It was just in time, too.  Toby had planned and was hosting a surprise birthday party for her sister Kelly.  Toby wanted the first floor finished for the party.

Here are some pictures of the finished kitchen.

There is still some detail work to do.  I am in desperate need of installing a water softener and the central vacuum system only has stub-outs and needs to be piped in.  Also, the stairs need some carpet, but isn’t perpetual maintenance what owning a home is all about?

The kids are at Poppa and YaYa’s house for Easter break, so Toby and I will take advantage of the time to move their room downstairs.

Chelsea’s mom (Toby’s aunt) Bonnie, stayed with us for the long weekend, and was a massive help.  She cleaned on Friday, set up the tables and chairs Friday night  and then on Saturday got all the food prepared. 

The pulling of the paper off the floor and the moving of the cardboard out of the house was done in such a rush that everything was just thrown into the front yard.  It was trash city.  The kids and I went out early on Saturday and began the yard cleanup.  We got all the trash up, Max trimmed some of the bushes and Lucy swept up the front porch.  My lawn hadn’t been mowed in months, so I did a ‘pre-mow’ with the weed-eater.  I was racing against the clock, but finished cleaning up with about 15 minutes to spare.

As a reward for doing a great job working so hard, I took the kids to see The Tooth Fairy.  It was silly and perfect for Max and Lucy.

Below are some pictures that show the insides as the party was being set up.  I think more than 30 people ended up attending.

We worked together to get the edges placed on the long strip of countertop.  We used Bondo to attach the 1 3/8" wide strips of granite tile to the edge of the counters.  Then we mixed 2 different 2-part epoxies to make the ‘grout’ the color that Toby wanted.  In the picture below, you can see that we used masking tape to hold the edge pieces in place while the Bondo cured.  The cure only took about 5 minutes and then the tape could come off. 

The big question since the drywallers finished up last September is :  Will the reefer fit into the alcove?  Even before the drywall went up, the area for the reefer had shrunk.  It was measured out at plenty of room for the reefer, and to be on the safe side we had 1/2" drywall (instead of the 5/8" used everywhere else) installed.  But at the end of the day, what should have been 3/4" to spare in the alcove was measuring out at exactly the same width as the reefer.  Not good.  But we were hoping and keeping a positive attitude.

Thinking good thoughts got us nowhere.  The reefer would not fit into the alcove.  Not even a little bit.  The drywall had to come off.  I thought we were done with demolition, but the hammers were swinging like crazy.  Once the drywall was removed, it was obvious where our extra space went.  The bullnosing on the corner bead was not accounted for in our measurements. 

The picture below is a bit dark, but if you look closely, you can see the frustration on Pop’s face while we pulled out the drywall.

When we pulled the reefer out of the garage to install it in its new home, we saw that the rats had chewed through much of the exposed plastic tubing that feeds the chilled water and the ice-maker.  The lumber yard had many of the fittings and tubing to effect the repairs, so it seemed like a minor inconvenience.

“Seemed” is the operative word.  Although we didn’t see any damaged tubing, there must be some, because when we turned on the water to the reefer, water started pouring out of the bottom.  We found a new section of damaged tubing, but even after we repaired that, the water was dripping out.

So I’m going to have to call for service.  That will be fun, explaining that the rats ate my tubing.

Also, I found another dead rat in the garage.  This was was long dead from the time of the poison.  Hopefully the garage smell will return to normal.

We are using 24" granite tiles for the countertops.  We are bullnosing the edges of these tiles.  I bought a wet /dry tool for grinding and polishing the edges of the granite.  As an accessory to the polisher, I bought a shop vac vacuum attachment that was supposed to suck up all the water and granite dust.  It did not do a very good job, so Pop decided not to use it.  This made for a very wet working environment.  So Pop got out a big leather raincoat and he work his fireman’s turnout pants and heavy leather boots.  He was still soaked through and through.

The grinder itself did a shockingly good job at making beautiful bullnose.  Shockingly because although the power cord had a huge GFCI built into it, my dad said that he got shocked each time he turned the device on or off.  And, as the day progressed, the shocks got worse.

He was definitely glad to be done with that job.

We fired it up and it was nearly magical.  One of the accessories was a fence that made a big improvement in the speed of setting up the cuts.  We cut all new strips and the worst ones we cut on the new saw were better than 95% of the ones we cut on the old saw.

This area :

turns into a sleeping nook :

with special bedtime reading by Poppa.

On Saturday morning, I went down to the Oxnard Home Depot and rented an MK Diamond Pro24 Wet Tile Saw.  This saw looked great, but when we set it up, we discovered that it was pretty worn out.  The platen that the tile sets on had a lot of play from side to side and did not move to the blade very smoothly.  We struggled to make the saw work all day.  We made the last major cut at about 8:15pm.

We still have a couple of smaller cuts to make, but we were able to lay out all the surface tiles.

Poppa with his game face on.

The final layout

Hopefully, the backsplash tiles (12" ceramics) will be much easier to install.