I'm a stoner now

The soapstone is in! Here's the step-by-step of how it happened, so there will be a lot of pics, but some people have been asking for the details. And besides, I'm pretty darn proud of Adam pulling this off and doing such a great job. And, did I mention that I love it!!

Here's the 1600lb crate that was delivered to our house:

It took 4 people to carry this piece into our house. After getting it moved, one of the guys commented that it felt like they had just moved a Volkswagen. Actually, moving it in was a bit scary--that sucker was heavy!

Here are Adam and Jesse positioning the slab exactly to get it ready for cutting out the section where the range will be:


Marking and taping for the cut-out:

Here's what they rigged up to support the piece that would eventually be cut out. The support would be slid all the way underneath, of course.
Taping off an area in order to keep all the dust somewhat confined:

And the cutting begins:
As Adam is cutting, Jesse is holding the shop-vac at the blade to try and get most of the dust:
Success! They pull off the cut out piece:
No mistakes whatsoever, and it's only about 1/16th of an inch away from the cabinet. Tight!
Here's the stove installed and the stone all oiled up fir the first time:
One of the sides of the built in area all oiled up:
The next big cut out is for the sink. This one is tricky because the sink is rounded and asymmetrical.

Here's the sink installed:

He did a great job on the cut out and the installation. I purchased the largest possible sink for this cabinet size, which meant that the cabinet had to be notched out for the installation, and it also made attaching the clips to the bottom pretty tricky as there wasn't a lot of space left over. But last Friday night he worked until 2am and now I have water. Happy Mother's Day weekend to me. Hoorah. The only thing left on this is that I still need to do some sanding to on the eased edges to smooth and polish them somewhat more. (The darker spots to the right are just water spots that haven't dried off since I was in a hurry to snap this picture. And the slab has not yet been oiled either.)

This is the only piece that needed to be seamed:

Unfortunately, the company supplying the stone didn't follow our instructions about leaving 2' of the larger piece with an unfinished edge for the butt joint with the smaller piece. It meant that Adam had to slice off that edge and notch it for the seam. It makes for a slightly more visable seam (and that's driving Adam crazy), but I think that in the long run it's not going to matter at all.


Ok, so it's all in. Already I feel like it's changing my life. On the first day of use after the stove was installed the kids got to sit up at the island and work on homework and coloring while I fixed dinner. Now this is the kind of stuff that makes it all worth it.