Floor prep

Last weekend was more floor prep. I rented an Edco grinder w/ scarifier blades to remove the adhesive off the floor. The machine is about 250 lbs and is pretty serious equipment. It's basically a heavy duty electric lawn mower that can take different accessories meant for grinding, sanding, polishing, and scarifying concrete floors w/ a vacuum attachment for keeping the dust down. A bag of play sand and 5 hours later the floors are smooth and 95% of the adhesive is off. It's a fairly easy machine to use, getting it down and then back up the stairs was the challenge.
So a few pics:

The dishes are done man...

Yes that was the line from 'Don't tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead'.

I just don't have much to say other than thanks to Gerardo & Jesus the kitchen is empty, and I am tired. Only thing to note really is that we found a water line behind the refrigerator and we went ahead and pulled the sofit off.
As for the water line....I don't know, maybe a pot filler. (It's on the side of the kitchen with the range, so that's about the only use for it I can think of....any other ideas?)

In this picture you can see where the little extension of the kitchen has been taken out.

The waste pipe just popped out when we were looking at the connection, and the line from the dishwasher just pulled out too. So it was definitely time to replace the pipes anyways.

In the bottom left corner of the picture below you can see where the water line comes out of the wall.

Sinks & Faucets

We went by Singac Supply today to check out sinks and faucets. We didn't see a huge selection, but we did find a few nice options. The only faucet we really liked is the Grohe Minta, which has an integrated sprayer pull out. We aren't completely sold on this concept yet, but other than the Dornbracht two pictures down (which is out of our budget) we haven't seen any non-integrated faucet/sprayer sets we've liked.

We got a quote of $525 for this faucet, Grohe Minta, but we see it listed online for $324.

At about $1500, this Dornbracht is out of our budget, but it's a good reference point.

Sinks -

We like sharp lines on sinks, but that seems to come with a pretty significant cost.

Singac showed us a few nice Elkay sinks, but those w/ the sharper lines and 16 gauge SS are about twice as much as the18 gauge sink which has more rounded inside corners.

The first two sinks below are listed at about $1700 each (online for around $900), and the third is listed for $925 (about $525 online).

This is the Elkay - EFU311810, 16 gauge, w/ soundgaurd, list price $1722 (online as low as $875)

This is the Elkay EFU312010R, similiar to the EFU311810 above but w/ different sink sizes, list price is $1763 (online $934)

This is the ELUH3120, 18 gauge, although it's less expensive online at $525 (quoted $715 Singac).

We've read some positive reviews and saw a few nice Ticor sinks on the Galaxy Tool Supply website (www.galaxytoolsupply.com) , but it's difficult to say w/o seeing the details in person.

More tile pictures

Just to compare the tile to the existing wood floors throughout the rest of the apartment, here are a few more shots of the tiles:

Kitchen Rendering

Ok, so this isn't accurate, or to scale, but this was a sketch to help me decide what to do w/ the counter that extended out of the kitchen. And per the rendering/sketch below, I think it's gotta go. It also gives a feel for the layout of the appliances sans the fridge and the open shelves vs. the range side w/ upper cabinets.

Tile: Out w/ the Old, Looking at the New -

Posting has been slow, but the work hasn't stopped. Over the weekend we framed the new wall in the foyer and demo'd a good amount of tile (the pantry is finished too). Only demo left is the rest of the tile and the base cabinets, which will come out this weekend.

We've pulled up (er, banged out) probably 70% of the tile, and as soon as we pull the appliances, the rest can come out. So after all that work, it better be for something nice.... Here are the 12x12" tiles we're looking at:

We just picked up the two samples on the right, and we're leaning towards the darker grey. I think it might show dirt more, but it does look good. Next I like the light limestone color on the upper left corner of the small samples....?

The wall is framed

The wall has been framed! I had a little trouble making the wall stiff, especially the leg that will come around the side of the fridge. It's only connected to the longer wall and the floor, so at first it seemed way too wobbly. To address that problem I added some diagonal bracing and a triangle of plywood on the top corner of the connection. To anchor the wall to the floor, I used both Tapcon screws (which I wasn't too sure about) and Hilti anchors (which seemed to have much better hold). Here are some pics of the framing going up: