Kitchen Upgrade - ORC Week 2

It has been an exciting beginning. The Demos..yeah multiple Demos!!! So scared…am I making a mistake?

The countertops are out and so are the lower cabinets and the flooring.

We have locked in the stone, the color scheme and the floors have been ordered as well.

Countertops

I have loved the look of marble countertops, however, in my multiple visits to tile and stone stores, marble was always voted against material to be used as countertops. Marbles etches easily and while you can seal it, and reseal it or have TuffSkin installed, there is always a chance to easily etch marble, and I had been well warned against it. Especially, since I use a lot of turmeric in my Indian style cooking, I decided, however tough the decision is, I will not opt for marble.

Then we come to quartz, the most common countertop almost everyone opts for, but I knew right off the bat, quartz was not for me. To me it looks like a printed countertop, it looks like it just fresh off the press with some blank ink on it. Maybe it’s just me, but this man-made countertop material literally looks artificial. Don’t get me wrong I have seen gorgeous pictures of quartz installed, and I couldn’t believe it was quartz, but selecting a print that remotely emotes marble, I just wasn’t feeling the love. Also, did you know that Quartz cannot take too much heat, meaning you may never be able to get a cake pan out of the oven and set it on your countertop..no Ma’am, you can’t. Just use a trivet at all times, they said and always just be stressed of not making the mistake of placing anything hot ever, in the kitchen when cooking. I don’t have the brain cells for that, constantly cooking, baking and balancing all that with work and calls. Quartz is out.

That left me with quartzite. Quartzite is a sweet spot between marble and quartz. It’s a naturally occurring material, looks like marble, can handle heat and if a true quartzite, does not etch. And I found a perfect one. A leathered White Lux Quartzite, that does not etch. I tried lemon juice and tomato sauce….no etching and no stains…SUCCESS!!

All Natural Stone in San Jose is a wonderful vendor to work with. Yolanda was super helpful and resourceful in securing the leathered quartzite for me. It was a smooth process and they even delivered it to my fabricator for a reasonable fee. There are other dealers, such as, Dal Tile, Bedrosian’s, Apex Marble, that had good customer service, but, I just happen to find my stone at All Natural Stone.

Flooring

Meet Sweet Hardwood Floors. I kid you not they are pretty amazing! Suren, the owner of the business, gave us a very competitive quote for the flooring, however, where they offered more was in upgrading our stairways. Our staircase is a typical 90’s orange red oak wood with carpet and those jazzy twisty stair posts, that I despise the most. Painting was an option that was offered by other businesses, but doing anything more would require a staircase expert business to take over. I am managing the entire project with 4 different businesses already, and I was in no mood to add another business to the mix. So Sweet Hardwood Floors it is!!

The floors itself are purchased from FMD Distributors in San Jose. I worked with Homer, who recommended the California Classics Engineered Hardwood Floors to me. I narrowed down to three floor samples, which I brought home and we had a clear winner. Vittoria from the Mediterranean line of floors. It is very modern, but does not have that white wash effect to it. Besides feels warmer than the other samples, which compliments the off-black lower cabinets. I am loving the process so far!

Yes, the Off-Black Samplize sample went with me everywhere.

Cabinet Refacing

Our cabinets are original builder grade real wood cabinets in great condition from the 90’s, so fairly new. There is seriously nothing wrong with them structurally. It seemed like a waste of resources to throw them away for new cabinets, with looooooooong lead time, blame it on COVID supply chain issues. It would have delayed our move-in by months, so we decided to go with Refacing. We are working with one of the best Refacing businesses in the bay area, Kitchen Reface Depot. This is a family business owned by Paul & Jenna. What we thought would be a refacing job, turned out to be quite a project for Paul. Remember the 37 1/2 inches countertop? Paul came up with a plan to bring it down to 35 inches, while accommodating a standard size dishwasher, alongside the peninsula layout change. Very talented and was a wonderful process planning the whole functionality of the kitchen. He’ll be adding a garbage pull-out cabinet alonwith some other bells and whistles.

He’ll be matching the F&B Off-Black in cabinet grade paint for the lower cabinets and the upper cabinets are his stock color Antique White, which paired very well with my cooler toned quartzite, just warms things a bit for our kitchen.

There is a huge debate on refacing vs new cabinets, because they cost almost the same. First of all, the cost is not nearly the same. I would think for humongous kitchens, maybe, however, for our sized kitchen it was 2/3rd the cost of new cabinets. I love the savings, use it for future bathroom remodel? If you are planning a kitchen upgrade, I would highly recommend getting a quote for both, weigh your options from a cost, timeline and ease of upgrade perspective, and choose an option that works for you and your family the best.

Alright, and after all the deets, here’s the Demo and Progress on the Kitchen. It is so scary, you really don’t know if you are going to find something unusual, that you have to now pay to fix, or is it going to be a smooth sail. I can’t wait to find out.

Day 1: Countertop and backsplash demo. The peninsula is out of the way. The flow feels so much better already.

Day 2: Floors are gone.

Day 4: Cabinets are taken out to resize and give way to other upgrades

We found out that the sink cabinet had a lot of water damage, so we will be swapping it for a new one. The HVAC vent under the sink cabinet is not the best position for hot or cold air blowing right on your feet while doing dishes, so we are going to change that up to be under the new L-shaped peninsula.

Also upgrading the plastic pipe running to the refrigerator to a copper wire and clean up all the plumbing and electrical.

In the meantime, the flooring expert found out that our kitchen is not level at all. And it is extremely not level. The previous peninsula was hiding the unleveled floors to a great extent. So they leveled the floors with adding shims on one side and some concrete on the other. Yet he wasn’t a happy camper. He explained to me in great detail with laser levels that the floors were off an inch and a half on 3 sides of the kitchen. He also explained it is because of the beam running in the middle of the kitchen, however, he cannot touch the beam.

Day 5: The shims on the left and concrete poured on the right. HVAC has been moved from under the sink area.

The HVAC job required cutting into the sub floor to access the system beneath. And that’s when the flooring crew realized that there are posts underneath our house that hold everything up. As explained, usually these posts are found under homes on the hills, which allow the house moving/shifting over time. The posts can be shaved accordingly to maintain the leveling of the home. So a specialist was asked to come in to shave the posts without impacting the beam or the structure of the home. See when I said, you don’t know what you’ll find that needs taken care of. With that the floor was leveled and the plywood was ready to go in for our glue down glorious flooring. These guys are a pro at floors and I am so thankful Suren obsessed over the leveling of the floors for a quality outcome.

Day 5: New vent for our hood

Day 6: Copper pipes upgraded and the electrical for Refrigerator and oven switched

By Day 8 everything was ready for next phase of the project, subfloor plywoods and cabinet magic.

This was not in the original plan, but, I decided to give all the common entry ways a modern upgrade and take all the ugly old moulding off. The idea is to smooth everything out for a modern look.

Clockwise from bottom left: Entryway from our kitchen to the formal dining room, the twins leading from the main entry door, family room, and finally looking from the kitchen to the family room.

This is exciting, unnerving and happening all at the same time. BTW, our new appliances will not make it into our kitchen for another 7-8 months, except maybe the dishwasher. Sad but, our kitchen will not be complete for the final reveal.

Nonetheless, all exciting.

Thank You for visiting.

Please visit the ORC Blog Page to check out all the other wonderful Guest Participants. Spring 2022 Week 2 updates are already up!!

Happy Upgrading everyone!