Kitchen remodel is finished! (Well, except for a few small things.)
Greetings All !
Believe me, I’m HAPPY to report that the remodeling of our kitchen is complete!
(OK, well, yes, there are a few minor things left to do. They include:
1) Fix two areas where you can see the old flooring that was revealed when the pantry was pushed back slightly and the counter near the stove was cut down slightly. I’ve got some spare flooring, but haven’t had time to attack this yet. Note that we did NOT upgrade the flooring. We didn’t want the added expense and the flooring is so darned indestructible, we wanted to keep it!
2) Terry wants to order an “island”…. one of the ones that are on wheels. She wants to put this right in front of the large set of windows in the kitchen. (At the moment, a plastic tea-cart is there.)
3) Someday, we’ll get a WHITE refrigerator.
4) We still have two light fixtures to get: one for over the sink and one for over the future island.
However, when I left you with my last post, we were agonizing over the crown moulding situation.
MasterCraft Kitchens, the company that we used for most of the kitchen remodeling project, had been (apparently) overwhelmed and confused when they realized that the new tin ceiling resulted in a ceiling that was lower and textured. They had not expected this, it seemed. And they insisted that the tin ceiling people cut back their tin, so as to effectively raise the ceiling at the places where they would re-attach the crown moulding.
Realizing that MasterCraft was out of their league here, we decided to hire Berry Construction (who had been recommended to us by our tin ceiling installers, Nani’s Impresa) to install the crown moulding.
For $800, Berry Construction purchased all new crown moulding, painted it white, and installed all of it in about 3 1/2 hours. And it looks terrific!
Here are some “final photos” I’ve uploaded for this project today.
Note the crown moulding.
Berry Construction’s solution to an uneven ceiling was ingenious: They simply allowed for a small gap to exist between the crown moulding and the tin… all the way around the room! This gap varies slightly in size, due to variations in the ceiling, but the naked eye doesn’t really notice this!
Plus I was impressed that they resolved an issue that MasterCraft had previously failed to fully fix: the fact that the pantry unit of cabinets had a huge gap on its left side, between the top of the pantry and the ceiling. Berry Construction did a nice disguise job that hides the flaw very well!
So, Terry and I were very happy with Berry Construction (from Kansas City, Kansas). Terry even asked Steven (Berry) for a quote on doing our front steps (near the street), as apparently, Steve’s company does concrete work as well. I know that sometimes going with a generalist seems like a bad idea, but Scott and Lisa of Nani’s Impresa knew that moulding was Steven’s specialty. And he and his worker did a terrific job!
In other minor news this week, I’ve got the gardening bug, bad! But the weather only really cooperated one day this week during my off-shift.
But I managed to dig a semi-circle in the lawn, right outside our dining room’s bay window. This semi-circle will be a new butterfly garden that I have been planning. I’ve been terribly tempted to order plants from either Michigan Bulb or Spring Hill Nursery, as both have sent me catalogs with coupons in them. However, after checking out their ratings over at GardenWatchDog.com… I decided to not risk it. I’m just trying to be patient until the local nurseries start getting in some of the plants on my list.
Thanks for stopping by this site!
Have a great day!
-= Dave =-