CD Volcano Kitchen Granite Installation: A Photo Essay

At 8:30 this morning, three trucks from Tile Collection pulled into my cul-de-sac laden with precious cargo...

Bye Bye, Baltic Barf!  Good riddance...

The first pieces that went in were the countertops on either side of my stove.  These pieces were cut immediately adjacent to one another on the slab so that the same swirling colors flow from one side to the other.

Next they installed this piece to the left of the wall ovens.  I love all these colors -- red, green, gold, orange, all streaked through with black and brown and smatterings of silver mica everywhere!  It reminds me of an amazing ice cream sundae melting in the bowl while you're eating it.

There was only one little annoying surprise today.  Look at all that wasted space between these two cabinets!  I'm always strapped for storage space.  If I had realized this was there early enough in this remodel, I could have had Bernie rebuild these cabinet boxes with angled side walls to utilize all that wasted space.  Naturally, Bernie is glad that I did not find out about this opportunity in time to add it to his Honey-Do list!

Here's an aerial shot from the second floor once the stoveside granite had been installed.  The reason Bernie looks so happy is that today, other people were doing the heavy labor and he was merely an observer.  You can also see my funky new Kohler Undertone Large/Medium sink in place on the island.

Here's that same shot a few hours later, with the island granite in place.  I love how the curves we added to the raised island bar soften the hockey stick look, and Tile Collection did a great job of cutting the island countertop and island bar from separate bookmarked slabs so that the movement in the granite seems to flow from one surface to the next.

By the time Anders got home from school, he was able to sit at the new island bar to do his homework.  Bernie is reconnecting the plumbing to the new Brizo Tresa single handle faucet.  This faucet is from the same collection as the bridge faucets I used in my master bathroom.  I was a little nervous about the sink choice, whether it might be too contemporary for my kitchen, but I looked at hundreds of sinks and kept coming back to this one.  The main basin is huge, deep enough for my biggest pots and pans, and I think the curved lines of the sink complement the flowing lines of the granite much better than a hard rectangular sink would have.  It was a tight fit, however, and the faucet, sprayer and soap dispenser are in the only possible positions where they would fit between the sink and the sink supports. 

Last but not least, here's what my butler's pantry looks like at the end of the day.  The wine fridge is humming away, the granite and Belle Forêt hammered copper prep sink are installed, and the smaller bar/prep version of the Brizo Tresa faucet has been installed.  I chose a full granite backsplash for this area to dress it up a little bit more, since it's in full view from the front door and formal dining room.  The backsplashes in the main kitchen are getting tiled in beveled marble bricks starting tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, today we placed the orders for the cabinet doors and drawer front required by this new cabinet, since the ones we removed were too small to reuse.  Fortunately, I was able to research the original builder's supplier for the cabinet doors and drawer fronts last summer when we were working on our master bath, so I know the new ones will be exactly like those in the main kitchen.

We also reached a truce on the under cabinet lighting battle we'd been waging for the last few weeks.  Bernie ran wiring to all the cabinets and wanted line voltage xenon light bars.  I preferred the customized low-voltage strings of xenon festoon lamps that could be sized to fit each cabinet precisely, with bulbs spaced every 4-6", but this would require transformers and more hassles than Bernie wanted to deal with.

*LET THE RECORD SHOW THAT REBECCA GAVE IN AND ORDERED THE LIGHTS THAT BERNIE WANTED!  I DO NOT ALWAYS INSIST ON GETTING MY OWN WAY!*

Tomorrow, Bernie will be able to finish the plumbing connections so we can regain the use of the kitchen sink.  The backsplash tile will go up tomorrow and the next day, and hopefully within the next few days the new range hood will be delivered so that can be installed, too.  The under cabinet lights were in stock so we should have them here to install by early next week, too -- and somewhere in the middle of all this the new carpentry and trim will need to get glazed and top-coated.  But the end is in sight!