Details Take a Home From Meh to ZOMG
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 32)
Kitchen Jewlery
Counter Tops
After much driving to view materials, decision making, and waiting, the day finally arrived… Counter Top Install Day! World Stone Group of Farmington Hills arrived at our home with our gorgeous quartz counter tops and began installation into our kitchen and master bath. Our kitchen installation went smoothly, and our kitchen was suddenly transformed into a useful room! We love the countertops and how they look with both of our cabinet colors.
I ran upstairs and grabbed a piece of our hand-painted kitchen tile to see how it will mesh with everything together and I was thrilled to see that it all works together beautifully!
We’ve Made a Huge, Tiny Mistake
Next up was our master bathroom vanity. The piece was laid down and seemed to fit just fine. We’d decided to go for simplicity and just use a sink supplied by World Stone, so our countertops were cut to fit their provided sink. We needed some of our cabinet cut away in order to make the sink fit, so our installers opted to leave the top there and come back another day after we’d modified the cabinet. That night, however, disaster struck.
We were in the house with Cal and Christian, discussing timing of some of our various subcontractors and steps moving forward. As we were standing in our bathroom all together, Brandon and I suddenly realized we’d made a mistake. Our vanity wall, which was quite short and tight due to all of the elements we had to fit into the room, meant that our planning of the vanity was very tightly specified. We were restricted by shower tile on one side and the closet door on the other, so our placement of lighting, mirrors, and vanity/sink placement was incredibly narrow. When looking for sconces, I had restricted myself to finding lights that were only 2.5" at their base because I knew we only had about 3.5" of space between each mirror. I ran to grab our mirrors and set one on the counter top, roughly where it should sit on the wall, and the mirror fell about 35% off center to where the sink holes were cut.
Brandon and I immediately went into panic mode of what to do. Our mirrors were not large mirrors, at only about 22" wide, there wasn’t much we could do about finding even smaller mirrors. The stud placement and narrow width of the wall meant that our sconces really only had one spot where they could each go, which would mean our mirrors wouldn’t be centered between them, even if we could find smaller ones somehow. We discussed having the top re-cut, but after measuring the provided sink, the width of it meant we would still never quite get it centered correctly in our cabinet. Cal and Christian then came up with an idea. What about a vessel sink? We could have counter top cut with no holes, drill the top on site so that it was perfectly placed, and we’d no longer have issues with the sink needing to fit inside our cabinet.
I called World Stone Group the next day and gave them a rundown of our situation. I expected we’d likely have to pay for our entire top and the replacement, and wasn’t looking forward to our conversation. Trent, our rep, heard the story and went to speak to his manager. He came back and offered to replace the top at cost and split those costs with us. We went from what I expected to be a $1,300 disaster to a $400 one, and I was relieved. Brandon and I immediately ordered our new vessel sinks and faucets and we are scheduling a new install date for a fresh slab. We can’t thank Trent and World Stone enough for helping us with our mistake!
Brick Wall
The day after our kitchen counter tops were installed, two men from Ambrico in Warren arrived to install our brick wall! This was something I had wanted in our kitchen from the very start of our planning 10 months ago, and so I was very excited to see the brick layers arrive!
They plotted out lines with a laser on our kitchen wall about 3 bricks tall to ensure that their laying would be straight across the kitchen. Each brick was hand laid onto the wall with a glue, trimmed by hand with a tool when necessary to cut around corners. These guys were pros to watch. After all of the brick was laid on the wall and evenly spaced, they discussed mortar laying techniques with us and I chose a “chop joint” to match the mortar of the exterior. The kitchen has been completely transformed again in two days time, and as the mortar and brick dries, our colors will become more accurate to what we chose.
Painting
Ongoing last week and this week will be exterior painting. While scraping and sanding are still ongoing on some windows, some painting is starting to occur. We are taking the house from its current yellow and faded red-brown color to more traditional tudor colors of dark brown and cream. Our doors will be returned to their original evergreen blue-green color, and we are exploring having our storm windows painted the same color as well. Exterior colors have probably been my and Brandon’s most heated source of debate, so hopefully once we paint a couple of the storm windows he will come to his senses. ;)
Painting of the brown is going pretty well so far, although I am now being called “boss lady” and “hawkeye” by the painting crew. While the guys are very easy to work with and take direction well, I feel like I need to be checking on them every 15 min or so, lest they try to paint something they haven’t even washed yet, let alone scraped or sanded. This aspect is becoming very exhausting, as their manager isn’t always on site, I don’t think I should have to be there 24-hours-a-day to ensure that my home is painted well and correctly… but here we are.
I wish that more subs were like our contractors Cal and Christian, who we never have to watch or keep an eye on. We’ve realized as this project is coming to a close how lucky we have been to have them. While at times we’ve disagreed, or things have taken longer than we planned on, Cal and Christian have just been amazing to work with both as professionals and as people.
Next…
Painting should come to a close this week and we should see progress on electrical/lighting, plumbing, and more as our finishing touches come into focus!
Our Journey isn’t over!
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