New Countertops!!!

We were doing it!!! We were moving ahead with the kitchen remodel. Our goal was to get things done in the kitchen by the time that the baby is born. One of the main items on that remodel list was redoing the countertops. This was an unusual item too because it was one we were not doing ourselves, unlike most of it. In fact this is only the second time we have hired someone to come do work on our house. The first time being when we hired John's friend to change the kitchen lighting. 

Obviously this was a little stressful because of the sheer amount of money involved. We got quotes from a couple of different people, but only one person had extended the countertop like we wanted with a couple of posts before. Since we didn't want someone learning in our kitchen, we went with that guy. Unfortunately he was the more expensive option, but really, we think it all turned out super well, so we don't have any regrets. 

After meeting with him, sending him photos, getting a quote, we had to actually pick out the material for the countertops. We knew that we wanted quartz because of the beautiful stone look, durability, and low maintenance factors. We looked at a bunch of samples in person and ended up picking the LG Aura quartz. We didn't see prices on anything, but of course it ended up being a more expensive option. It is fitting because we picked LG appliances, so our whole kitchen is LG. Hope they're a good company. :) 

I think it is funny that we got a quote without him actually coming to see the kitchen. We sent him these before photos and these measurements that we took. 

He eventually did come out and take precise measurements and made a model of the space. Unfortunately this all coincided with COVID-19 so everything took a lot longer than we think it normally would have. 

One way we saved money in this process was to do the demo work ourselves. The easy part was to pop the laminate countertops off.

This was the less easy part. Cutting through the drywall was no problem but there were a couple of 2x4s that John had to cut through that were lined with some light metal. A real saw caused it to spark, so he sawed it through with a hack saw. It was labor intensive! As an added bonus the dry wall dust was thick in the air, which meant it was thick on everything it landed on. It was a long clean up process.

That wasn't even the worst of it though. We had bad luck with what was in the wall. John had to move electrical wires, which wasn't that bad. But then there was a pipe that went up into the bar wall. It was just a big U-bend pipe that we think is for venting. Ugh, this was stressful. Because of COVID-19 the hardware stores were closing at 6pm. We couldn't find the things online that we needed. And the countertop installers were coming at 9am the next day. We had to have it ready! After trying a number of solutions, we resigned ourselves to getting it fixed after the countertops were installed and having to repair the drywall.
John decided to give it one more go in the morning by running to Home Depot early to see if he could get the necessary repair equipment. Even though it closed at 6pm, Home Depot opened at 5am. Thankfully he was able to find it in the store (even though it was no where to be found on their app or online store). So superman that he is, he ran to the store, fixed the pipe, repaired the drywall, and got it all situated before the installers arrived! Way to go John!

My role for that day was to keep the kids away from the installers. We didn't want to pick up Coronavirus, or get in their business too much. Among other things we did that day, we spent a lot of time playing games on my bedroom table. We especially played the game Bonanza a lot. It was a fun but long day, and I discovered that Holland was trying to learn to shuffle. Super cute. 

Posts and wood frame in!

It took them the whole day, and then we had a handyman come and repair the drywall where we had cut down the wall on the bar. It was long day, but look how beautiful they turned out! I love, love the enlarged peninsula. I think it makes our whole kitchen seem bigger and more modern.

Close up of counter.

Before

After with new sink and faucet! It was a bit of a project to get that whole system situated. They installed the sink, but John did the plumbing work to get the disposal reinstalled on the other side of the sink. Connecting old and new pipes were harder than you'd think so we dealt with a couple of leaks and didn't use the sink or dishwasher for a few days. So worth it though! I love the countertops! I also love the new sink and faucet. We got a large one basin sink and it feels so much bigger than the last sink even though the dimensions were about the same. It was more money than we thought it would be, but we really like it! That is one of the main rules of home projects--more money than you'd think. It mostly ends up feeling worth it though, especially in this situation. 

One unintended consequence of doing our countertops was that we have almost an entire slab of quartz that is sitting at the fabricators that we have already purchased. It is too big and heavy to just hang onto for a later date, so we have to figure out what to do with it now. These are the four surfaces we are thinking about replacing. We are not sure what the process is in getting them rough cut for the space, but we hope it doesn't get thrown away while we are waiting for our installer to go through that process. Fingers crossed it all works out!