Maison Robaire was the first appointment on the stonemason’s schedule, which was great. About an hour beforehand, I went back and opened all the windows to air out as much as possible. When the robocall came that he would be arriving in 30 minutes, I set my timer for 25 minutes. When the timer went off, I poured a fresh cup of coffee, stepped outside, and he was just pulling up in front of the house. Truly, punctuality is the politeness of kings!
After the COVID courtesies - “Has anyone been coughing or exhibiting symptoms?” “No, everyone has been healthy.” - we got down to it. I was sure it was a simple matter of measurements.
There are three areas for countertops:
PANTRY: The pantry counter is going to have to be seamed because the room is so narrow, the countertop will be wall to wall, and there’s a long ell on one side. Apparently because it’s quartz, the corners have to be rounded, something I hadn’t even thought about. But I’m not anxious about any of that.
SINK: Very simple, just a flat rectangle with a hole for the undermounted sink. A friend suggested I ask for the sink cutout to use as a cutting board. I did. They don’t do that. And that’s OK; I have cutting boards.
STOVE: “Here,” as someone said in one of those Monty Python sketches, “is where my theory falls to the ground.” This isn’t one continuous countertop, but two small pieces on either side of the stove. One is a narrow rectangle, the other is a unique shape to go over a triangular-ish cabinet. Now, you know that the appliances are not here yet (even though they were supposed to be) and that they are now going to arrive next Wednesday. The extensive pre-checklist I got from the stonemason indicated that appliances must be on site. The contractor said he had never heard of such a thing before, and of course I wasn’t going to say anything - I want this job done! But it did make me anxious.
Turning last to this section, the stonemason asked to see a photo of the stove, which involved me going to the front of the house to get my laptop. While there I heard this beeping start to come from the kitchen. When I returned, the stonemason had set up some sort of machine on a large metal tripod about three feet high. And the machine was beeping urgently.
“Do you have a working outlet in this room?”
“Um, no. But we can use the bathroom outlet. Let me go around and take the plastic off the hall door.”
More urgent beeping. Me running to the front of the house, ripping down the dusty-gritty plastic, throwing open the door to be handed the machine’s cord. It wasn’t long enough to reach the outlet. “Wait!” I said. “I have a three-prong industrial strength extension cord!” And after some panicked fiddling with the cord for either the hot plate or the convection oven, because I could not find the third (which I now realize is with the mini-fridge), we got that damn machine connected to some power, and it stopped beeping.
The stonemason’s gear, all packed up and ready to go.
Then I could show him the picture of the stove. “Ohhhh, I’m going to have to see some specifications for this.” Printing is an involved process here now, because for some reason the printer . . . oh hell, I don’t know, it just won’t print from the laptop*. But it will if I stick a thumb drive in the printer, so after a bit of finagling, I got him what he needed.
And my education continued. The stonemason took a look at what I’d given him and said “I’m just not sure how this stove is going to work.” So of course I had to ask what he meant, since all it has to do to “work” is fit in the space and be exactly 30 inches wide. Right? Is that not exactly right? Turns out the correct answer to that question is No, it is not exactly right. The 30 inches wide part is right. But the two counters don’t both meet the stove at a flat angle, plus some stoves are (or are not) made with a “lip” or something so that stove and counter meet more tightly. (I hope I’m remembering this correctly. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well.) And then he needed to factor in the overhang, too. But he explained better than I am reporting it, and he seems to have a solution. So all that’s fine.
The one remaining oddity is that the far left end of that counter will overlap with the door frame, which means notching the countertop or something three-eighths of an inch to accommodate.
Here’s where the notch will be in the countertop.
While he did what he had to do with that machine, I adjourned to the back porch to read the news. When he was all done, he reviewed everything with me again (“Yes, yes, mmhmm, I understand, yes”), and asked about what kind of finish I wanted. “Umm . . . smooth?” This turned out not to be the correct answer. He was asking about how I wanted to edges of the counters finished, not the surface. He said a lot of words, and I chose the first option, which had “pencil” in the name. He said that was best, and the other choices were old-fashioned.
He was very nice, the stonemason, and I have a greater appreciation of what the drama teacher in Stage Fright called “an old and very beautiful art.” It was a pleasure to work with him.
After he left, and with plastic off one door into the kitchen, I went through to the front of the house, started to walk back into the kitchen, and suddenly realized “This is what it’s going to feel like when it’s all done!” Being able to enter the room from its entrance and not from the back porch, I had this pleasant taste of what my new daily life is going to be like. And I like it!
*Rant. You know, so many people - like everyone else in the world but me - have technology that works. You just press Command-P, and then Enter, and poof! A document is printed on your printer. Simple! And my beautiful printer used to work like that. And I have no blesséd idea why it doesn’t any more, whether it needs to be rebooted or restarted or reconfigured or reassembled or what. Or, more importantly, why it should need that when I haven’t done anything to it. Thank goodness a dear friend guided me to the solution of using the printer’s USB port, which will do in a pinch. But honestly, this should not be so incomprehensible. End rant.