Counters have been partially torn down, flooring and sub floor partially torn down. Pantry (new and old) placed in their new locations, along with the fridge. New base cabinets and wall cabinets in their new locations as placeholders. Electrical work is complete, with the installation of can lights and a pendant light. Also, electrical overload switches installed to bring the kitchen up to code. Trim work on the utility room and entrance doors completed. Trim work starting to be torn down on the garage door but that might have to wait until floor is started. Electrical stove has been disconnected.

Appliance store confirms delivery of sink and stove tomorrow. Hood is still not in stock. No ETA.

At last, Day 1 of our project. On June 26, 2007, the contractors arrived bright and early in the morning, ready to start the project. Travis is sort of the head honcho of Home Expressions and Ken’s son.They wanted to start off by installing doors first. We realized that Home Depot had not yet delivered the fire door. Also, we needed to order a new cabinet since the one we were going to move was a tad too wide for the new wall space. Finally, we needed some shims for the door, filler block for the cabinets and toe kick for the new cabinets. So Steve and I headed over to Home Depot and after an hour, were on our way back with all the items. An extra $108 for the new cabinet.

I realize that painting the doors, buying and painting the trim was not part of the contract. This was my second taste of budget overrun. Painting is going to cost an extra $150 per door.

By the end of Day 1, the main entrance door and an interior door leading to the utility room have been installed, not yet finished up.

The cabinets have arrived and assembly is in progress ahead of the start of job next tuesday. Meanwhile, I headed over to Pental today to select a Tan Brown granite slab of suitable size. It turned out that while Pental had at least a couple of dozen slabs in their yard, the ones that fit my size requirement were all taken. Picking a smaller slab would mean purchasing two slabs and that would increase the kitchen budget.

Fortunately, there were a few other granite yards in that vicinity, some open today (saturday). Dal-tile had one on display and 9 others in their overstock yard however that yard was not open on saturday. Went to Oregon Marble and Tile and they had a few on display as well. The ones I was able to see had a predominance of grey tones and unfortunately, they dont move slabs on saturdays. Decided to check out Michelangelo since it was on the way back home. I found their customer service very curt and impersonal and besides, they didn’t have a slab in the size I wanted. So, I’d have to wait until monday to make a slab selection.

On monday, I head over to Oregon Tile and Marble. They had one slab in the yard and one in their overstock area. The one in the overstock definitely looked much more brown, the one inside was more grey. Placed a hold on the brown slab and headed over to Daltile to see what they had. Their slab was quite different with much more whites and greys. It looked somewhat like Dakota Mahogany. Decided to pass up this slab in favor of the one on hold at OTM.

The appliance store was going to deliver the stove on a particular day but that was before our contractor was scheduled to start his job. The appliance store can haul away that old stove but only if it is disconnected. Same with the sink and hood. So I had to postpone the delivery date for the appliances to a fter the contractor starts the job. Home Expressions will not haul the old stove.

A few days later, I learn that the hood is back ordered so the delivery might be delayed by another week. Meanwhile, the cabinets are expected to arrive this week so I plan to assemble them before next week when the contractor will start the job. They will assemble the cabinets but charge me $60 per cabinet, which I want to avoid.

Selecting appliances was an incredibly time consuming process. Downdraft or vent hood? Slide-in range or cooktop? 2cm or 3cm granite? What kind of laminate flooring? Finding a matching backsplash was also a challenge.

Kitchen Plus was the first contractor to give us a quote. We spent a considerable amount of time at their showroom picking out the granite countertop and matching backsplash. We loved the variety in their showroom but their bid was too expensive. Besides, the salesperson piled on quite a few things that we hadn’t even discussed.

Next, we went to Pental granite showroom in Seattle to see a slab in the granite style we picked out. Boy, that place is a granite ocean. Their selection overwhelmed us. Luckily we had a granite style picked out – that is certainly not the place to pick a new style since you’ll end up totally confused. We noticed that the granite style we picked looked good in a 12×12 tile sample but the slab displayed a predominance of grey tones which didn’t appeal to us. So we picked a close but different style (Tan Brown) that looked good as a slab. We also tweaked the backsplash to a slighly different style. We walked out of Pental confident about our selection. I also checked on the retail prices on the backsplash and used that to negotiate with our contractor for best rates.

Next stops to a few appliance shops around town, looking for a stove and hood/downdraft. Quickly we realized that for our kind of cooking (spicy Indian dishes), a downdraft just wouldn’t cut it. Besides, we are installing the stove against the wall so the best choice was a vent hood. The choice between a cooktop and slide-in range was also very simple. If we went with a cooktop, we would have to purchase a wall oven and find a place to put it in the existing kitchen. That was not only too expensive but oven base cabinet styles in Mills Pride was fairly limited. So we decided to simplify and go with a slide-in range. After comparing Jenn-Air, Viking and DCS, we finalized on DCS for price, aesthetics and finish.

As for flooring, Home Expressions had quite a few samples in their showroom. I brought home a few and the choice was quickly obviously.

Ordering cabinets from Home Depot was more painful than it should have been. For starters, not all cabinets were available on the shelf so I had to pay a visit to the kitchen design center. We were going to install a wall-mount microwave shelf so I went into the first visit with a design in mind. It turned out that the microwave shelf from Mills Pride wouldn’t work out for us due to its dimensions. So I had to return to the drawing board and make adjustments. Next visit turned out very long and painful. Just providing the specs to the designer took a long time. Why can’t we order this online and cut out the designers? Next, the designer placed a special order for all the items. I asked in passing about the price of a door to a base cabinet since I wanted to compare its special order price. We quickly realized that those items on the shelf shouldn’t be special ordered since they are more expensive that way. Back to the order and further delays. After an hour at the desk, my order was completed. Expecting them to be delivered home in a few days.

The idea for remodel started when Venkat visited last winter and suggested a few updates to the kitchen. At that point we weren’t thinking of the remodel but his ideas were exciting and that got us thinking more.

So I visited the Seattle Home Show website (since the show was already over by then) and picked up a dozen kitchen remodel vendor’s contact information. I started calling each one of them, asking if they would like to visit and give us a quote. As we talked to each one of them when they visited, we started refining our ideas and making adjustments as we went along. By the end, we had 6 bids and a clear plan in our head.

The bids were all over the board: the most expensive bid twice as much as the lowest – believe it or not. We were going to add a couple of cabinets so visiting a local Ikea and Home Depot revealed that the existing cabinets were Mills Pride from Home Depot. This dramatically cut down our cost since some of the contractors had estimated a hefty sum just to match the new cabinets to the old.

At the time we sought bids, we hadn’t decided whether to install an overhead hood or a downdraft. Also, we hadn’t decided whether to install a cooktop gas stove or a slide-in range. As time went by, we finalized on a slide-in range with a vent hood.

We used a couple of criteria for selecting contractors: Did the contractor seem down to earth and willing to help us reduce our costs, or are they trying to milk us for money? Does the contractor’s bid seem reasonable? Did they accurately estimate what we discussed or did they throw in some extras that unnecessarily cost us money? Did they have a brick and mortar walk-in showroom? Do their past clients vouch the contractor?

Based on these criteria, we have selected Home Expressions as our contractor.

Technically, this is my second blog although on the same topic that I started at myspace.com. I didn’t find the myspace.com UI appealing. Besides, it wasn’t intuitive to me how to continue to blog, even though I’m technically savvy. Hope this will work out better. Rehashing from the “first” blog…

I have read a lot of blogs and found quite a bit of value in them. However, I have never created a blog myself. A few months back, we started thinking about a kitchen remodel in our home. We believed we did considerable homework before starting the project but our experiences in the last few months have been very interesting and enlightening. I figured sharing our experiences might help somebody else learn a thing or two quickly, without making the same mistakes we did. So, here goes my first blog…