More Kitchen Cabinets

Valda sent me some photos of the kitchen cabinets she took yesterday. They're looking nice!

Cooktop Area

Island

Pantry Cabinets

Coast Guard 2009

Well, the Coast Guard showed up today and dropped off one of their little boats. Now they've been sitting outside my window with all 4 engines running for 22 minutes and counting. I really wish they'd either taxi away, or shut down.

Upper Cabinets being installed.

Here are a few more pics I took on Thursday before I left for work.

Cabinets

OK, so 2 posts back to back, but I'm trying to get caught up before I go back to work...

I ordered the kitchen & bathroom cabinets from a place in CA and had them flat packed and shipped. They are similar to the IKEA cabinets I liked, but actually are a better quality, so hopefully they're going to look nice & last. Though it's a lot of labor to put them all together. Each and every piece has a sticker on that that says which cabinet it belongs too. So when they're unpacked you have to sort them all out. Very interesting to say the least.

They're a birch plywood construction, with a natural maple veneer. Monday morning Paul had James start unpacking and sort them, then after lunch Lee came over and started putting them together. I think it's going to take all week. But Lee made some real progress today.

And then Paul is building shelves, etc. for my master closet. I'll start with the shelves and hanging poles, then will add some drawers and cabinet doors sometime this fall.

More about the floor...

My concrete floor project has definitely been a 2 steps forward and 1 step back experiment. In fact sometimes I think we've gone 3 steps back. The idea was fairly simple but it's turned out to be quite the project. I just wanted to color the concrete, pour it over the in floor heat tubes, then polish it once it had cured.

But we ran into some trouble. The first grind of the floor went pretty well. All the trowel marks, etc. were polished off. But we'd sprinkled some aluminum filings in the surface of the concrete, hoping to give it a bit of a sparkle when polished. Instead, the filings clumped together, and then were pulled out of the concrete by the polisher, leaving little holes & divots. What a mess.

So Rob though we could mix some black concrete/grout mixture and trowel (or squeegee) it over the floor. Then grind it off, leaving behind the filled in holes. Didn't work that way. I think it's just too soft, so we're going to let it cure a few more weeks and try grinding again. But I really don't know if that will work.

Here are some pictures of the grinding and grouting process.

This is the living room with 1/2 of the first application of grout ground down, and 1/2 still curing. We didn't finish the grinding, it wasn't working out too well.

Here is the pile of 'sand' swept up during the grinding. This stuff is almost like talcum powder and really gets into the air.

Here is Rob grinding in the closet, you can see all the dust in the air around him. What a mess.

This is the floor with the 2nd batch of grout applied. This was taken on Friday afternoon. It's curing while the guys work inside and get the cabinets, etc. installed.

Then on Monday, I decided to grind along the edges of the floor, where the normal grinding machine won't reach. So Paul can install the baseboard, etc. I'm planning to use a buffer instead of a grinder to remove the rest of this grout, and I'll probably be working on that in August. So, I rented a hand grinder, what a job. I ground 3 or so inches away from each wall, and then ground out both of these small closets because the buffer won't fit inside them very well. I'm too old to do this much hand work :-). This looks pretty rough, but it will do for now though I have some touch up to do. Look at the dust on the walls though. I spent all of Tuesday cleaning that up.

Backfilling

Today the dirt work guys showed up and moved some dirt around. They put down fabric and then gravel between the house & the driveway. And they did the same for the carport area. Then they moved some dirt out of the back yard to bring up the grade out the back door of the kitchen. This area will become a little morning courtyard, someday :-).

Fabric laid so gravel can be added & compacted next to the house.

Dumping gravel in the driveway to be used next to the house.

Here is the back yard, lots of work still to do back here.

And here is where the propane tank will end up being set.

Floor Polishing 1

Well, Rob got the first grinding of the concrete floor done. We knew some of the aluminum filings would pull out and leave holes during this process. But a lot more came out than we'd hoped. So instead of being able to do this with 2 grinds, we'll end up with 4.

Here is a close up of the floor after grind 1 using 60 grit grinding blocks. All the trowel marks, etc. are ground out, the floor is very flat.

And here is Rob appling a mix of cement dyed black with some black sand blasting sand mixed in. It's basically a grout that will fill in the holes left by the aluminum pulling out. Once it's dried we'll grind it down again and take off all the excess.

Then once that's all smooth, Rob is going to apply some additional grout, in blues & greens, and grind it again. Then it will get densified, and polished with the 120 grit blocks. So with a bit of luck he'll have the floors done around Wed. I can't wait to see how the turn out.

Here I am, waiting :-)

Wind & Ice

We've had wind & freezing fog for days. Mother Nature is starting to push the ice around. I got this video taken out at Oooguruk Island on Tuesday. The wind is pushing the sea ice on shore. It really moves fast, doesn't it.

Concrete Floor Polisher

Well, dad is taking the concrete floor polisher down to Homer for me today. Rob should finish painting today, and be able to start on the floor tomorrow. I'm really anxious to get home this coming weekend and see what it looks like.

Kitchen Faucet

Talk about leaving things for the last minute. But I've finally orded the kitchen faucet. Waaayyyy too many hours have been spent looking at faucets, that's for sure.

Danze D457144SS

House Pics from Thursday, June 11th

Here are a couple of pics I took on my way out of town. The drywall guys are making a lot of progress. So the house should be painted when I get home in a couple of weeks.

Also, the EPDM was installed on Monday, and Paul is getting the metal on the sloped part of the roof. All the roof trim work etc. should be done early next week. So then we can hook up the gutters and start collecting some water :-)

Some Progress.

We've had a few more delays the past couple of weeks, but things should start to move faster the next couple of days. I'm still hoping a lot can be done the next 3 or 4 weeks.

Some of the taping has been done, and Rob plans to start in there full time tomorrow.

And this afternoon the roofers arrived!

Plus the kitchen and bathroom cabinets are shipping tomorrow, they should show up late next week.

Wish me luck....

Driving Directions

Medivac

I'm sitting here in my office doing some paperwork. It's almost the end of my 2 week shift and this afternoon is pretty quiet. Then I hear a small jet land and look out my window to see it the Medivac plane. And an abulance is on the ramp waiting for it. This is not a good way to go home from a work shift. But I'm glad the medivac plans are available when they're needed.

PLUS, look at this spring snow storm. YUCK. Last week it was sunny and 40's. Melting snow everywhere. All the parking lots flooded. I'm NOT ready for snow again.

Island Countertop

I've been looking for months for a picture, showing what I want my island countertop to look like. It will be 4 ft wide, 10 ft long and 1/2 has cabinets underneath. The other half will be open so people can sit around it like a table.

I read about using hot rolled steel as countertop material but couldn't find a picture of what it looked like. I know it will rust if it's not kept waxed, but that's OK. It looks very durable and industrial. And it's all 1 piece, no seams which is what I want.

So here is the picture I found. This table was created at a shop in Dallas, The Weld House. I found this picture on Flickr.

http://joelhester.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/weldhouse/collections/

So, then the question is. What do I do for the rest of the countertops. The floor is dark gray with sprinkles of aluminum filings. And the cabinets are natural maple, which is very light colored. Hmmm.....any ideas?

Wildfire 2

The wildfire up the road from us is roaring out of control. I was up at the fire station last night about 10:30 pm (took some brownies up to help feed the fire fighters). They were expecting it to have grown to 1000 acres by this morning. The State sent in some Forestry crews, but the volunteers are on day 3. They're doing structure protection, while the Forestry crews try to put up fire break. But it's soooooo dry, that they won't get this under control until we get some rain. And there is NO rain in the 7 day weather forecast.

Patty took yesterday off from her job and took the ambulance up to the staging area to be on standby in case someone got hurt. She said there were a few minor injuries among the fire fighters, but not enough to send anyone home. Just patch them up and send them back to work. She's going to do the same today.

These are a few pictures she took from the ambulance.

Wildfire - the first of our season

HEA had a powerline go down yesterday, and sparked this wildfire. The first of the season near Homer. It started about mile 17 on East End Road and has grown to over 100 acres. The fire teams got it knocked down pretty well last night, but it's warm and sunny today. This afternoon when the day breeze got going, it blew back up. Here is a picture of it from town, and then another from the Spider House. We're at mile 10 but the wind is currently pushing it toward the head of the bay which is away from us.

Sheetrock is done.

I was surprised but happy to see the crew working on Saturday morning. But they got the sheetrock all in. Will the taping & mudding start on Monday? Stay tuned....

Burning Sticks

Yesterday morning was nice so I spent several hours pulling dead tree limbs and assorted sticks out of PART of the yard to be. Boy, this is going to take me a couple of years to really clean up. Anyway, we were supposed to get rain showers in the afternoon, so I thought it would be a good time to burn them. Instead it turned to snow. In fact we had about 1/4 of fresh snow still on the ground when I got up this morning, but it's melting fast.

Anyway, burning sticks was a muddy, cold, snowy & wet mess. Kind of fun though :-) These pics were taken about 8 or 8:30 pm.

Sheetrock!

The guys started putting up the sheetrock today. Yay!

That should mean mudding & taping next week...