California 2 Puerto Rico

Summer has pretty much givin’ me full decision making authority for the kitchen (i am the cook). I laid out the cabinets, the floor plan and now have to pull the trigger on our counter tops. Her input is very important to me and we have collaborated on every purchase so far (no one gave anything up to get what they wanted, that’s a compromise) and I am really satisfied with every decision we have made together.

Now that we are onto the counter tops, I really wanted her input as to what they should look like. We both liked the idea of granite (solid, earthy, natural, strong presence) but neither of us fell in love with any of the samples we found. As a matter of a fact, we really didn’t like any of them. I couldn’t stop thinking of confetti or some cheesy jersey shore summer rental. There was one that was kinda cool, but really only because it was granite. If it were another material we never would have chosen the pattern.

Now, that it is decision time, I might be backing out on the granite. But I am not sure yet. I would really like everyones input on this one. Link to whatever may help us in the comment section and help give us some direction.

I found this stuff called SileStone.

The superman of stone, quartz surfacing provides a nearly indestructible material, idea for homeowners who want a beautiful countertop—that they might occasionally spill wine on! Providing the look of natural stone with a mettle that laughs in the face of coffee, lemon juice and high-maintenance care, its non-porous nature protects against more than just stains—it’s also extremely hygienic, making it a food-safe choice.

Though quartz surfacing is sometimes referred to as “engineered” quartz, don’t be fooled into thinking that you’ll end up with a synthetic countertop. Expect pure natural quartz (generally upwards of 90 percent) mixed with epoxy resin binders. The care-free surface doesn’t require sealants. Boasting the look of natural stone, quartz surfacing has a consistent color; its color should be very close to what you saw in the showroom.

Pros

* Does not require sealants.
* Scratch-resistant with diamond-like hardness, you can cut on quartz (excessive force can damage it, however).
* Consistent color.
* Its non-porous makes it virtually stain-free.
* Can be worked into a decorative edge.

Cons

* Though it can briefly tolerate moderate temperatures for a brief time, you’ll want to use a hot pad or trivet when placing a hot pan on it.
* Integrated sinks are not available, as with solid surfacing.

Click the link to see big version: SileStone Quartz Color Chart

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Today, Jerry and I decided to take a major road trip and try to find some hard to find things. Puerto Rico travel isn’t the easiest thing to do when you are looking for stores, farms…pretty much anyplace you haven’t been before. Luckily, Jerry is a pretty good guide. We didn’t get everywhere on the first try, but having someone that speaks perfect spanglish is a plus. Our travel mission, taking about 8 hours, for yesterday was the following:

• Big Palm Trees (Cheap)
• 36” Pipe for around the front downstairs windows (topsoil will be up to the bottom of the window)
• Epoxy Thinset (to install the marble we bought for the bathrooms)
• Marmolina (Bought 80 bags at home depot for $2.99 a bag with delivery..the local Rincon Freterria was $3.59)
• Inspect the Granite Yard where we are going to buy our granite

We accomplished everything…well, not really.

We found the Palm Tree farm in Lajas. It wasn’t easy to get to, but after asking for directions and finding about 3 other nurseries, we found the Palm Tree Farm in Lajas Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, they are only open from 7:00am until 12:00pm so we were S.O.L. once we got there, but now we know where it is. It was pretty cool to see hundreds of 30ft palms lining the fields. I also got all of their contact information.

Palm Tree Farm in Lajas Puerto Rico
Website: Palmas Ornamentales Puerto Rico
(787) 568-6394

We drove around Mayaguez for about 30 minutes looking for the store that sells big pipe (36”), and we completely struck out. No one knew where we were talking about and we couldn’t find it on our own. We need to use the pipe to cover the windows to the basement before we fill in the topsoil. I found this example on Google Images of what we are trying to accomplish. This image shows a pipe cut in half, pushed up against the window and then backfilled to the very top on the outside protecting the ground level windows. We won’t be backfilling that high, but it is pretty close to what we are going to do.

Basement Window Shield

We went to 3 or 4 tile stores with no luck finding our Epoxy thinset for setting the marble. Two of them carry the item, but didn’t have it in stock. And in a very typical Puerto Rico fashion, no one had any idea when their next shipment may come in. We may have to drive all the way to San Juan to get the epoxy thinset…which would suck. But, the show must go on and not finding this stuff has all but stopped the progress of finish work inside the house. Marble is so heavy that you can’t just use normal thinset to attach it to the walls (concrete board) like you do with tiles and travertine. You need to apply special epoxy glue in order to adhere it securely to the walls.

I figured out that Home Depot Puerto Rico has the cheapest marmolina. They are going to be delivering a full pallet of marmolina to our house on Wednesday morning. A pallot contains 80 bags. We are going to use a mix of marmolina and concrete (7 to 1 ratio of marmolina to concrete) to plaster all of the concrete block walls downstairs. It will be a nice smooth finish (with a little texture…not like polished concrete). If the guys show up to do the work, we should have it done in 4 working days. When using concrete on walls, it is best to complete an entire room with the same batch so all the walls in that room have the same exact texture. Mixing concrete by hand is not a complete science, so there will be some minor differences in the batches so to avoid different textured walls in the same room, you complete a room a day. These guys (twins) offered the job at $80 a day per person. So, essentially, $160 a day for 4 days should complete the walls downstairs.

One of the nurseries we were guided to on our Puerto Rico adventure just so happened to be right next to the granite yard where we are considering buying our granite from. They didn’t nearly have as many slabs of granite as I expected to see. I saw a big slab of the granite summer and I liked the most…seeing that much of it in one spot (instead of our little sample) has me thinking twice about the kitchen counter tops again. One of the tough things about building your kitchen, is that things like counter tops and cabinets need to be spec’d out weeks and weeks before you see the finished product. Not only is it hard to conceptualize the finished product (without the help of an architect or interior designer) but every day we wait is another day to wait in 4-6 weeks from now.

The only really bad news out of yesterday (aside from summer going back to california) was that the Bronco broke down when we were half way home. We pulled into the parking lot of Puerto Rico Wire Company, hopped out of the truck and notice fluid spewing from the bottom of the truck. That is never good. When I went to walk around the truck I noticed a trail of the same fluid going from the street into exactly where we parked. We were loosing the fluid at a high rate. After dipping my finger in it, feeling the texture and then smelling it, I came to the conclusion that it was transmission fluid. That is no bueno. Unfortunately, when I checked, we were completely out of fluid. I refilled it with three more quarts and got it home with almost no leakage but this morning when I woke up, it was empty again. The long and the short of it is that the transmission in the bronco is shot. Looks like it’s time to dump some more money into the hoopty.

When all was said and done, even if we didn’t get everything that we set out to do accomplished, we traveled the entire west coast of the island and I found new stores that may help in the construction of the house and thanks to my guide, I know how to get back there without getting lost. Sucks about the truck.

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Stefan and I decided against doing wood floors in the kitchen, so we bought cream colored marble for the floors. Next step was to figure out what the hell we are going to do for the kitchen counters. Originally we wanted to do a modern concrete counter top, but we couldn’t find anyone skilled enough down here, that we would trust doing them. So, we went granite shopping the other day. Quite honestly, I thought all the granite was ugly, but we found one that we think we like (of course it’s the most expensive of the bunch…):

Here is a picture of the cream marble (floors), mahogany (cabinets) and green granite (counters):

What do you think? It will cost over $6000 to do granite in the kitchen. Ouch.

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Today was a very productive day. Jerry and I finished up cleaning up all of the extra rock from the blue stone planter boxes and stairs, we filled up a truck full of trash, carried in 200 12×24 1 inch thick marble tiles (they must weigh 15 pounds each) and helped Louis carry in the first two rough pieces of our kitchen.

Although I am excited about all of the progress we make at the house…you can’t see a lot of it as you work on it. It slowly evolves into something that is too slight on the daily level to notice. It’s only when I look back at the before pictures that I realize how much progress we have made. The kitchen, however, is not one of those slowly evolving things. Once we put in the back to two bottom pieces (two “L” shapes) the kitchen took form right in front of me.

I will have more pictures for you in a day or two…mark has my camera. Lo Siento.

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Without dwelling on this, our kitchen cabinets were supposed to be installed this week. Our mahogany french doors were supposed to be built and installed 2 weeks ago. The cabinet guy we are using is a very talented woodworker and is in high demand in Rincon. Unfortunately, he is not a good communicator. He never started our cabinets or door…he said he needed a deposit in order to do that. Of course he does, but he didn’t except my offer of a deposit 2 months ago saying “not to worry about it.” I am going to blame this miscommunication on my ignorance…I should have pushed the issue.

Although I was upset because it puts us behind on our work schedule, I sucked it up, created a time that he could agree on, put it in writing and gave him a deposit last week. Yesterday, he called me and asked me to stop by his shop to answer some questions. We had to figure out where to put drawers, cabinets, what type of shelves, lazy susans, spice racks, recessed shelves and detail work. It was actually a lot of fun because he had the “L’s” built that are going to be at the far end of the kitchen so I could actually visualize where everything would be. I stood in his shop as if I was in my kitchen at the stove and strategically place the spice racks, drawers and trash can cabinet in proportion to where the fridge, dishwasher and stove would be. It was cool and I got into a zone and made all of the decisions he needed made in order to keep moving forward with our mahogany kitchen cabinets. We’ll see if my decisions were good ones once we get them installed and I start cooking.

Check out some pictures of the start of our cabinets…

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This is the Grand Plan…I bet it makes sense to Louis

The frame of the cabinets that will be on the left side of the kitchen

I took this pre-sunset picture leaving Louis’s shop

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Stefan and I went to the Home Depot in Mayaguez and picked some paint for the interior of our house.

We went with a vintage-y, brightish green for the kitchen, a light blue for the guest bedroom and hallway, a very light green (it looks white at 1st glance) for the great room, a coffee brown for the master bedroom and a much lighter brown for the master bathroom.

Yo Pinto (I paint):

Stefan pinten, tambien (Stefan paints, also):

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Today Stefan and I went to Sears and picked out our appliances for the kitchen. We went with the Kenmore Elite line in stainless steel and bought our refridgerator, stove, microwave/hood and dishwasher.

We really were trying to NOT go with stainless steel, but the only stove that Stefan wanted only came in stainless, sooooooo….Cie la vie.

I feel poor now :). Appliances are quite expensive, but Sears was having a 20% cash back deal, if you bought 3 appliances priced over $399. So we bought the stove, microwave/hood, refridgerator, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer and an airconditoner. We spent $7500, but we get $1500 cash back. So, $6000 for (fairly) top of the line appliances, isn’t too bad.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Today, Gino was going to finish up the tile work in the guest bath. Unfortunately, when the drywall was put in around the sink area, instead of moving one of the pipes…the guys just screwed the greenboard in over the pipe causing it to bubble out. If we had done regular tile instead of butt joints, Gino would have been able to lay the tile over the bow and it wouldn’t have been a big deal but since all of the tiles are “butted up tight” against one another…it would have made for a bad tile job..so Gino spent a couple of hours chipping away at the greenboard and evening out the area with grout and didn’t have time to finish. So…still no toilet for us to use and no pictures for you to see. Once it is done, I’ll post the pictures so you can see how rad the travertine looks.

We bought all of our appliances at Sears today (summer is going to post pictures later) and met with our cabinet maker to tie him down to a price and time frame. More to come….

Popularity: 39% [?]