Kitchen Remodel Week 5

The word for this week is Granite!

We took a day for vacation on Monday, but the contractor didn't so when we came home there was plywood in place on top of the cabinets underneath where the granite will go. I don't know why, but I was surprised to see it.

The next day our appliances arrived and I got a call from Sandi and the contractor making sure that we had received the refrigerator we actually wanted. Refrigerators are much larger now than they were when we bought our last one almost 20 years ago. You can get a "normal" or "Cabinet depth" fridge. The "counter depth" fridges are generally smaller interior volume and cost more. So thinking we wanted a good size fridge and didn't want to pay extra we bought the normal size. Turns out normal means "Sticks out pretty far from cabinets."

The contractor said that we could still return it if we wanted to, but I chose to keep it.

 In these two pictures you can see the sink sitting about where it will be mounted and that the oven/range has been put in place.

We needed to decide on a faucet by Wednesday night so that the contractor could pick it up on his way to our house Thursday and install it after the sink and granite were in place. Who knew that choosing the faucet would literally keep us up after midnight trying to make the right choice. We looked at Home Depot to get a feel for what they had, then went to Lowe's and saw that there were three that really matched what we wanted. Sandi wanted to look online and see what the reviews were before we made a choice. Turns out every one of the faucets that we saw at Lowe's had glowing reviews for those that had just installed them, but the rest of the reviews were from those that had owned them for 1 to 3 years. Most of these people were complaining about what broke or leaked. We finally gave up and told the contractor that we just couldn't choose and needed to talk to him the next day. The only advice he gave was that hard water causes all plumbing to fail and that they are all pretty much the same. We picked a faucet we had looked at the night before and went on with life.

Thursday was granite installation day. We had selected a large piece of granite at the shop in downtown San Jose and the contractor had a "fabricator" in mind that would take this piece of grantie and fit it to our kitchen. Some of the questions he had were "how tall of a backsplash" my answer "whatever is normal." We also wanted to put something behind the stove and below the built in microwave. Previously we had a piece of stainless steel, but the fabricator thought there would be enough material to make that out of granite too.

When I came home Thursday afternoon, it was all done.

The L shaped piece that starts at the Dishwasher and ends at the oven/range is a solid piece. We had initially talked about how the fabricator would choose the best place to put the seam between the pieces around the sink, but he was able to keep it all one piece.

The sink is stainless steel with a coating on the outside and sound absorbing panels so that it doesn't act like a big drum. The sink on the right is smaller than the left and holds the garbage disposer. There are four holes in the granite, one for the main faucet, one for the water filter faucet, one for a soap dispenser and one for the dishwasher drain air gap. We are going to get a new water filter faucet to match the stainless steel look of the sink and main faucet. The main faucet came with a matching soap dispenser.

The contractor also installed the built in microwave over the oven/range.

 

He's concerned that it's a bit loud when it's running, so he said not to use it until he decides if it can be fixed or just exchanged.

The cabinet in the lower corner has a lazy Susan so we can reach whatever gets hidden back in there. We also have under counter lighting so that we can see back in to the corners up there.

Next week should see the dishwasher being installed and the island being bolted down to the floor in the middle of the room.