M logos.

The wood is primed and painted twice now, and I am more than halfway done installing it in the family room. I'm hoping to get past this, and the next row of lights tomorrow.

Countertops come in on Thursday.

Looking good! I've found myself staring at my vaulted living room ceiling contemplating tounge and groove for a few weeks now. Waiting to show the rib your final product to get her opinion.

I hope to wrap up on Friday. This is something that's very difficult to do on your own. Some rows work out where the pieces are something I can manage by myself, but others end up with much longer ones (14-16ft) and they're difficult to install without help. Or with help who is more concerned with Facebook and her iphone than building the place.

Your rib looks totally excited about the ceiling going in....

I like the toe lights. What did you do to install it? What kind of lights are those? Something I hadn't seen before and now interested in. You are dangerous, you know?

~egon

Thanks! She'd better be excited, it's her parents that are visiting in just over two weeks. She wants this, that and the other to be done by then and could probably stand to pitch in a little more. But you know, Facebook and all.

All of the LED lighting came from Environmental Lights. I wanted it to be dimmable so that upped the cost some. I bought the dimmer, transformer, LED strip, channel the strip instals in and clips that attach it to the underside of the toe kick from there. It's a very easy install; while the walls were apart I ran power from the switch to the inside of a lower cabinet next to the outlet that powers the cooktop sparker. The hardest part was screwing the clips into the toe kick since you can't see in there.

Tomorrow the countertops go in and the wall and combi-steam oven arrive. Unfortunately both are scheduled for 4-7pm. Until then I guess I'll work on the ceiling some more. I decided that after its up I'll give it another cost of paint with more of a gloss. With any luck I'll wrap up by the end of the weekend.

Looking good man, looking good!!!

You know, with it finally almost being done, I don't see why you changed the house. Looked just fine...

Yeah, can't say that with a straight face. Looking great.

~egon

OK so a funny thing happened yesterday. Whoever made the template for the countertops forgot about the column that bumps out at the dining room end of the peninsula, and the freestanding column. Instead of freehanding it and me needing to install some kind of rediculous molding we decided it would be best to mark and cut it at the shop. The other side with the cooktop did go in.



Up close...




Also, the appliances came in. Online the shipment said it weighed 77lbs. In reality it's about 4x that much. The boxes say 72kg and 98kg
Unboxing...





Surprise #1. The manual online said it comes with a whip instead of a plug so I installed a junction box large enough to handle the connection in the cabinet above. Instead, there's a NEMA 14-30 plug installed with a huge, round head. I plan on relocating the wiring down to some dead space behind the cabinets about 1' above the floor and buying the right kind of outlet this afternoon. No big deal, and it's ok according to the paper manual that shipped with it. The water line on the other hand, is ready to go as planned.

They just started selling the new Miele lineup in the US, though they've been selling them in Canada for a while. Mine may be Canadian stock. My inner hipster thinks this is awesome.


The Combi-Steam oven is similar. Manual online said whip, appliance has plug. No biggie. Canada says that it uses a lot less kWh than the wall oven so this is the one we'll use more often. The polar bears will be pleased.


All kinds of other stuff inside that I'll have to read the manual to understand. The rubber bands were easy to figure out though. This one is sitting in the hole it's supposed to be installed in, though I'll have to take it back out to make a couple of adjustments to the shelf it sits on. I'll need to bribe someone into helping install this stuff this weekend since it's all super heavy.


[This message has been edited by The Fife (edited 7/11/2014 5:43a).]

Dig the counter tops.

And I've never installed an appliance that didn't plug in, odd that they would advertise whips. The several hundred Miele appliances we installed in the last condo project were all plug in.

Weird. For what it's worth when I first was picking out appliances they mentioned plugs. Then when I was running the electrical some time later I loaded up the manuals again, and the called out whips. And here we are with plugs.

LG and Jenn-Air are the only brands of wall oven I've done until now. I've swapped out a wide variety of ranges and all of those had a plug you could swap at the terminal block for whatever kind of plug you need. Either way, I'll get those take care of at Lowes/HD today and recruit help for tomorrow. In the meantime there's a lot more ceiling work left to do.

Cooktop is in. The gas guy said that the lines are in great shape under the house. No leaks.

It feels pretty solid and is made in PA by Blue Star.

Looks great! I'm assuming that your countertops are quartzite. If you don't mind me asking, what did you pay for them? I'm looking into replacing ours and wanted to see if anybody had any current prices on quartzite.

It weighed in about $6,500. Altogether there were six pieces to put in. They wrapped up this afternoon.









[This message has been edited by the fife (edited 7/15/2014 8:00a).]

I stopped yesterday about halfway through the dishwasher install. It's really not so bad once you get over the complete lack of words anywhere on the instruction sheet. There will still probably be a bit of trial and error involved when it comes to fitting the thing.

Beyond that I'm just up to more ceiling work. I'm 6 rows from the end and I caulked the high end of the room while countertops were going in yesterday. I should be able to have this project nearly completed by the end of July.

Are you going to cut in your faucet?

There are three holes (faucet, air switch and soap). They don't show up very well in the pictures for whatever reason.

That top is HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE and looks great! How many pieces did it come in?

Is it becoming more common to have a microwave in a drawer like position?

Long term we might look to do something like that at my place because we dislike having it above the stove...

agmatt - I find there is way, way more value in going with a double oven of some kind instead of wasting the space above an oven for a microwave. The microwave is something you can fit anywhere, even on top of a counter.

The countertop came in four pieces, counting the part that goes to the floor. Combined it's somewhere between 15 and 16' long.

I first saw a microwave drawer at a home show in 2003 at a neighborhood off Lake Travis. Sharp makes all of them (in the US, even!) and some are rebranded Wolf / Viking / Dacor. I was skeptical about the format long ago but it seems to be alive and well. After using ours for a few weeks I've become a pretty big fan. It's quiet and easy to use, and I had no idea how convenient it wound end up being.

The other thing about the over the range microwaves is that they normally don't do a very good job venting. They don't move a lot of air, the intake is not placed very well to capture anything from below and most ranges/cooktops want a vent that's 6" wider than the appliance is anyway. In our case that's a 42" vent, hidden behind a panel that matches the cabinets.

I'm not sure if it will stay a custom appliance or not in the long run or not. For now I can see why builders don't bother - they would have to put in a separate vent over the range which might require them to actually vent the way they were supposed to (outside the house instead of recirculating) and of course, that's a bit less money they'll make. If it becomes something people start asking for all bets are off.

The only reason we went with two ovens is because the capabilities and sizes are different. If it were 2x 30" ovens we would likely use only one of them.

[This message has been edited by the fife (edited 7/15/2014 11:06a).]

Looks great. I may start a thread on my house some time. It's been quite a transformation although not quite as drastic as yours.