She Said

Our contractor, Eric, arrives ahead of schedule – about 7:50 a.m.. Lucky!

Lickety split, Eric’s got the cabinets coming down and thinks he’ll be done by noon – just one guy!

Alas, there’s a snag: the pantry cabinets that are coming out are one piece, 8-foot-tall units and too big to wrangle alone. Not that I wouldn’t be willing to help, but heck, have you seen me? I’ve got the pipes of a 90 year-old grandmother! No problem: he calls in another associate of his to give him a hand. In the end, it’s Doug, the guy who originally came out to do the cabinet measure, so we have a chat and catch up.

In the meantime, however, Eric has uncovered snag number two: the plumbing for the dishwasher, at the end of a peninsula, has not been run from the sink. Instead, it was run from somewhere in the basement, back when the basement was unfinished. Well, now there’s a very nice-looking family room down there with flat ceilings and pot lights. This work, presumably, was done by the previous owners themselves, given the number of “features” that, we’ve since learned, do not meet code. I’m informed that this plumbing really should have had an access panel in the ceiling of the basement. Woe is Eric, there is none. So, Eric is going to have to dig up some floor tiles to be able to recess and cap off the plumbing.

Luckily, we had already planned to change the floor!!

Swanyways, speaking of features, when the pantry cabinets come out, Eric discovers an electrical box that was hidden behind one of them. This, apparently, is not to code, either. There I was, all this time, thinking, “I guess builders aren’t necessarily cooks…”. As it turns out, it looks increasingly likely that the previous owners weren’t necessarily cooks, either, and had re-done the cabinetry themselves! This might explain crazy little things like, oh, say, a corner of the (beautiful) window trim being cut to accommodate some (ugly) crown moulding for the completely inaccessible cabinet that was sitting right above the peninsula…. You know, fun stuff like that.

The one fortunate aspect of the plumbing woe is that, in the process of checking out the sub-floor region, Eric did discover that it will, in fact, be possible to run water under the floor to the fridge (see rant, below). This was done previously, in the original location of the fridge, but must have been done prior to… having had the basement finished (!), so no one was able to figure out just how it had been accomplished.

Which reminds me! We looked high and low for a fridge with no water or ice capabilities (from the pessimistic side, this is just one potential thing to go wrong with your fridge, right?)…. There are so few options on the market, and certainly not a single one in counter-depth fridges, that we had to get one with these, um, features. On the one hand, you could just plug it with no regard to water accessibility. Just plug in the fridge and forget about the rest and never give a second thought to the puddles and damage when the darn thing goes kaput! Um, until you have to sell your house, that is, and confess that your kickass fridge is a dud because it’s in a spot where you couldn’t access any water and so now you look like a freakin’ idiot.

But I digress….

I’d like to take a brief moment to commend our star of the day, Eric. As you may recall, he was supposed to be done by noon. Upon finding our plumbing conundrum, he immediately called his boss to arrange to stay for, like, the whole freakin’ day and ensure that the whole rest of the project plan was not put off by even one day. Way to go, Eric! We love you!!

And so, all in all, day one is a winner, and next comes the floor rip-up.

Stay tuned!

~ One of Seven