Kitchen Cabinet Makers & Cost of Living Room

5-25-13  Sat.

         Yesterday morning, while I rode up the Han River after bringing Sweeney-Poo upstairs for a while, Leona waited for a call from the cabinet makers as to when they would return to finish constructing the new kitchen. I met her at the new home at 11:30am.

The cabinet makers had started on Wednesday and they finished yesterday. It looks beautiful. My input with Leona was to tell them where to put the handles on the closet doors, in the center (their suggestion) or at the corner of the side that opened, horizontally or vertically. Leona and I decided to put it on the side that opened for convenience. Over the sink, there is a dish dryer. On either side of the dryer there are doors. I had them change the one on the left to swing to the left as the one on the right swings to the right; a matching pair. It took some convincing Leona who was on the workers’ side again and not mine. She finally saw the light. Four of the cabinets weren’t going to have handles put on them at all, “for standard beauty,” Taiwan style. How would one know then if the door opened to the left or right? I convinced Leona and the cabinet makers and five more handles are on order; they had only ordered as many as they thought they’d need.

Yesterday afternoon, the tile setter for the fireplace returned to finish cutting the ceramic faux slate tiles. His plan was to finish cutting the tiles and affix them today when no loud construction work is allowed at the building. He finished cutting and affixing all the tiles by 6:15pm when he left. I am to go back to the new home in a short while to let him in to finish off the job. It took one and a half boxes of tiles of the five they had delivered Monday; they rest will be returned. It has taken about eight hours so far to tile the fireplace. It took about six hours for the carpenter to build it. The teak mantle was cut and refined at another location. That piece itself was about $800us. The whole fireplace with $1,400 firebox, separate electric wiring and breaker, and the tiles and setting cost us about $4,000us, but it’s beautiful. All together, with sofa, lamp, coffee table, end table entertainment counter, vestibule shoe box and glass partition, the living room cost around $15,000us. Aside from the kitchen, it was the only room in the house we added our own interior decorating. The bedroom has new wardrobe doors, a paint job and a new bed and mattress. The study has three movable bookcases and a desk. Our total upgrade was $25,000us which is what we had budgeted. We paid only $3,600 for eight pieces of furniture; that’s what saved us from paying much more.