I got an estimate on the rest of the tile today and everything is lined up for installation. They are waiting on me to get some more tile for the kitchen. I stopped by the tile place and bought it, so I plan on picking it up tomorrow then maybe they’ll start installing on Monday. They also do carpet and said if I picked up some samples I liked, they’d match it and beat the price, so that’s cool. So perhaps next week the floors will be almost done.

Today, Mike and I picked up tile. We bought about 150 square feet of 20 inch porcelain tile, four 50 lb bags of mortar, one 25 lb bag of grout, and some spacers. The place is almost out of this tile, but they are supposed to get more in 2 weeks. Normally, you wouldn’t want to have tile from two different batches, but none of the areas to be tiled this weekend will touch other tiled areas, so minor color differences won’t be noticeable. I was gonna buy a cheap tile saw, but listening to other people, it sounded like the little cheap ones are a big pain. We went to Home Depot and they had them to rent for $54/day, which could cut up to 24 inches and has the blade on a rail. The saw they have is probably worth about $1000, so it should cut very well, and I figure we can get all of the cutting done in 3 days of rental, so about $180 (which is barely more than buying one of the crap saws). The kid working the rental shop said it would take about 8 seconds to rip a 20 inch tile, but I have a lot of trouble believing that. In any case, it should be very nice compared to smaller saws.

After Home Depot we dropped off the tile and took a look at the master bath. We started scraping the vinyl glue off, which is a huge pain. I think we may end up just leaving a lot of it on and tiling over it. We also removed the vanity in the master bath, so aside from the glue, it is ready to roll. Tomorrow I think I’ll give it another scraping and maybe use some soap and water, then give up.

Today after work, I stopped by the place and did some measurements on the bathrooms to get the final design for the vanities checked. Everything looks good, so I went to Home Depot to order. It took me about an hour and a half to get everything ordered. I even ordered the countertop for the bar part of the kitchen, since Ikea’s don’t fit there. I went up to the checkout to pay and gave them my credit card and it was rejected. So, I pulled out the backup card. Rejected again. Anyway, I ended up being unable to pay so they had to “suspend” my order. I went home and called up the credit card and found out it was over my limit. They ended up increasing it for me, and I got everything paid for. I’m still not sure why the other card didn’t work. Oh well, at least this ball is rolling now. I could’ve gotten granite counters for a little over twice as much, but I really can’t be spending out of control now. I was tempted though.

The kitchen is, aside from a few little fiddly things, done. I think it came out quite nicely. Tomorrow I’m going to go into massive cleanup mode and try to work out some details of the flooring and other stuff that needs to get done. Here are some pics of the kitchen:

Installing one of the last doors:

The sink area prior to handles being installed:

The stove area with handles installed. As you can see, the alignment of the doors needs a little work because there are gaps. Also, I’m planning on replacing that oven still.

Tomorrow the kitchen will be done, I’m feeling it. I’m starting to get pretty nervous about the impending tile project, and the suitability of the subfloor of the place. As of now, I’ve almost convinced myself to switch the plan. The new plan is to tile only the kitchen and bathrooms and use laminate flooring from Costco in the living/dining room. That would bring my entire project into budget including professional install on the tile. The laminate flooring is a pretty small investment as well, so it could be replaced with something fancier later if needs be. The only problem is if I want to tile more later, it will probably be pretty much impossible to match the pre-existing tile. I dunno, the idea of not having to install tile and being under budget is pretty appealing.

My goal for today was to get the sink in the kitchen installed. The shutoff valves in there were crap and didn’t work well at all, so it was a mess having the faucet/dishwasher off for so long. I went to Home Depot during lunch to peruse the shutoff valve selection, and didn’t really know what I was doing. The guy told me they didn’t have what I needed and I’d have to go to some special plumbing store. I stopped by the condo after work and cut the cabinets up some more so the sink would fit. I couldn’t get ahold of Mike, so I didn’t have anyone to help me lift the sink into position, so I cut some toekicks, then inspected the shutoff valves. I made another trip to Home Depot knowing the sizes I needed. They said they were out of stock of what I needed for the dishwasher hookup, but I bought one valve for the cold water. I went to the other Home Depot in Tempe, and they had a terrible limited selection. I went to Lowes, and their selection was crap. Sitting in Lowes lamenting over the inability to buy the parts I needed, I finally stumbled upon a T connector that would get everything to work if I went back to Home Depot and got another shutoff valve. So, I made a total of 5 visits to home improvement stores and I had what I needed. Exciting! I went back and hooked everything up, and it was leaky. Finally, we resorted to getting my dad to come over and take a look. We fiddled around and replaced compression rings and teflon taped and tightened, and the leaks are minimal. It does still seem to be leaking a bit. We’ll see how it is after a day. Anyway, my conclusion is, plumbing is something that is far from perfected despite how long it has been developed. Keeping water under pressure from leaking is really a pretty tall order.

So, Saturday was a lost day as expected, but this is a long weekend. Mike and I spent a lot of time on Sunday working on the cabinets, and were there until about 3am. We got them all installed except for the sink cabinet. Right where it needed to be fastened to the wall, there was some sort of steel plate in the wall, so we couldn’t drill in and put an expansion bolt. So, today our first challenge was that. We ghetto-rigged on a piece of wood and two bolts to go into the wall nearby. There’s a photo in the gallery. Anyway, we got that done, then cut all the counters and set them on top. We just need to find screws and attach them, then install the sink.

Me doing some important supervision work:

One of the many cabinets that are perfectly level:

And here’s what the cabinets look like with the countertop. We will be cutting a hole in the left hand one and putting in the sink. The corner cut there was pretty tricky, but it’s pretty close.

I haven’t had a lot of time to mess with the cabinets, but they seem to be pretty easy to install so far. We’ve got 3/7 of the wall cabinets installed, and the rest should be done sunday. I have a big important beer pong tournament tomorrow, so I’m not sure anything will get done. Anyway, I spent a summer unloading cabinets off trucks at construction sites, and I got to see a lot of installer technique, and it looked pretty tricky. They used to build these little machines out of an old car jack with a box mounted around it, in order to hold up the wall cabinets at a level position while they screwed them in. Ikea has a tight system where you mount a metal rail on the wall first, then just “hang” the cabinets from it. That way you don’t have to manhandle a big heavy cabinet while you are trying to get it perfectly level. I had to cut a couple side panels tonight and I was gonna use my dad’s table saw, but it chipped up the first board pretty bad (luckily it won’t be visible in the installation). I ended up going over to his neighbor’s house and using his fancy laser miter saw. Anyway, here are some pictures that are a few days old:

Mike screws in a wall rail:

..and the cabinets are hung. There is an end panel on the left side now (it wasn’t there in the pic), so the white surface isn’t exposed anymore:

An army of base cabinets awaits installation:

The painting was completed last night, except for a couple touch up items. Today after work, Bob and I reviewed the cabinet plans. Then, I went to my parents’ and borrowed the van and took the seats out. Mike and I went to Ikea and put in the order. We left for Ikea around 7:30, and the van was fully loaded to the brim with cabinets by 9:30. They were running a deal where you get a $250 gift certficate with $2500+ in purchases, so that pretty much knocked out the sales tax, which was pretty awesome. The whole cabinet configuration ended up just under 3k, although I haven’t decided on/bought the handles yet. We stopped by QT then headed to the condo to unload. By about 10:30, everything was unloaded into the garage and we decided to call it quits. Tomorrow, we start building/installing. I’m a little worried about the two rows of cabinets that are angled. Cutting the countertops to match perfectly is going to be very tricky. Aside from that, it shouldn’t be too bad.

Today I finished the closets and put the first coat on in the kitchen. We figured out the mysterious paint color problem, and it looks like the Home Depot on Ray messed up the original batch of the color. My dad took it over there and made them match the original bad color, so I think we just need to use that to do some touchups and we should be set. I think we should be able to wrap up the major painting tomorrow, and there will just be really minor touchup stuff left. Here are some pics of the gutted kitchen:

And here’s one of the stairway that was a real pain to paint: