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Question for my kitchen remodeling guysm?
Comments
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It was a goddamned fun trip, too!RaceBannon said:
Reminds me of one of my favorite lines when people are picking REAL stones that come out of the earth1to392831weretaken said:
My kitchen remodel story--and proof in HAND that Rowboat should listen to smart people like Race and not broke people like me:Swaye said:I went with a custom handcut from Italy or some other bullshit travertine backsplash because Mrs. Swaye thinks I'm made of money even though I come home in an Orkin van.
Started with a $10K budget, figuring I could do a lot myself and save money. Things were going really well at first. Local hardware store (Hardware Sales in Bellingham is a mancation-worthy destination if you're an out-of-towner who likes man stuff, particularly during July tool fair) furniture division used to be a dealer for Canyon Creek cabinets, made locally in Monroe, and they also had hookups on granite. Price was spectacular. Saved a lot of money ordering sink and fixtures on eBay/Amazon, and was feeling REALLY good.
Then it came tile/backsplash time. Went to the flooring shop, brought home 5000 sample tiles, laid them out on the floor next to the newly installed (white) cabinets and next to the sample chunk of granite for the countertops. Wife selects the tile she likes for the floor, and we order something like $1500 worth after freight.
Countertops go in next, and we have a problem. Every slab of granite is different, so the countertops that went in were a lot more yellow than the sample we brought home. I don't see the problem, but the mursses is in tears (they do that). Now her carefully chosen floor tile won't match. Also, seeing the countertops all embiggened like that really drives home how busy they are, so the floor should probably be something either very plain or match some other feature in the room. I focused in on the red brick chimney that runs up through the kitchen. "Is brick floor a thing?"
Turns out it is. There's a company that reclaims the bricks from demolished buildings in Chicago, slices them 3/8" thick, and sells them to dupes like me. It's super cool if you ask me, as many of the bricks have union stamps on them, and all of them have slightly different edges and textures and colors (we chose the end slices). And they're fantastically expensive! Going from large square tile to small tile in a herringbone pattern and with a border seemed like something that would take too long for me to fuck around with, so I also had to hire out the doin'.
Then came returning our first tile order, which turned out to be not so straightforward. In order to avoid losing half our money to return freight and restocking, we had to spend the same amount of money with them on a different product. Which is how we ended up with a backsplash that cost as much as our original tile budget.
All said and done, we managed to get a kitchen we really liked for only slightly more than double our original budget, what with the $10K floor and $1500 backsplash!... Bonus: My wife haaaaaaates the floor, as it's impossible to clean. I love it, as dirt and grime totally blends in, so cleaning (to me) is optional. I rent a floor buffer once a year and knock it all down. She wants to rip it out and replace it, this makes my butthole clench and respond with something about my dead body. Not my house, but the floor looks pretty much exactly like this only with a border around the outside:
The end.
It doesn't match the sample!!!
Take it up with God
The truly rich get flown to Italy to pick the slabs from the earth. We actually did that for some of the early Seattle tech barons
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1to392831weretaken said: [great poast, loved reading this discussion, a funny and ironic true life tragedy account with some humor involved in the process.]
"Then it came tile/backsplash time. Went to the flooring shop, brought home 5000 sample tiles, laid them out on the floor next to the newly installed (white) cabinets and next to the sample chunk of granite for the countertops. Wife selects the tile she likes for the floor, and we order something like $1500 worth after freight.
Countertops go in next, and we have a problem. Every slab of granite is different, so the countertops that went in were a lot more yellow than the sample we brought home. I don't see the problem, but the mursses is in tears (they do that). Now her carefully chosen floor tile won't match. Also, seeing the countertops all embiggened like that really drives home how busy they are, so the floor should probably be something either very plain or match some other feature in the room. I focused in on the red brick chimney that runs up through the kitchen. "Is brick floor a thing?""
then he talks about the wife hating the alternative flooring which happened as a result of the difference in color for the slab etc... all of which is exactly what can and does happen.
So regarding how to help avoid the buyers remorse of getting combinations of colors and textures that do not complement, i suggest painting a sample board of the paint that is in the kitchen, get a sample of the floor tile or whatever you have used or will use [or take a [picture of the floor and print an 8x10 which matches as close as possible], get a good sized sample of the backsplash and take one of the doors off of the cabinets and bring all of that with you to the slab place to pick out the exact slab stone[s] that you are going to buy use. Just a suggestion to help give you a better idea of how the combination will look as a final product. -
This is the goddamned truth, and something we weren't warned of. It's impossible to take a little one-square sample out of a piece of stone and make it accurately represent 100 square feet from some other stone.RaceBannon said:
Reminds me of one of my favorite lines when people are picking REAL stones that come out of the earth1to392831weretaken said:
My kitchen remodel story--and proof in HAND that Rowboat should listen to smart people like Race and not broke people like me:Swaye said:I went with a custom handcut from Italy or some other bullshit travertine backsplash because Mrs. Swaye thinks I'm made of money even though I come home in an Orkin van.
Started with a $10K budget, figuring I could do a lot myself and save money. Things were going really well at first. Local hardware store (Hardware Sales in Bellingham is a mancation-worthy destination if you're an out-of-towner who likes man stuff, particularly during July tool fair) furniture division used to be a dealer for Canyon Creek cabinets, made locally in Monroe, and they also had hookups on granite. Price was spectacular. Saved a lot of money ordering sink and fixtures on eBay/Amazon, and was feeling REALLY good.
Then it came tile/backsplash time. Went to the flooring shop, brought home 5000 sample tiles, laid them out on the floor next to the newly installed (white) cabinets and next to the sample chunk of granite for the countertops. Wife selects the tile she likes for the floor, and we order something like $1500 worth after freight.
Countertops go in next, and we have a problem. Every slab of granite is different, so the countertops that went in were a lot more yellow than the sample we brought home. I don't see the problem, but the mursses is in tears (they do that). Now her carefully chosen floor tile won't match. Also, seeing the countertops all embiggened like that really drives home how busy they are, so the floor should probably be something either very plain or match some other feature in the room. I focused in on the red brick chimney that runs up through the kitchen. "Is brick floor a thing?"
Turns out it is. There's a company that reclaims the bricks from demolished buildings in Chicago, slices them 3/8" thick, and sells them to dupes like me. It's super cool if you ask me, as many of the bricks have union stamps on them, and all of them have slightly different edges and textures and colors (we chose the end slices). And they're fantastically expensive! Going from large square tile to small tile in a herringbone pattern and with a border seemed like something that would take too long for me to fuck around with, so I also had to hire out the doin'.
Then came returning our first tile order, which turned out to be not so straightforward. In order to avoid losing half our money to return freight and restocking, we had to spend the same amount of money with them on a different product. Which is how we ended up with a backsplash that cost as much as our original tile budget.
All said and done, we managed to get a kitchen we really liked for only slightly more than double our original budget, what with the $10K floor and $1500 backsplash!... Bonus: My wife haaaaaaates the floor, as it's impossible to clean. I love it, as dirt and grime totally blends in, so cleaning (to me) is optional. I rent a floor buffer once a year and knock it all down. She wants to rip it out and replace it, this makes my butthole clench and respond with something about my dead body. Not my house, but the floor looks pretty much exactly like this only with a border around the outside:
The end.
It doesn't match the sample!!!
Take it up with God
The truly rich get flown to Italy to pick the slabs from the earth. We actually did that for some of the early Seattle tech barons
Were I to do it again, I'd do concrete, and I'd do it myself. Concrete countertops weren't much more than a fringe idea back then, and I didn't have the confidence in pulling off projects like that that I do now. Now, though? I love concrete, love working with it, and love the look. Recently, I needed to make a table for the 3D printer, and overkill was the word of the day. Concrete is great at damping vibration and so is a lot of mass. So I built the frame out of 4x4s and Headlok screws, then cast the tabletop in place, with a 3/8 rebar grid. With such a small tabletop (38 x 38), it was only a four-bag job, so figured I'd just mix one bag at a time with a paddle on the joist drill and then shake everything to get rid of voids. Didn't go to plan, as I found out all my 60V batteries were dead midway through the second bag. What followed was a mad scramble to get the wheelbarrow and shovel clean, then mixed the rest of the bags at once, dumped, finished. Not enough time to shake it, so there were a few tiny voids here and there, but I still fucking love the way it turned out:
My finish work won't win any awards, so I'd always planned on giving it a light diamond grind after the fact, but I actually really liked the look of the trowel paths, so just lightly hit the edges and called it macaroni. Whole thing weighs 400 pounds, so it gets the job done.
I'm in the process of a bathroom remodel, and I'm definitely pouring a concrete vanity top.
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Stained concrete floors are making a comeback. Were big in mid century modern along with terrazzo. My last job in Seattle with the company was running the terrazzo wing which included stained concrete. I would tell people to look at the floor in the concourse of the original terminal at Sea Tac to see how terrazzo lasts. Forever
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My ex wife’s grandfather used to be in the terrazzo bidness.RaceBannon said:Stained concrete floors are making a comeback. Were big in mid century modern along with terrazzo. My last job in Seattle with the company was running the terrazzo wing which included stained concrete. I would tell people to look at the floor in the concourse of the original terminal at Sea Tac to see how terrazzo lasts. Forever
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They can do amazing things with blended epoxy over concrete as well. As a concrete purist, I think a lot of it looks like garish hot garbage, but it's still pretty impressive the looks they're able to achieve. This one's a pretty subtle stone look:
And this is when things get a bit... over the top:
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All those elements are fighting each other not working together. Too much brown. The floor is too busy IMO but could look better if the cabinets and counters were different. We are all HGTV design experts now
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Now the flooring hot takes come out.RaceBannon said:
All those elements are fighting each other not working together. Too much brown. The floor is too busy IMO but could look better if the cabinets and counters were different. We are all HGTV design experts now -
YellowSnow said:
Now the flooring hot takes come out.RaceBannon said:
All those elements are fighting each other not working together. Too much brown. The floor is too busy IMO but could look better if the cabinets and counters were different. We are all HGTV design experts now
If you had a floor like this your kat and dawg would be scared shitless to go in the kitchen -
On my remodel the only issue I had was matching engineered flooring that I had put in early. The only place that had the matching floor (wide plank distressed rose wood) was located in Alabama. It would cost me 3x the cost of the wood to get it shipped to a distribution center then to a local store (Portland) so I improvised.
We were connecting an open breeze way porch so we? didn't need to go outside to the laundry building. My beer fridge was out there so I thought it was a good idea. Here is a couple of pix of how I mated up two different woods on the floor. Also one of the bakery station for the missus and a wood cook stove.
