In which the contractors came and went: Step 2 of the kitchen process

Where we started.  We did paint over the wallpaper many years ago.

The contractors came.

DH put the blue tape over the sink to remind himself that the water is off!

They took off the old ugly countertop.

One of our big hopes was that they’d be able to keep our fancy glass cabinet/tea nook (formerly microwave nook). They were.

Then the started putting the countertop on.  This was one piece with no seam.

Here you can see the other part of the countertop came in two pieces.  They matched up the seam really well and you honestly cannot tell here.

Here’s it all together with the sink put in.

There’s another seam in the middle of the stovetop, but you can only tell if you specifically know to look for it.  After the countertop, they moved onto the stovetop, though they did not actually connect it.

The next day the plumber (eventually) came back and hooked up the stovetop for us.  (Note in this picture and the next two that there is a drawer that no longer closes.)

He also put the faucets and garbage disposal in.  (I vetoed a soap dispenser because I hate not being able to see if something is empty and I also hate cleaning soap dispensers, so they didn’t drill a hole for it.)

  Here’s how it looks now.

We’re not done yet.  We need to shorten or replace that drawer so it closes.  We need to replace the gingham knobs and get new shelf liner.  If it were just me, I’d go with brushed metal knobs and plain white shelf liner, but DH wants to be more interesting in our middle age and so we’ve ordered 14 sample knobs of various dark blue on ceramic from home depot ($51, but I assume we’ll be able to return the ones we don’t use) and a bunch of one dollar shelf liner paper samples from Houzz.  There’s also some gold accents we’d like to replace with brushed metal.  And that little water tap is dangerously powerful– if we had a party, someone innocently eating cheese and crackers would get drenched when someone else tried to get some tap water.   I haven’t done a full accounting of how much all of this has cost, but for posterity’s sake, I need to note here that the plumber did $400 of additional work (on top of the turn-off/hook-up fees), adding and replacing valves before the countertop people came in.

So this is not the last post– a future post will have a final picture with better lighting and no green gingham in sight.

What do you think, grumpy nation?