Dishwashers....

As most of you know we are 99% done with the kitchen. I thought I would share some thoughts regarding all the research I've done for our dishwasher purchase. I had certain criteria, some just my fetishes, some very logical criteria and some selfish. My criteria is listed below. Some interesting things to note. There are rebates for almost every appliance right now. Check google and your local power and electric company's website, make sure you get your rebate money! One of the things that make dishwashers really quiet now is the lack of a built in little garbage disposal. Most have this basket you have to clean out every couple weeks depending on if or how much you rinse your plates.
My criteria:

• Quiet - ultra quiet
• wine glass holders in top shelf
• adjustable top shelf to accommodate large platters in bottom drawer
• heating element (more on that later)
• delay start
• no stupid little drawer for silver ware (see picture)

Heating element, why was that a criteria? Well, some dishwashers, like the Bosch do not come with a heating element inside anymore. This saves energy. It makes the Bosch the most energy efficient dishwasher out there, but do you really want wet dishes? I like my dishes nice and warm and DRY when I pull them out of the dishwasher. Quiet? Why did I want a quiet one, well we run our dishwasher at around 2 am usually and I don't want to hear it spraying and clunking away in the kitchen. So delay start and quiet go hand in hand. Our new Kenmore Elite is so quiet it's a little hard to tell it's on.

Adjustable top shelf. Some of these are cheap and just scream, "I'm going to break soon!" so try it out over and over again. I think it's a great feature as Dena and I entertain frequently and use large platters to serve food. It would be nice not to have the middle swinging spray arm hit all the plates and pots on the lower level. Bad for the arm and bad for the dishes.

Silverware - there is nothing I hate more than having to work hard to put dishes and silverware in the dishwasher. Isn't a dishwasher supposed to save time? This new feature of having a silverware drawer is the stupidest thing I ever saw. It takes too much time. Who has time to place every single knife and fork in its own little slot. Just throw them all in a basket and be done with it. For those of you that say they don't get clean, well, if you don't wipe the peanut butter off the knife and leave it sit for 4 days then no, it probably won't get clean.

Other things we learned - positioning and understanding of your controls. Dishwashers nowadays in order to qualify for energy star compliance have certain features that you must turn on when you wash. We have to push the Hot Dry button to get it. Where are your controls? Are they on the front? Do you want to see that or do you want them hidden in the door? We have this turbo wash thing in the back. If you put dirty pots in there like a roast pan, you can pick the turbo wash cycle and they'll blast the pan. Pretty cool.

So, do your homework and you'll be happy. We consulted consumer reports and all sorts of online reviews before our purchase. The nice lady at Sears was extremely helpful and we learned a ton.

Kitchen Remodel - End of Week 9

I know you were all expecting some exciting pictures today....but alas, the kitchen is covered in tarp, paper and the new stove and hood is all covered over by a "bridge" that they made out of wood for installing the new hood. I can tell you that it looks fantastic though.

Sears repair is here today to fix the new fridge. Yes, it was installed improperly. Now he's blaming my contractor for not clearing the water line for the ice maker and that the filter is clogged. Filters are not covered - $ 50 down the drain, literally. The freezer has frozen condensation in it because the door doesn't seal properly on the left side and they neglected to drop the feet down, so every time I pull open the french doors the fridge slides out 12". Nothing irritates me more than incompetence.

They are finishing the grout, moving in the washer/dryer, finishing the plumbing, installing the under cabinet water filter, and the list goes on. I have high hopes that I'll be making dinner Friday on our new stove, washing dishes in our new dishwasher and drinking a bottle of wine chilled in our new wine cooler. Hope springs eternal....

Kitchen Remodel - Day 4 Week 9 or something...

An Exciting statement emanated from the mouth of our contractor today..... he proclaimed he would be done with the kitchen Tuesday October 13th. Perhaps he should have picked a better day. In true Dawn (reads....pessimistic) fashion it will probably be more like Friday the 16th, but hey, that means one week from now we'll have our kitchen back. That has got me all whipped up into a frenzy for sure.

Kitchen Remodel - The Lizard

This is the behind the stove back splash. It's done in a herring bone pattern and has taken our contractor 4 days to complete. It is quite a detailed pattern, especially using smaller 1" x 4" Japanese tiles. As you can see the cuts on the sides are quite small, combine that with the fact that the cabinets are not perfectly straight or the wall or something is not straight, perhaps the owners, and you get minute differences in lots of cuts. It's a shame really that the hood will cover a portion of this pattern. Our contractor has taken to calling this the "lizard". It fits.

We look forward to tomorrow which will hopefully mark the end of the tile as Thursday is granite repair day and Friday the stove arrives.

Kitchen Remodel - 8 weeks

The granite has arrived. It truly was like Christmas. There were 6 guys working in the house that day and it was about 100 degrees outside. So I suppose it wasn't much like Christmas... The granite is beautiful but apparently nothing can be accomplished without problems and drama. There was a large scratch on one of the pieces and the installer decided to attempt to fix it even though he told me he wasn't the specialist at this. What resulted was that the scratch is gone but the polish is gone as well. So, we will wait and see what Monday brings, and it had better bring the specialist over and it had better magically be fixed when I come home from work. These are all the photos Dena got before I came home and freaked out that it wasn't covered. That's all I need are more scratches! It's covered now!

Kitchen Remodel - Week 7 Cabinets Stained

The cabinets are stained and apparently we will have two days of peace and quiet. That will be nice. Everyone now waits for the granite.

Kitchen Remodel - The Other Shoe

In true pessimistic fashion I knew we were moving along too well, even despite the fire and flood. No remodel or contractor/sub-contractor experience is complete without some bullshit. I had a feeling it would be with the flooring guy. As you can see by the picture he laid flooring underneath most of the cabinets. That's bad if you have a leak because you now need to replace wood flooring that disappears under cabinets that you don't really want to move. After all, there will be granite on top of them! Also, what you don't see is that he neglected to put down a vapor barrier between the wood sub floor and the red oak. While it is not absolutely necessary in the Los Angeles climate it was part of the quote to my knowledge and I feel ripped off. I had a feeling about this guy even though I'd never met him. You should trust your intuition I guess.

As Dena would say, look at the bright side....the floor looks good.

Kitchen Remodel - 36 days

Saturday - what a day. Our Saturdays have been jam packed every weekend for the last 3 months. Always one or more things to research, price, shop for, measure, or buy for the kitchen. Today was no exception. We were at Mission Tile in South Pasadena at 9am when they were supposed to open to order all our tile. They apparently decided to close down shop for the entire Labor Day weekend. That was a drag. Then it was off to Crown City Hardware to return a handle (an expensive one), then off to Woodland Hills to the Ferguson Lighting Showroom to look at LED under cabinet lighting. We have finally made a decision on the under cabinet lighting deciding on the direct wire CounterMax LED strip. Apparently, you practically need to be an electrical engineer to figure it all out. I think I've rambled on in previous posts enough about all the challenges of it. They are, of course, back ordered until October 1st.

It is now just after noon, we're home already and discovered a coat of primer had been applied to the kitchen and our new unfinished red oak flooring delivered. That funny little "window" in the wall above Dena's head is our new built in spice rack. We added that at the last minute last week.

Kitchen Remodel - 35 days

Amazing progress has occurred I have to say. The drywall is done and tomorrow, on day 36, they will prime it all up to prepare for painting. Also tomorrow, our flooring guy will drop off our oak flooring and plywood covering. Today we lined out tile design and nailed down how many square feet of each tile type will be required.

Kitchen Remodel - Cabinets....

We went out looking at our new cabinets today and we liked them. More decisions had to be made and new things were discovered. We only have 1.25" for the valance for under cabinet lighting. This will further restrict our choices. Under cabinet lighting is in my humble opinion akin to rocket science. There are a vast number of choices, each of them with pros and cons and everyone has an opinion.

Kitchen Remodel - Making Do

This is how we're living now. Doing dishes in the bathtub, we have one burner in that old PureAire 1943 unit in the guest house that we can reach. The washer and dryer are blocking most access to that unit. As you can see, Dena is holding breakfast over the washer. The other picture is our old Kenmore fridge, still surviving, despite it's new home in the dining room. The birds, pantry and prep area are all in the dining room now.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 22

Today marks the beginning of the 4th week of the kitchen remodel. For almost 3 full weeks there has been nothing but destruction. Each week the demolition continued until I couldn't fathom how there was anything more to remove from that kitchen/laundry room/breakfast nook area. Finally, right near the end of week 3 we see rebuilding. Some rough in plumbing is done, as you are all well aware....

Probably 50% of the rough in electrical is done. It is amazing the number of decisions that are required for each trade. For electrical you need to decide where each light goes, which lights are on what switches, where the switches are going to go, if the switches will be 3 ways, will they be dimmable, what size recessed lighting? 4", 5" or 6", what type of trim? White? Chrome? brushed nickel? What type of lights? Florescent, incandescent or LED? Well, we had our eyes set on LED but the technology just doesn't seem to be there yet and it is way too expensive for any kind of decent ROI (return on investment). I've also spent hours researching under cabinet lighting. You'd think that would be easy but it proved to be extremely challenging with the end result finally going to fluorescent tubes for two simple reasons, it made that granite just pop with color, texture and detail and cost. You can't beat the price.

All the walls are removed, the pocket beams installed, hold downs are in and amazingly enough, drywall should start going up tomorrow. Can you believe it? It seems like it's been an eternity that we've been washing dishes in the bathtub yet seems like only yesterday that the demolition started. Life is funny like that I suppose.

Into Each Remodel a Little Rain Must Fall.....

After the Dodger Game we came home to a note on our gate. The note said that our good neighbor turned off the water to our house after they heard water running and saw it cascading down our driveway. That day was rough in plumbing day so a pipe must have burst. Obviously, I was upset. After checking out the kitchen, in the dark, it was obvious that water was all over but not as bad as it could have been. I called the contractor and told him to get his a$$ over here early in the morning and we gave thanks for good and vigilant neighbors.

The shock came the next morning as the sunlight illuminated the truth. It wasn't so much that there was a flood, it was that the fire was so hot that it melted the sodder on the copper pipe that then burst, causing a geyser of water that put out the fire. Does this sound over the top to you? Well, it should, because even as I type it I still cannot believe it. There is truly someone or something watching over me. The what ifs are endless but none of them relevant as a miracle truly occurred.

As you can see by my friends' artist rendition of the actual event in the blog post below, all of the planets were aligned. During soddering of the copper sink riser an ember must have manifested itself in the dry 1920's redwood 2x4's. There are a few termite trails in these from days past and perhaps the ember smouldered in there. The smouldering took what we figure was about 3 hours to ignite before the water was turned off. Below is also a picture of the melted PVC drain pipe.

Kitchen Remodel - Is it Hot in Here?

Kitchen Remodel - Day 16

Here they are putting in the 2nd pocket beam. This will support the wall that was between the laundry room and the kitchen.

Kitchen Remodel - Discovering History

During our tear out of the last floor level in the kitchen we discovered an intact newspaper from November 7th, 1933. In the old days if they needed an eigth or sixteenth they would just use the newspaper as a shim. That appears to be what they did here. November 7th, 1933 was election day. They were voting to end prohibition. Here are some pictures of that paper. We hope to frame it and hang it in the new kitchen. By the way, you could get a pack of smokes for .15 cents and a new toaster for .69 cents, but if you wanted a cord on that toaster it was .20 cents more.....

Kitchen Remodel - Day 11

There has been much progress. All the debris is removed including the 4 partial walls that basically opened up the entire space into one big room. As Dena says, it's a blank canvas now. Naturally, problems were discovered, as happens in houses, old and new. We have a couple new beams and feel generally better about the structural soundness of the house. While the marriage is still in it's honeymoon phase with our contractor things are going very well and thus far we are happy.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 10

This is our second huge debris pile....and they are not quite done with "debris".

Kitchen Remodel - Day 1

Today we finally, after 5 trips to granite yards (or was it 6?) we picked our granite. This turned out to be quite a difficult task where at first we picked something called Rainforest Amazon and that turned out to be marble. Marble is no good for kitchen counters, it's too porous. Live and learn. We discovered a granite that was like our amazon (green with brown and white quartz veins) and it was called Verde Borgonha. But, we dragged our feet to think on it a little more and all the slabs we knew were around at a couple yards were now spoken for. Even if you find something you like, you have to pick the actual slabs as it could be slightly lighter or darker or whatever depending on the cut.

Today we ran out to Walker Zanger's slab yard in Sun Valley where it's so hot the rubber on your shoes starts to stick to the pavement. They had some but it was on hold by some San Franisco designer that had Verde Borgonha on hold at every yard he could find. Nice. But money talks and bullshit walks and it was ours!

The First Purchase

I guess in for a penny, in for a pound. We made our first kitchen purchase yesterday. A new wine refrigerator, built in. We had planned on a 16" wine fridge in the kitchen, stainless steel but the price for any builtin wine fridge is outrageous. On a whim we wandered on over to Home Expo which is going out of business to check out the sales. When we arrived all floor model appliances were 40% off. This little wine fridge from Marvel popped out at us and said "buy me please". I checked it out thoroughly and it looked to be in good shape. The only problem was that it was not stainless steel and was missing the handles. Odd I thought. But upon further investigation it is a cabinet style, where your cabinet maker puts a door frame on it in the style and wood of your choice. I think it will work and we save $ 1,000. That makes me happy. Hopefully it works.

Oh, and as a point of reference in case you ever need to know. If you ship/transport any refrigeration unit on it's side you must leave it upright for 48 hours prior to plugging it in to power. This is so the freon will settle. This is apparently vital. Good to know.