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backsplash
Jan. 5th, 2024 05:25 amvia https://ift.tt/XKHTMLz
ok so after they put the countertops in, it was time to tile the backsplash, and install the last cabinet, which rests on top of the counter in the corner.
“I don’t remember what color tile we picked,” I said.
Jim laughed, and got one of the tiles out, and laid it on the counter.
“Oh,” I said, “right. Yeah.”
[image description: a white tile. It’s a white tile. Lying on the new white countertop.]
In my defense. It’s a glossy white subway tile, but it matches the white in the countertop, and it also has a subtle undulating texture.
They covered the countertops with a dropcloth and taped-down thin cardboard (just like the taped-down cardboard they’ve covered the floor with since it was installed), brought in a tile saw, and set to work.
[image description: my in-progress kitchen, with a Ridgid brand tile saw set up on a plastic tray on the new counter in front of the bay window, and tools spread out across the rest of the counter. Max is laying out tile along the north wall, and the foreground is my stove, covered in a towel, being a surface for tools to lie on.]
Max found the center line of where the stove is going to be installed, and spaced the tiles based on that. I figured they’d start at one end and work over but no! They start from a center line and work out. The tile is going to the ceiling above the stove, so that was their center line, even though it’s not anywhere near the middle of the wall.
[Image description: Max is bent over facing away, and has just placed the first tile in the center of a piece of trim mounted behind where the stove is going to go, after covering the whole wall in whatever the stuff is that you stick tiles to. Above him is the square of plywood that the stove fume hood is going to get mounted into.]
Meanwhile, Jim had retrieved the last remaining cupboard from the living room. It is meant to rest atop the countertop, over in the corner. The electrician had accidentally installed an outlet in that corner, and when he discovered his mistake, Jim suggested just leaving it there anyway and cutting a hole in the back of the cabinet to accomodate it. So I said sure, and now Jim was slightly moving the outlet to fit, and then sawing the hole out of the back of the cabinet. He got it all nicely lined up, and then he and Max went to lift the cabinet up onto the countertop and there wasn’t clearance, so he had to uninstall the LED light fixture there. Which was fantastic, as now I know how they go in and how they come out, and he also showed me that there’s a set of switches in there– if I want, I can pull all six of them out and change their intensity and color temperature, because there are five total settings! Wild. Now I know!
Anyway he got the cabinet into position and attached it and installed the outlet, which was pretty cool.
[image description: The north wall of my kitchen. On the left, Max is tiling; in the center, there’s a pyramid shape of the tiling in progress, where he’s done a line all along the bottom where the stove will sit, and then has worked up from there. To the right, a sunbeam is coming in the bay window and illuminating the glorious warm-birch interior of the cupboard, which doesn’t have doors on at the moment, and in its lower right corner it has an electrical outlet nestled in position just above the bottom drawer.]
I’m going to make a lil basket of some kind (possibly with a grid bottom for air flow? or maybe i’ll just use a wire basket to begin with?) along which I’m going to clamp a bunch of Managed Cables with a variety of ends on them so I can throw Devices in there to be Charged, neatly and out of sight. Temperature management is going to be important though, lithium batteries get warm when they charge, so i’m going to have to give that some consideration. I wonder if I can construct some sort of heat sink. Well, I won’t have too many things in there probably, so it won’t be critical. Maybe I’ll get a spare like, wire cookie cooling rack and have that be the surface the charging items lie on.
[Image description: A close shot along the north wall, showing the textured surface of the tiles. There are little plastic spacers at short intervals sticking out of them, and an outlet is sort of poking out of the wall with the faceplate off; tools lie on the cardboard-covered countertop, and in the center of the photo is the blue-gray side of the cabinet installed against the east wall.]
It suddenly has gone from a construction site to looking like a kitchen that like, tasteful, normal adult people would have.
[image description: a text message from Dude, to whom I’d been sending photos. Dude: it’s starting to look like a regular person’s kitchen me: It suuuuper is Dude: gonna have to find some way to get weird with it me: Well. Yeah.] (Your picture was not posted)
