Bathroom getting close to done and kitchen cabinet issue

The contractor, Damian, made some effort to get the bathroom ready since I will be moving in next weekend, hopefully. It will be a few days before my current lease expires. They finished the electrical, plumbing, and sheetrock work for the bathroom. The plumbing consisted also of installing a box for water valves and raising the existing drain in the shower stall, which is now converted into a small laundry room. They started now with laying the tiles on the floor. Next week, they will continue laying tiles on the walls and around the shower/bathtub area.

The 2-in-1 washer/dryer arrived on Thursday. I waited at the condo to pick up the delivery. They deliver only in front of the door and don't go up the stairs, but I talked the delivery guy into bringing the box up one floor into my apartment by telling him that I will pay extra. He rolled the box over to take it up the stairs. The box had a lot of padding in it, so it was OK to do so.

As for the kitchen, aside from the electrical and plumbing, the vent guy did some work this week. He removed the old vent that was hidden in the wall. Next week, he will install the new one.

Because the vent that has to run along the ceiling from the wall to the hood, there is a problem now with the kitchen cabinets. The ones I am ordering are standard cabinets, not custom. We have to find a way to fit the vent into the cabinets. The contractor said they usually build a custom box that sits inside the cabinet and it houses the vent in it. I'm going to go this afternoon to the cabinet place and ask her if it's possible to have anything like that. If not, I will have to come up with a creative solution. Maybe I will ask the contractor to modify the cabinets since there is no time to order other cabinets. Custom cabinets usually have a lead time of 4 weeks, which is too long at this point.

Here are some pictures of the progress in the bathroom.


New sheetrock around the bathtub


Plumbing for the bathtub and shower


Tile floor in the bathroom


Tile floor extending into closet


Shower room that will be a laundry room

Here are some new pictures of the kitchen.


Old kitchen vent removed


New boxes in the kitchen ceiling for lights


New electrical wires in the kitchen

Whiskey Bottle

Last Monday evening I stopped by the condo and met the contractor to unload the tiles from my car that I had purchased the day before. The contractor, Damian, cleared up some wood from the empty wall space next in the corner of the bathroon and discovered behind the studs in the corner an empty bottle of whiskey, covered with dust!



It must have been one of the workers who was working on this building in the old days and he wanted to hide his bottle of whiskey after finishing it. :) The building was built in 1947, so 64 years ago.

Talking about tiles, I got ceramic tiles for the bathroom. They are beige. I thought I couldn't go wrong with this color. I also got a liner that will go horizontally on the wall through the bathtub surrounding wall, and will be repeated on the top portion of the bathtub wall. The porcelain tiles are now in. The glazed tiles are not that in anymore. These are not porcelain but they aren't shiny either, so they look similar to porcelain. They are made in Spain.



This week, the following things have been completed:

• Demo of the shower room


• Removal of door frame from the kitchen wall


• Plumbing for bathroom and kitchen


• Gas pipe redone for kitchen

Here are a few more pictures that show the progress of the project.


New extension to the gas pipe.


The two old cast iron water pipes that go to the upper unit have been removed from the wall and ceiling because they are no longer in use. The whole building is now using copper pipes.



Door frame has been removed.


It remains to be seen if we can use this vent for the kitchen hood. This wasn't used by the previous owner and was covered with sheetrock.

Demo Phase

Today I went to the condo to meet the contractor at 9am. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much they demolished already. The whole kitchen has been gutted and almost all the bathroom. There is one slightly bad news and one good news:

• Mixed (bad and good) news: The partition wall that separates the kitchen from the dining room cannot be completely removed. We can remove 2/3rds of it because there is a duct that runs from the garage all the way up to the upper unit. We could move the duct and the adjacent water lines to the corner of the wall, but I think it is not worth it for the extra cost. I would gain only an extra 3-4 feet because part of the wall will still need to be kept at the corner to redirect the duct into it and keep the water lines. I also don't want to have to deal with unexpected problems when moving the duct. If I keep a portion of the wall, the upside is that I can add an extra cabinet close to the kitchen sink. So the decision was to keep the portion of the wall that has the duct and remove only the other part.


• Good news: There is an extra empty space in the bathroom next to the toilet area. This can be opened up and used for shelves.

Here are some pictures.

Kitchen Partition Wall - View from the living room. Notice the offending duct running through the wall. The wall will be removed from the right edge of the wall up to the stud right before this duct. The other 1/3rd of the wall on the left will be closed.
Another view of this partition wall.
Kitchen sink area.
Kitchen backwall where the range/oven will be. Notice the gas lines there. There is a duct in the right side of the wall, but it was used for a furnace. Contractor needs to check if it can be used also for the cooktop hood. If not, we will need to install a new duct for the cooktop and run it out of the building (with association's approval).
Entrance into the bathroom, taken from inside.
Bathroom vanity area.
Bathtub/shower area. A new tile wall will be installed.
Empty area next to toilet. Will be removed and replaced with shelves.