Kitchen Progress | Weeks Five & Six | Floor & Cabinet Installation

Hello friends!! I am overdue to update you on the kitchen progress – our life has been a cyclone as of late living amidst a renovation! Last I left you, we had demolished the old kitchen and ripped out the tile and vinyl flooring to make way for the professionals to come in and put it all back together. Here are a few messy, unfiltered snaps of our progress at the six week mark.

FLOORING

The refinishing of the old floors and installation of the new hardwoods in the foyer and kitchen ended up taking TWICE as long as expected, because 1/ the subfloor needed so many repairs, and 2/ we decided to have the floor installer lay the new floors on the diagonal. I labored over that decision because the adjacent rooms on either side of foyer and kitchen have hardwoods running front to back, and the new floors are integrated into them without transitions. Would it look weird? Would I tire of the diagonal? The installer laid a series of boards in the foyer for us to mull over, and right away we were smitten! 

Now that it’s all installed we are so happy with our decision – it was more expensive to have it installed this way but it’s a design element that we love and think it was worth the investment. Here you can see how it transitions to the old wood.

The installation came out beautifully – the floor installer is a meticulous tradesman. Right now the hardwoods are still in their raw state until the cabinets, carpentry and painting is all finished. The floor installer will then return to stain and seal them! 

CABINETRY

I designed a rough draft of the kitchen and ordered our cabinets online. I’ll tell you all about that decision and the process at a later date! For our kitchen and flooring renovation, I’m acting as the general contractor, hiring all the sub-contractors individually versus hiring a company to manage the whole process for us. The contractor that we hired to install the cabinets and do all the finish carpentry, Ken, typically works as the GC and handles all aspects of a renovation like this, including lining up the electrician, plumber, floor installer and so on, but he very kindly agreed to work with us in this way because we’re handy and could tackle things like removing the old cabinets and flooring. This has helped significantly to keep our renovation within budget. 

I ordered the cabinets the second week of January and they were built and delivered the first week of February to our garage. This was actually three weeks earlier than the lead time the company had given me, and although we weren’t ready to get going on the demo when the cabinets arrived, we were glad to receive them, check through them for damages and have them all ready to go when the time came.

Once the floors were installed, Mark, Sean and I brought all the cabinets into our living one by one and unboxed them so they could acclimate to the indoor climate. There were also all sorts of filler pieces, baseboard and trim from the cabinet manufacturer to go through. Who knew this process was so time consuming! 

Within two days Ken had most of the cabinetry installed!

It’s the little things! 

Now Ken has moved on to building a custom hood, installing all the baseboard, and adding a header over the cabinets so they extend to the ceiling with crown moulding.

The electricians spent a whole day here this week too, getting all the pre-wiring done for new outlets and light switches as well as new placement of recessed lights and my pretty new fixtures. Ken had 12 holes in the ceiling to plaster after we moved the lighting around in here – we keep adding to his to-do list!

So YES – our house is still a complete mess with wires hanging out the walls, tools and wood in every corner, and a fine dust everywhere – even behind the closed bedroom doors upstairs – but it all is coming together! This weekend Mark and I are painting the ceilings throughout this whole floor and maybe starting the process of caulking seams and puttying nail holes in the crown moulding in an effort to move things along and get our house back!

Next week the countertops will be templated and the floors will be stained and sealed while we move in with our friends for a few days. I have a post coming about kitchen lighting options – there are so many pretty choices out there!! – and I’ll fill you in on the state of the pantry makeover soon too.

Thank you for following along with these messy progress reports! Today I’ll be posting a video tour of the kitchen in it’s current state on Instagram and Facebook stories, where I frequently share in-the-moment photos, if you’re interested in more of the nitty gritty! 

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

xo