After spending most of Saturday working on refrigerator / water issues, Pop had to go do some long planned Valentine’s day stuff with YaYa.  He came back Sunday afternoon to continue to get things ready for Chelsea Nawai’s baby show next Saturday.  The task for Sunday was to get the refrigerator into its built-in alcove. 

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.

The main focus of the President’s Day long weekend is to get the countertops in so that the kitchen is serviceable in time for Chelsea Nawai’s baby shower on Saturday, 2/20/10.

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 decided to get a tile saw again, but NOT from Oxnard Home Depot.  I went to the rental yard at the Camarillo Home Depot.  I touched the tile saws and ran the platten back and forth and picked out the saw I wanted.  As I was telling the clerk my tale of woe, he said, "Do you want this brand new one?"  I looked where he was pointing and there was a shiny tile saw with tons of accessories.  Who knew tile saws had accessories?

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.