It's always fun when the materials start arriving for your project! This is where I get genuinely excited for my clients. This Kitchen Renovation is well underway.
Here are some tips to keep in mind as your appliances, fixtures, and materials arrive.
Always inspect what's delivered, as close to the arrival as possible. A lot of vendors have a policy where they don't accept returns past 30 days.
Compare the packing list, your original invoice, and the materials delivered to make sure you aren't missing anything including trim kits. This also applies to ensuring that what you ordered and paid for was provided.
When ordering backsplash and tile, add an extra 10% past what the measurements call for. Sometimes tiles break when being installed, sometimes they break when being shipped. It can cause a severe delay if you have to reorder 2-3 months down the road. And with the current material shortages, it can also be hard to find the exact match from the original batch.
A good delivery consists of a phone call letting you know the arrival window and should ask you if you want it unboxed for inspection. Most of them will unbox it for you.
Appliances will generally come with a film protecting them prior to the final installation. It's ok to leave those on till they are in place. It helps prevent dings and knicks.
A good rule of thumb is to also cover appliances with a moving blanket during the course of construction.
There is always going to be a surprise when doing a major renovation. In the Wagon Trail case, the surprise came in the form of a sprinkler head. The bulkhead that originally spanned the length of this kitchen, happened because a contractor decided to run the sprinkler pipe in their fire suppression system the wrong way when building the house. This may seem like a minor thing, but it actually boiled down to a decision to add crown molding or not and how important that was to the homeowner.
This required getting permission from the fire department and purchasing special pipe, usually steel vs pvc. Our contractor was able to reroute the pipe to be flush in the wall so the bulkhead could be eliminated and allow the space for crown molding to be installed around the perimeter of the kitchen once it's all patched.
Every house has its secrets. This house also has walls that were not installed properly and in some instances, they bow. And we found out the floor had a 1-inch difference in height in an 8-foot square foot space. This means the flooring had to be raised so that the cabinets and countertops were level.
While we do our best to try and eliminate these types of surprises, there are just some houses that keep their secrets and surprises from us till all the layers are peeled back as in the case of the project.
We're coming into the home stretch of this project. It was really fun to see the cabinet bases and countertops going in this week. That means this project is about 2-3 weeks out from the completion date. Stay tuned for part 3 and the final reveal in a couple of weeks.
