About Paulineachen

One Job, Not Two

Paulineachen is a countertop shop on Central Ave in Riverside. We template, fabricate and install kitchen and bath surfaces across the city and the towns either side of the 91 and the 60. What makes us slightly unusual is that we will not talk about a countertop without talking about the wall behind it.

That is not a sales position. It came out of ten years of walking into kitchens where the counters were fine and the four inches above them were a mess, and every one of those messes traced back to the same scheduling decision.

Where It Goes Wrong

The standard order of work is to template over whatever splash is currently on the wall, fabricate, install, then let somebody else worry about the tile. The template records the face of the old tile rather than the face of the wall. When that tile comes off, and it nearly always does, the new counter is left standing a fraction of an inch short of a wall that has just lost its paper face and is wearing a grid of dried thinset.

At that point every choice is a repair. The tile setter has to build the wall back out or accept a shadow gap. The new first course sits on a counter that was never scribed to anything. Outlet boxes that were flush with the old tile now sit buried behind the new one.

What We Do Instead

We take the old splash off before we template. It costs a visit. It means arriving with plastic and a bucket rather than a laser on the first day. In return, the template captures a real wall, the counter can be scribed tight to it, the drywall gets floated flat while the room is already empty, and the tile or the slab splash goes on to a surface that was prepared for it.

The Local Part

Riverside kitchens have their own habits. Most of the tract housing here is slab on grade, so cabinet runs tend to be true but the walls behind them are stucco lath and plaster or older drywall that does not enjoy demo. West facing kitchens take a hard afternoon sun in summer, which is a genuine reason to think twice about quartz on a sill or a peninsula. Older homes over in the Wood Streets often have plaster walls that are out of plumb enough to matter over a full height splash.

We would rather tell you that up front than discover it on install day.

Call (951) 795-0209, or find us at 1499 Central Ave, Riverside, CA 92507.