We spent the afternoon after Thanksgiving skirting the mall parking lots and hitting tile places - most of which were closed. We did finally get the over-peninsula pendants at Lighting Unlimited, three nice amber WAC low-voltage halogens that should look pretty classy. I can't find any pictures online so here's a lousy picture I took in the showroom.
Key your decor off of your best guitars.
This weblog is taking its toll. My sister visits the site and dreams of handsome strangers bearing granite samples. Last night I had a dream that I was back in high school music class but with paint samples where my sheet music used to be (green paint - what does this mean?). I am not making this up. My imaginary therapist has me on 24-hour supervision.
The new Key West Gold arrived at the warehouse this morning. Melanie got off the plane from New York at 1 PM and by 2 we'd chosen the last two slabs - the lot's already sold out.
The stone is very close to the samples we'd seen before - maybe a little darker, less consistent. But then we wanted character.
Since we were there we placed the templates to get the colors we wanted the most. Had to let a few artifacts go, but they were in awkward spots. I don't want questions about "that stain" for the next 20 years.
The countertops:
The peninsula:
The new shipment of Key West Gold is in. The manager says it "looks pretty good." We'll check it out tomorrow. please please please please please
R.Bratti didn't get the new shipment of Key West Gold this week. "Call Monday. Maybe Tuesday." We went back to Marble Systems around two o'clock. They close at one on Saturdays.
It's gotten to the point that we sneak around the back parking lots of closed granite warehouses to see what hasn't made it to the showroom yet.
I don't think we topped the crowd we had when all the plumbers, electricians and HVAC guys were here but I think we had eight in the kitchen at one time today, plus one person coming up the walk as another was leaving. Debbie from Reico came by to inspect the discrepancies in the cabinet order - she agreed with our reluctance to accept the wine rack with the sap marks that looked like cigarette burns, so that goes back as well. The guy from R. Bratti came by to measure for the granite - the pictures show us working with Mike to improve the peninsula countertop layout.
Montgomery County electrical code allows no more than six feet between a GFI outlet and a sink, and no more than six inches of countertop over an outlet box. We needed an outlet at the corner of the peninsula support to be in compliance with the former and the latter was cramping my radius, man. Mike had the idea of pushing the outlet box out with another 2x4 post, giving us a wider countertop sweep... I think Steve was ready to kick his ass when he found out he'd modified the structure. No going back now! Poor Dan the electrician came back and got another handful of changes - their idea of ivory is way yellow, so we'll go with white switch covers after all. Sorry. Again.
The new dishwasher fell off somebody else's shipment and arrived today.
We started the day at couple of Alexandria granite warehouses, pretty much completing a full sweep of the Beltway in our quest for the right countertop. We originally planned just on stopping at one place to pick out a couple of backup slabs only to find they no longer had anything we could use. Alarmed we hurried over to R. Bratti (the fabricators who will eventually cut the stone we pick) to discover the last four slabs of the original Key West Gold that we fell in love with - reserved for another project.
Okay maybe all eight slabs were already spoken for when Melanie first saw them six weeks ago. But we were under the impression that the company would not hold stone for more than two weeks - wrong. They'll hold slabs indefinitely as long as a design and deposit are on file. We've had a design for months. We could have tried to hold a couple of those slabs and this granite misery would be over for us now.
As it stands they expect the next shipment of Key West in tomorrow. But they always preface the news with something along the lines of "you know each lot is different." I think they're setting us up for disappointment. We reserved a couple cuts of backup - Juparana Something-o. It looks fine, but it would always be our Silver Medal if tomorrow's shipment doesn't work out.
I wonder how hard it is to chain yourself to a slab of granite.
The refrigerator and dishwasher arrived today. Steve refused the dishwasher because of shipping damage - I'll have to catch up with him in the morning about just what was wrong there.
The faucets are in - Melanie ordered them from an online store and they arrived in about five days. HomeCenter.com gets the thumbs-up.
After signing and initialing the 42 pages of the cabinet design we figured ordering errors would be the least of our worries.
The pantry side cabinet is all wrong - closed off where we wanted open shelves. Wrong wrong wrong. Where'd that bottom door come from? Send it back to Iowa or wherever it came from.
I kind of liked the wrong doors we got with the desk-side cabinets at first but now I don't think they make sense. Too much visual noise with the inner shelves. Back they go. The cabinet boxes can stay.
It'd be nice if Debbie over at Reico would return our calls...
The cabinets are here.
We all think they look pretty good.
Okay so Steve won that one. We committed to a paint color before picking the granite. Steve got to paint the walls before installing the cabinets.
The cabinets are due in on Monday. A big step...
The walls are back up in the basement. Even the music room, which I tore up exactly a year ago in a fit of plumbing.
The low-voltage lights came in last week. Turns out we can't install the straight track along the low basement hallway ceiling and still meet code - great.
You'd think that with acres of granite to work with we'd be able to find just the right slab.
Of course you'd be wrong.
Granite is the most unpredictable of the materials we've chosen to work with and the one with the most potential to make or break this project. There are thousands of beautiful selections out there but only a few will match our wood and trim choices. A few weeks back Melanie saw a lot of Key West Gold that looked promising but we were still too far off from installation to hold the slabs. Now it's all gone but we're told there's a ship in dock with more, it just needs to clear Customs. Maybe by next week we can see if it looks enough like the last shipment to finish this stage of the project.
On Saturday we thought we'd found the one: a slab of Juparana (Classico? Fantastico? I can't keep these names straight) that - in the warehouse - looked like it could have come from the same lot as our beloved Key West Gold. We couldn't get the manager to hammer off a chunk, not on a Saturday when everyone else would want a piece of something. The owner would kill him. I made plans to run out at lunch on Monday. We needed to see the stone away from the fluorescent warehouse lights.
Now it's Monday and we're depressed. The Juparana doesn't have the deep grayish-brown quartz of the Key West Gold. We're going to roll the dice and hope that when we get to see the new shipment next week it will look like our sample from the last lot.
We have to move forward with painting the kitchen so Steve can install the cabinets early next week. As much as we want to wait for the final granite selection to key the paint choice we're under pressure to keep moving.
If it doesn't work out quite right we can always rag over another color to tie things together.
I think we're at that point in the project where everybody hates everybody else. It's been a long haul, and we still have a long way to go.