Well, I only thought all the big items would be complete this week. Another week coming, for certain.
On Thursday afternoon, the new installer stared in disbelief at the joke of an installation by the first contractor. I wish I had a photo of his face -- it was priceless! The inept appliance guy with "forty years of experience" had bent tabs never meant to bend. He also reversed the mounting brackets, which oddly enough meant the oven wouldn't just slide in easily, so he forced it, further bending the brackets. Even so, the side trim just wouldn't go on.
No worries! The new guy took it all apart (forcing the oven back out), flattened everything and mounted it properly, in 15 minutes. The first guy spent over an hour, with an assistant, to do it wrong.
Another hour saw the second oven and cooktop installed and the markings for the hood on the wall. The oven breaker is still off until all the setup is run through, but the cooktop is functional at this point.
The plumber hooked up the new faucet, soap dispenser and disposal air swich in the evening. With running water, it feels like a kitchen again! The new counterdepth, French door refrigerator was delivered on Friday morning, with no issues.
The tile man showed up near Friday lunch time after a delay in the previous job, and we discussed layout for over an hour before he unloaded his tools and the tile. The eight boxes of tumbled travertine 4" x 4" tiles look nothing like my three samples. I describe them as moldy swiss cheese. The stone is extremely porous, to the point of one tile that I pulled out having a hole the size of a quarter in the center. This is the nature of natural stone, I'm told -- it varies. Some of the tiles were very dark as well, which distressed me less than the texture, since I have travertine accent tiles with high density and crisp edges. Refined travertine meet rustic travertine -- now go home.
So I spent my afternoon searching for better travertine tiles, finally finding a helpful warehouse guy who let me sort through a full pallet of Mexican tiles to find the ones with the sharpest edges. This stone varies a lot less in color, as well. Monday we'll try that tile thing again.
Meanwhile, I've been exploring paint, since the wall color was too close to the cabinet color.
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