Kitchen Remodel --- Day 3

Day 3 of remodeling, technically speaking, it's day 2, since no work was done on day 1.

Tough morning to start with. As the outlets were placed differently than planned, my boyfriend insisted they should do it right, as we (mostly 'I') have spent a lot of effort into designing and planning. We should not compromise on their 'forgot about it'.

So I told them when they got here, and asked to restore to original plan. We even had some alternative solutions that they could use. They were unhappy and raised their voices. Unpleasant it was. Since they did not speak English, I needed to translate between them and my bf. They finally agreed to change it. In fact, they did not bother to take out sheet rock wrapping at all, but said they would cut a hole into the 2x4 post for placing outlet box inside later.

Ironically, yesterday they were unwilling to do that, they told me it would weaken the post, hence the supporting structure. They offered a quick and dirty way of letting the outlet box sticking out from the dry wall, which I did not like. That was why we changed the layout plan. And now that we insisted they do it according to original plan and insisted it stay pretty, they reverted back to do things they were unwilling to do at the beginning.

So far I felt it took certain skills to get the best out of them. They could do the job well, yet they seemed to try to avoid extra work if they could get away with 'quick and dirty'. And they easily resort to self defense when proposed plan has potential to add a bit more task. Yet when they saw other alternatives actually add even more efforts, they would come to agree with the lighter one. Everything is negotiable?

So they re-routed the wire a bit to have them come out from the correct spots -- funny, it only took 20 minutes, yet they were unwilling to do it yesterday. Then they mixed dry wall compound and stared first layer of finish. I was told it would take a few layers to complete.

Another main thing they did today was to move the base board about 4.5 feet away so that I could place side board and base cabinets over where the heater was. They changed the plan as they looked further around the piping, and decided to extend the water pipe and just let cabinets go on top of them. Well, it was not ideal either, just the easiest way. The main issue was these base board were hydraulic system, they run hot water through to heat up the space. So all the pipes needed to stay connected. They first shut off the water main line, then emptied the existing water inside the pipes before they proceeded. Experience learned from the first day, as water ran out like a small fall when they cut the pipe.


At night I found the heating system had problems. The pipes did not get hot as they were suppose to :( And the engine kept making pumping sound from time to time... I wonder what went wrong, all they did was extending the pipe... I did not think they changed any other setting.