The new Dishwasher was installed and is working now.
However the Reverse Osmosis filter is another story, we kept the original filter and when the contractor went to install it he found that I had cracked one of the "finger tightened" nuts by using more than my fingers to tighten it the first time I installed it years ago. For some reason wehn I installed it there wasn't an issue with leaks, but he couldn't get it to work without dripping. Fortunately the company that makes the unit still sells pieces on their web site. I ordered a new piece and it should be here next week. I had previously used the RO water to feed the refrigerator ice maker. Now that we have a new refrigerator with TWO ice makers it was important to get that going and it seems to be working OK, albeit slowly. We now have a fridge with water and ice in the door.
The next big finishing step was to install the baseboard around the outside of the floor. One of the things I never completed when I installed the floor five years ago was installing the quarter round around the edge of the kitchen like I did in the living room. Turns out, I should have done a little more homework and made the space between the edge of the boards and the wall be 1/4 inch or less, instead I set it at 1/2 inch. Fortunately my contractor was able to come up with an elegant solution
More finishing work was done on the window sills and sliding glass door frame. Another example of something that I had put off from when it was originally done, oh 10 years ago or so, was painting the frame of the "new" sliding glass door we got when the retrofit windows were installed. I always knew we'd get around to fixing up the kitchen.
The last finishing touch that got done this week was adding the wood panel to the back of the island. I had never known that an island wasn't sold as a single piece. I always assumed that the thing in the kitchen was brought in a one big piece, however I learned during the design process at Lowe's that you select the pieces that you want and then they're screwed together to make the front look nice, but the backside needs to be covered in order to make it look nice. A single piece of 1/8th inch thick veneer was purchased with the cabinets so that the contractor could cover it up. That got done this week:
BEFORE:
One final thing I did this week was swap out the incandescent floods for fluorescent and LED lights. We now have 6 recessed light cans, that original had 65W incandescent bulbs, for a total of 390Watts. The Fluorescent and LED bulbs are 13Watts each for a total of 78 Watts, a savings of 312 Watts, which was mostly heat, for the same amount of light. Think of it this way, turn your hair dryer on low and that's how much heat we were unnecessarily pouring in to the kitchen. Sandi had actually started this by asking if there was any way to reduce the heat coming from the lights. There is a "problem" with the fluorescent lights they come on dim and slowly "warm-up" to a full glow. The LED light comes on quickly but costs literally 10 times what the fluorescent costs.
For next week we needed to have the pendant lights for over the island, so we chose the mini-pendants lights from Lowe's that look like this:
Next week: Exterior House Paint, we have to choose yet another thing! Hopefully we're coming round the corner on wrapping up this project. While we're getting the outside painted we have to move in to the kitchen, clearing out the garage so that we can move the living room items in there to complete the popcorn ceiling removal project. Of course, we're going to have to paint in there too, so that's another thing to have to pick. Oh well, I'm thankful that simply having to make choices is the hardest part of this project.
No comments:
Post a Comment