Counters! Oh My Gosh we are at Counters!

It is always a milestone when the counters are coming. It means the end is near and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. The clients can actually use their house again and I can call the photographer in to record the results. FYI, not all remodels are photo worthy but the Sammamish remodel of Jennifer and Ryan Lee surely is one of them.

Before we get to the end of the project I thought it might be interesting to see what happens when you decide you want stone counters. First of all you get to go shopping at a slab yard, usually a very,very big warehouse where all the different slabs of stone are displayed. It is hard not to fall in love.

After going to a couple of yards Jennifer and Ryan decided on the Superwhite Quartzite at Crocodile Rocks.

Once the base cabinets are installed the fabricator of the countertops comes out to make templates of the areas needing to have stone. This requires great precision, well it should. Not all fabricators are created equal but we are using Holmchick Stoneworks so no worries.

You can see the templates that are made from the areas the tops are going.

Making sure everything will fit and making notes on the templates about edge details, reveals etc.

These templates are then taken back to the fabricators and are used as patterns to create the new counters. If you are an interested client and you have the time you are invited down to decide which parts of your slab you want to go where. What you want to highlight and maybe even avoid. This quartzite has a lot of activity and diversity.

Here you can see the templates being layed over the stone to pick the optimum placement. The blue tape then marks the location.



More location picking.

You can already tell how beautiful these counters are going to be, believe me it will be a source of endless wonder over the years as you use your kitchen. The finished product will be installed Wednesday. Check out my Facebook Page and I will post the results.

 

 

 

 

So How is it All Going To Look When We Are Done?

The finishes, yes all the little details that make a space personal and refect the owners taste. This is a fun process of looking at what you like and narrowing the field down to one thing. It can be overwhelming but I find when clients react viscerally they often have an easier time.

Here are the basics, the door color, countertop (Superwhite quartzite) and backsplash tiles. Ryan used his Photoshop skills do do a mockup of the backsplash. And yes, there view is much like the picture. Knowing him it is his backyard. The design has changed a bit but you get the idea.

Here are some of the other elements that make up the finishes.

The maple floors with a wider plank.

The chandelier for over the dining table.

The pendants for over the island.

The hardware for the cabinets.

 

We are getting our insulation inspection next week and will be moving on to sheetrock. It will be looking like a room soon!

Why Remodeling Can Sometimes Be Surprising!

I am reposting an article by David Getts who is the contractor on the Sammamish remodel. When we started this remodel we knew that we wanted to add a lot more windows to capture the light all through the day. We needed a Structural Engineer to tell us how to do this and still keep the integrity of the house. We also found some surprises left by the previous owner.

Notice something missing. Read David's article for the whole story.

http://www.examiner.com/article/structural-engineering-the-brains-behind-the-brawn

Coming Along!

The remodel of Jennifer and Ryan's downstairs is really looking good. All of the walls we don't want anymore are down, the plumbing is moved, the wall to bathroom has moved over a few inches and the pesky closet is gone.

 David Getts, our estimable contractor is right on track and doing his best to solve the many problems he found behind the walls. Here is a link to an article he wrote about doing it right and doing it wrong. http://www.examiner.com/article/construction-mistakes-how-to-avoid-ignorance-and-disregard

So let's take a look at the progress.

This is what you see when you walk in the front door now. What a difference, and no closet to trip over. Originally
there was a window in that area, the one that is above the sink in the new kitchen. Look at that light and view.
 

Looking into the new kitchen from the corner by the fireplace and no closet.

Existing window moved to new location above sink. You have to use your imagination.

Standing in new kitchen area looking back to the dining area. Another new window at the back.

Looking from kitchen towards living room. The windows on either side of the fireplace were installed without headers, very dangerous as the load of the second floor was being carried without help.

Missing closet and the only wall with it's original sheetrock still on. Look at the beautiful new beam, instead of sheerocking it as planned we are going to stain it match the floors.

 David and his crew are working hard to keep this job on track. Next time I will be sharing all the finishes the clients have picked out. Hopefully they will be picked out.

 

How we got to where we are now!

In my last blog I said I was going to give a little background on the design of our Sammamish remodel for Ryan and Jennifer. When I first met them they were disgusted with their kitchen, in fact the whole downstairs.

The kitchen was directly behind the living room with a wall separating the two, not the open plan we all like to live in these days. Plus there was huge space off the the right of the dining area that was unused. In the picture below you can see the shape, the living room isn't on the plan but you can imagine it in front of kitchen.

They had been thinking about this for quite awhile and wanted someone to guide them through the design process. Ryan's dad is an architect, Ryan and Jennifer are both designers in their own right and they had talked to some other kitchen designers. They wanted to remove the wall bewtween the kitchen and the living room and maybe bump out the back two feet to create more room.

As a designer working with clients that have a limited budget I try to come up with ways to use the existing space in a more efficient manner before adding more square footage. Here a few different ideas we seriously talked about.

 

After looking at these and a few others we decided that the best use of the space was to have the dining room behind the living room and have that flow into the kitchen. This way you enter the home in it's most formal area and transition back to the least formal. It also allowed us to add a huge amount of glass. The house backs up to a greenbelt that features wildlife and a lovely pond. This way you could view it from the whole downstairs. Here is the design they settled on. The wall is gone and the kitchen is at the other end.

Next time, more about how the remodel is going. It is looking great, the new windows are all in, what a difference.

Demo Day Continued!

Well it is really Demo Day 1, Demo Day 2 and Demo Day 3 with a little bit of Demo Day 4. To back up a bit none of these days would have been possible without this!

How exciting to have one of these delivered to your driveway. Uh, maybe you had to be there. So as you know our ever fearless homeowner, Ryan, has decided to tackle this enormous task all by himself. After the first day we went from this-

 

To this-

See that wall, that is the wall that started all of this. To go or not to go? It was unanimous "It Goes". So now what? More on that in a later blogpost.

A work in progress but we are on our way.

Looking through the wall that is coming down after some electrical and tricky plumbing are rerouted.

Ceilings too.

Can't wait till the closet is gone! Do you think it's in the way when you enter?

The easy way to remove lots and lots of underlayment. David giving Ryan some hints.

The foreground of this picture is where the new kitchen is going
 and the rest of the downstairs will all be open to it.

Old kitchen, new dining room with two sets of French doors and big new picture window at the end.
Now you know why we needed a structural engineer.

He is getting there.



One corner where the walls and ceiling aren't coming down.



 

So now you can see the blank canvas that we need so we can create the kitchen and downstairs that this house deserves. Good work Ryan :)  I am going to start looking back at the design process in my next post so you can see how we got to this moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Kitchen is finally moving!

 Wow, I have been writing about moving this kitchen from one side of the house to the other for months. D Day is finally here, D is for Demolition. Our fearless owner has decided to tackle this task himself. One very large dumpster delivered to his driveway and lots of work ahead. His task is to remove all the cabinets, appliances, sheetrock on walls and ceiling, trim and flooring, not to mention an unsightly closet in the entry. here are a few before photos.
 

Existing kitchen.

This is the wall between the living room and kitchen, it is coming down.

Here is the unsightly closet!

Now that I have refreshed your memory, let;s have a look at Demo Day One. This was at noon so I am sure we have more to come.

Cabinets and appliances are gone.

This picture shows the demo of the wall that has the
plumbing that needs to be moved so we can
 take the wall down and open up the whole downstairs.

The structural engineer needs these photos to see if we
 can move this wall back 6 inches so we have more
 room between the wall and the island.

Keep watching, lots more to come. You can see the empty living room in the backround. It is so exciting to start this project after all the work we have done leading up to this moment. I have great clients and a true craftsman for a contractor. It doesn't get much better than this!

Sammamish Kitchen Remodel- Do you want to move the kitchen?

We are in the planning stages of a kitchen remodel. The clients are a young and talented couple who bought a house on their dream lot. As the owner likes to say the house is quirky. It is our mission to unquirk the main floor. The main floor consists of the living room pictured above and below, a kitchen right behind the mirror and a dining room/extra space combo. I told you, quirky. The wall with the mirror is coming down so we can open up the whole downstairs into one big space. Happy days!!

Here is the entry closet which is in the middle of the entry and contains the water shut off for the entire house, the "q" word again. Soon to be moved to a better location along with the closet.

The existing kitchen, very small and tight with budget everything including the cabinets and finishes.

Here are a couple of pics, it does have a big refrigerator.

In the next picture you can see where the kitchen is moving to on the main floor, pretty much where all those people are standing. Don't be alarmed the french doors are being relocated. The downstairs will be shadow of it's former self. You can see David Getts, the general contractor on the job, talking to the client who has his back to the camera. Dad, otherwise known as Mark, is in the second picture talking to David.

This a complicated project so there will be lots to see as we proceed. We are all excited to be moving forward on this dream project. Ryan, one of the clients is an incredibly talented game designer and I will be posting some pics of his renderings of the final project as we go along. Back to the home page of my website. www.lweldondesign.com