Jon said that it would all start feeling faster now, and he’s right.

The cabinets are now all installed, so Granite Guy came on Friday to measure for the granite. As feared, the job oozed over two slabs into three, so in a twist of the usual “As long as we’re at it” syndrome, Jon asked if there was anything else I wanted to do with the extra rock. So we also had Granite Guy measure to put granite on the wide new-dining-room window sill where I’ve been stacking my mug collection, and to replace the hearth and facing of the fireplace’s ugly tile with granite. If there’s not enough for the whole fireplace, we’ll do just the hearth and then redo the facing in slate. Either way it’ll be a big improvement on the baby-shit tan blotchy tile that’s there now.

Jon says granite-fabrication will take about a week. He’s planning to start in on the tile work, and he’s bought a huge pile of slate tile, now resting in my driveway. George has the underlayment work all done, including the front closet and the mouth of the hallway. The hardwood will come next.

You can see all the gorgeous cabinetry in the latest new pictures:

Progress!

Old pictures:

Before

Preparing for chaos

Demolition and chaos

One month in

Still later

Two months in

George has the puck lights installed. Under-cabinet lights are next.

The glass I’d originally picked out for the upper cabinet door-fronts didn’t come tall enough, so I went back to the Stained Glass Garden in Berkeley to pick out glass all over again. This time they had a pattern I liked even better: Rivuletta, with a subtle vertical reeding. Jon ordered the pieces we need and it came out, of course, several hundred more than the allowance in our contract. Yet another change order–ouch. Damned good taste of mine!

It turned out that we just couldn’t get the Golden Butterfly granite (at least without an indefinitely long wait for a slow boat to bring it from Brazil), so we’re back to uba tuba.