Kitchen – Page 2

Page 2 of 2

May 31, 2023

Kitchen – May 2023

As I did in April 2023, I divided my time between work on the kitchen and master bathroom and, just like last month, I’ve created two separate posts. The work in May started in the kitchen, so it’s best to start with this post. Within it I’ll mention when I switched to working in the master bathroom, which you can choose to jump to if you wish to follow the sequence.

My concrete saw arrived right on time, but the blade took a week to arrive, which was frustrating. I was keen to get going. When the blade arrived I got right on it and started extending the existing trench at a 90 degree angle toward the small wall where the services would be. Below you can see that I removed half of the trench and am working on the second half.

I was happy with the performance of the saw. It is rated at 15 amps and I had it plugged into a 15 amp circuit, so I had to go easy with it, which I discovered the first time I tripped the breaker. It was a bit tricky getting into that corner. I got as close as I could. Here’s as far as the saw would take me.

The next part would be tricky because I had to remove the concrete from under the bottom plate of the wall so I could feed the water and electrical lines down. I used my big honkin’ saw to get as close as I could, but resorted to a drill bit and cold chisel and hammer to get the rest of it.

You can see how I used the saw to get as close to the bottom plate on the one side (cutting into the plate a bit) and how I used the saw again to give me a starting point on the other before resorting to the drill. I chipped away at this for some time using a hammer and cold chisel before giving up. So I went home to look into renting a small powered jack hammer. While exploring that option, I decided to buy one instead since I expect I’ll need it for the two showers too. So I picked one up from Harbor Freight and it made quick work of it.

Next, I cleared away the dirt to get at the existing drain and connected the new section to it, as shown below. The new section will come up into the bottom of the cabinet that will house the sink. The dishwasher, which will be located next to the sink cabinet, will also tie into this drain.

I placed a hose in the drain and ran the water for a while, feeling under the joints for any sign of leakage. The joints were well sealed, so no evidence of water around them.

Running along side the drain are the water supply lines for the sink (red and blue) and dishwasher (red).

Here they are coming down from the ceiling entering the trench. Note the bracing I added to support the lines within the wall.

Here is another angle.

With this done, it was time to call for a plumbing inspection. I had to wait a day because it was the weekend, so I shifted my attention back to the master bathroom (see that post).

The inspection went well and I used the time to ask about how best to run the electrical lines to the island. Online there were differing opinions about whether one should use a conduit under a slab. After speaking with the inspector he said that no conduit was needed if you used underground feeder (UF) cable, which is what I was planning to use. This is considered fine for direct burial. However, he recommended I use a conduit anyway, so that’s what I did. So off to the store I went to pick up a 1″ conduit that would house 3 wires (two 12/2 wires – dishwasher and GFCIs, and one 14/2 for kick plate lighting).

A wire fishing line was required to pull the wires through the conduit. I pulled one at a time. The last one required a lot of effort because the space in there was getting limited. Here are the wires entering the conduit from the wall.

Here they are en-route to the island.

And here they are emerging at the the island location.

The conduit was made up of a single 10 foot section of PVC and four 90 degree bends. They are glued in the same was as the drains. Before entering the conduit, I put the wires in their respective junction boxes ready to be hooked up. The wire for the dishwasher was not long enough, so I introduced a junction box in the attic where I spliced in a new length of wire that would reach the island. I wired it up and tested it.

So it was time to get this inspected. While waiting for the inspection I drilled the holes for the rebar. Rebar is needed if the width of the trench is over 22 inches, so I only needed rebar along the wide section of the trench. The part of the trench that runs along the wall is only 15 inches, so that does not require reinforcement. Shortly after drilling the holes, the inspector arrived and gave me the okay to fill in the trench, as you can see below.

I had a couple of days to wait the pest control guy to arrive and treat the soil for termites, so I returned to work on the master bathroom. I also made a run to the store to get all the concrete I would need. I estimated seventeen 60 lb bags based on what I used in the master bathroom, which, coincidentally, was about the same amount of area to fill.

After the soil was treated, I prepared the trench for the pre-pour inspection, which was scheduled for the next day.

The inspection went without incident and I began the process of filling in the trench with concrete.

And here it is finished.

Here are a couple of closeups of the area where the services enter.

The next day it looked like this.

You might be interested to learn that I used almost all of the seventeen bags I bought. There was very little waste, so I was pleased. After this I returned to the master bathroom to start removing the existing shower pan.

As mentioned in the post about the master bathroom for this month, I had a period where I had to wait on deliveries, so I decided to grind smooth the concrete I had poured in the master bathroom and kitchen. Here is an image of the trench in the kitchen after I smoothed it out.

That’s all for the kitchen in the month of May.

April 29, 2023April 29, 2023

Kitchen – April 2023

This post was written concurrently with the one for the master bathroom, so you should start with that one (Master Bathroom – April 2023) to keep the time line straight.

Since I had to wait for the concrete in the master bathroom to cure (I wanted to give it a week to be certain it was safe to drill into it), I turned my attention to the kitchen. While I was doing the concrete work in the master bathroom, I received word that the revisions to my permit, that I submitted a couple of weeks prior, were approved. So now it is time to reveal the changes to the kitchen. I start by showing images of the original plan.

And here is what the new plan looks like.

This rendering is not exact. It just gives you a sense of what is coming. The entry to the dining room will not have an arch, and who knows what vent hood will be selected. What is worth noting is that I will be removing a significant part of the wall that divides the kitchen from the great room. The designer, Jennifer, convinced me that my original plan provided very little prep space. The part I really liked in my original plan was that I would be looking out over the beautiful view I have as I stood at the sink. But she was right, and this makes more sense. The refrigerator will move to the opposite wall from where it was and the dishwasher will be housed in the island. To prepare for this, I had a lot of electrical and plumbing lines to relocate. I’ll also have to do some more cutting into the slab to route the water and electrical lines, and there will also be some modifications made to the drains (so more concrete to pour in my future – yay!). But that will be covered in another post.

I began by removing most of the existing wall that divides the kitchen from the great room. Here is the before image.

Notice the electrical and water lines that had to be relocated. In the image below I have moved the lines and removed most of the wall.

And here is the result. Note the new framing up top to connect to the existing part.

There is about 2 feet of the wall remaining, and that is there because we needed somewhere to put switches and water lines.

Here are some images of a mock-up of the kitchen island to give you a sense of how it sits in the space.

After doing this mock-up, it became apparent that something was a bit off with respect to the dimensions. It was too big, leaving little room to maneuver around it at the ends. I discovered that there were measurement issues and spoke to Jennifer about it. The upshot is that I will reduce the size of the cabinets at either end to open things up a bit. No big deal. But you can get a sense from the images above how the island will sit in the kitchen.

Although not planned that way, the existing trench is well positioned and will line up nicely with where the sink will go. I’ll just have to move the drain in by a couple of feet. However, to accommodate the supply lines, a new trench will have to be cut to connect from the small wall where the electrical and plumbing lines are to the existing trench. Before getting to that, though, I relocated the water line for the ice maker in the refrigerator.

I moved the water line so that it enters the kitchen from the ceiling within the wall that separates the kitchen from the laundry room. I would have preferred to send the line most of the way above the ceiling and bring it down directly above the refrigerator, but with the spray foam insulation and the sloping ceiling, there was no way I could access that area. It was tough enough bringing the line down here. Very tight quarters. I was laid out flat on my stomach to reach the opening I drilled.

Ice Maker Water Line coming down from the Ceiling

Once the line was pulled down I had to extend it almost the entire distance along the east wall of the kitchen, which was easy enough, just a lot of holes to drill.

Ice Maker Water line extended to Refrigerator location

This required a 90 degree connection; the only connection along the span, which isn’t bad. I had to remove the vertical 2×4 that was installed as a nailer so that I could get access. When I put the nailer back in place (you can see it in the pic above), I cut out a notch to make room for the connection.

I had to do something similar with the electrical connection for the refrigerator. Like the water line, I couldn’t simply drop the wire down from the ceiling at it’s destination due to the spray foam insulation being in the way, so I routed it through the plumbing closet in the laundry room.

Since the length of wire from the original fridge location was not long enough to reach the new location, a junction box was needed to splice in a length of wire sufficient to finish the journey. The wire exiting the junction box followed the path of the cooktop wire (black) until the dividing wall, where I had to drill a separate hole because it was just too tight from that point on. Below you see it emerging from the laundry room into the kitchen.

And finally to the fridge location, shown below beside the end of the blue water line. I had just enough wire to reach (I was trying to avoid having to buy more). It was too close, actually. I ended up installing the outlet box a bit higher than I normally would just to make sure I had enough to play with when it was time to install the receptacle. The location of the outlet is not critical because it will be hidden behind the fridge, so I chose to take advantage of that rather than make the final hookup more finicky than it needed to be.

After that, I sorted out the services on the interior wall.

This short span of wall was retained as a place to mount switches (both great room and kitchen) and a place to route the water and electrical lines to the island. In the original plan, I had a 4-gang box: one for a light above the old island location, a second for the can lights in the ceiling, a third for the under counter lights, and a fourth for the kick plate lights. In the new plan, there is no need for separate island lighting. Consequently, the 4-gang box is replaced with a 3-gang box. Beside it is a blue 1-gang box that will house the only Ethernet connection within the kitchen. Below the 3-gang box is another 1-gang box for the GFI outlet (12/2 wire – yellow). This outlet was originally at counter top height, so the wire was not quite long enough to reach to where you would normally put an outlet box (about a foot above the floor), so I raised it up a bit to make it work. I don’t think it looks too odd. That box will also be where I splice in the GFI wire that will be routed under the slab to the island.

The blue and red water lines will also be routed under the slab to the island, along with a separate yellow wire for the dishwasher (separate circuit) and a white wire (14/2) from the 3-gang box to supply power to the kick plate lights there.

After finishing this work, I returned my attention to the master bathroom, where I began framing the toilet alcove (jump back to Master Bathroom – April 2023 to continue the story).

I have ordered a concrete saw in order to cut the new trench that will connect to the existing one. I considered renting a saw or hiring this work out, but after exploring the purchase route, I felt the cost was reasonable and would give me more flexibility. Having my own saw will allow me to attack this without a rental clock running and is way cheaper than hiring it out. The saw is not limited to just cutting concrete, so I’ll have use for it in the future. It will show up in the next post. That’s all for this one.