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Now, the last of the “big” installs is done. And I mean BIG. They brought up through our crooked staircase a granite slab large enough to crush several men if it fell while they were moving it. All of our counters are seamless sections now. We’re very happy with our fabricators.

The stone is called Yellow River and is very nice with lots of “movement” and a variety of color tones.

Here’s a few wide pictures.

I have a few close-ups of some of the details:

And finally, our spiffy new faucet [which I installed myself!]:

Awesome!

Now, we just need running water…

After a long day of very skilled work, the installers have completed the main phase of the cabinet install. They have to leave a few things undone for the electricians to finish and the plumber to attach things, but for the most part, they’re done!

Tomorrow is major electrical work and hopefully granite templating followed by the inspection for electrical. Once that’s done, the finishing can be done on the island and the sheetrock can be closed up.

So, you asked for them and here they are: some pictures!

First, the upper cabinets were assembled as a unit.

Then, they were lifted on top of the mounting board that was temporarily attached to the wall to keep them level. You can see how many people it took – I’m glad I didn’t try to do it myself!

Here’s the cabinets without doors:

And now, the “final” shots [well, final for the day at least]:

No, we don’t have the dishwasher installed since the electrical and plumbing on the island aren’t done yet. That starts tomorrow.

Well, I love the new layout and it was exhausting just watching these guys work.

After four days of very loud pounding and sawing [and lots of the accompanying dust] our floors are finally done! They are beautiful. Now, we just have to learn how not to scratch them.

Our next step will be moving our furniture back into place in the living/dining area. We’ll be able to do this over the weekend.

Monday, our new cabinets will be installed. And we’ll get our garage back, since they are stacked in there.

Here’s some pictures of the final floor.

Pretty!

Today is the third day of our flooring install. This morning, they repaired the whole in the floor that the plumber had to make to move the island over… and they did it EARLY. I’m glad, but I had to be up and ready early for them to come in. And they had to do it this morning [as you’ll see in the last picture] because if they didn’t, the flooring installers would not have been able to continue.

So, without further ado, pictures.

Day 1 [flooring removal and most of living room]:

Day 2 [all of living room up to most of “dining” room]:

Day 3 [most of kitchen]:

Today I stayed home from work to watch our kitchen fall apart. We first had to clean out all of our kitchen stuff – which I must say is quite a job. We then created a “kitchenette” upstairs in a spare bedroom. The demolition team arrived at noon to this clean, neat kitchen:

A mere two hours later, we have this:

Amazing how devastating two hours can be, yes?

Next up: plumbing!

We made a journey the other day to the same area that our granite counter top fabricator’s shop is, so we thought we’d stop in and see the slab. We had chosen it from a company out in Jessup, MD and they then shipped the slab to our fabricators.

Here’s a shot of it:

Pretty, ain’t it? It will be the last thing installed, so we’re a bit impatient to get it home.

As many of you know, Laura and I are in the process of renovating our kitchen. We have already started with the electrical work, and next week [Wednesday] we will begin the demolition phase. We will, of course, be posting some photos – like these of some electrical work:

Here are some of the after pictures:

As you can see, we now have more light than we did before. And there’s still more to come!