Letters From The Loft
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
The kitchen looked pretty good, with a new floor, new coat of paint, redone cabinets, and new lighting, but we still had to replace the wooden countertop. That involved another contractor (through Home Depot, of course) and until we could get that done, most of the contents of the kitchen (table, chairs, oven and range, contents of the lower cabinets) had to remain out in the garage. On the positive side, the refrigerator and microwave remained inside and in working order, so the Thornton family didn't end up running in the same circles as the Donner party.
The process of getting a new counter is a little involved. First you have to pick out the material. Sue decided on some sort of engineered stone. I would think the term "engineered" would have negative connotations (I think of Spam as engineered meat) but apparently it's a desirable category of countertop material with all sorts of colors and exotic brands to choose from: Zodiaq, Viatera, Cambria, and Silestone, for example. I forget what Sue went for, but it was one of the ones that didn't sound like a lifestyle prescription drug for men.
Next you have to schedule an estimate. Some guy comes out with a tape measure and gathers information, then returns to Countertop Central to noodle the figures before delivering an estimate a day or two later.
If you accept the estimate and pay some money, then you schedule the "real" measure. That means a few days later, a "real" man comes out and rips out all your old counter. Before he'll do that, though, all the faucets and plumbing from the kitchen sink, including the garbage disposal, have to be removed. Since this was essentially demolition (my specialty), I figured there wasn't much expertise involved and I could handle it myself. I extracted the faucets with the finesse of a frontier dentist, but the garbage disposal was a tough nut to crack, and I finally had to resort to downloading the installation manual and reading it backwards to figure out how to get the thing out of there.
Once you're ready, another guy comes out and lays down plywood where your old counter used to be, ensuring there's a level surface on which your new counter will be installed. Here's what it looks after the guy does his work:
The bucket under the sink is to address a slight drip that magically appeared after I yanked the plumbing out. It was either that or keep Sam down there with his finger in the dyke. We also drop our spare change in it, like a wishing well. The proceeds go toward the new counters.
Our old countertop was so ugly that the plywood was an improvement and we were tempted to stop right there. But as the old saying goes, in for a penny, in for a zillion pennies, and besides, the plywood doesn't have any holes cut out for the sink and faucet. After this guy finished the plywood prep, he used a laser gizmo to accomplish the "real" measure, meaning the one they'll use to manufacture your actual countertop. Then this guy also returned to Countertop Central for another strategy session before we got a call to schedule the actual countertop installation, which was about 2 weeks out.
Until that time, we were washing our dishes in the bathroom sink (my conservation-minded suggestion that each of us take a dish and our favorite utensil into the shower every day was quickly rejected by Sue). We didn't move the range back in because we would have just had to move it out again when they installed the "real" counters, so our dining choices were: a) microwave meals; b) stuff right out of the refrigerator; c) standing plaintively outside the neighbor's window during mealtime; or d) eating out. We chose "d" most of the time, but keep in mind that for our family, "eating out" just means that we're eating food that was paid for at the same place it was prepared. A lot of the time, we're getting it and bringing it back home because it's tough to find a good place that lets you eat in front of a TV, and those that do won't let me assume command of their remote control.
Now that we had the new carpet, eating in the living room took on a whole new dynamic. Allowing scraps of food to hit the carpet is now punishable by a slap up the side of the head by Sue, and if you drip or spill liquid, she's got a cattle prod ready. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but there is a lot of pressure presented by the new flooring, and my heart pounds every time I eat in the living room (or anywhere, come to think of it... maybe I shouldn't wrap everything in bacon).
After a couple of weeks, the guys came out to put in the countertop. They set up shop in our driveway with sawhorses and power saws to do all the necessary customization. They plugged their saws into an outlet in our garage that apparently was connected to the same circuit as all the stuff in my home office, because we kept losing power up there anytime their saw blade exceeded 2 rpm. At first I thought I was having a series of mini-strokes till I realized it was the surrounding 5 tons of electronics constantly rebooting. We finally shut everything down till they were finished. The surrounding houses probably experienced a power surge that exploded all their light bulbs, but I'm told these things aren't traceable, and as soon as we powered the office back up, the rest of the community was back to its customary brown-out level.
The next day the plumber came out to install the new faucet and new garbage disposal. The old garbage disposal was a little worse for wear after I extracted it, and we were afraid if we had it reinstalled, the first time we turned it on would result in some sort of warp core breach that would take out the whole kitchen. So we got a new heavy-duty-mega-super-turbo disposal that's guaranteed to mulch tap-water down into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. The plumber also hooked back up our range at Sue's request. She's convinced that whatever pipes I touch lose their integrity, and although I'm trying to disprove that theory, I wasn't prepared to put it to the test with natural gas. Now that the plumber's left, things look like this:
So it's pretty much finished, though we're still trying to decide if we want to put a new dinette in there, or go with a blanket for a picnic motif. But the rough stuff's over, and the moral of the story is not to be discouraged by home improvement projects. There's always a light at the end of the tunnel. I'll admit that sometimes the light is from an oncoming train, but in this case the source of the light was in the eyes of my wife. As the MasterCard people would say: Priceless.