Kitchen, Continued: "Back to those things we said we'd do when we toured the house the first time"

Ever since we moved in, there's been this strange cabinet-where-a cabinet-used-to-be-or-something, next to the refrigerator. The previous owners put their trash can there; we opted to put the trash can elsewhere so we could pack it full of crap:

   

I kid. Anyway, the first time we toured the house, we were all like "we'll put a wine fridge there!" Sure. Only.. a "wine fridge" has never been anywhere really close to halfway down The List. ("The merest thought had not the inkling of a possibility to begin to cross my mind...") We'd halfheartedly "measure" any wine fridges we stumbled across at Target, decide they were too wide or something and go buy popcorn.

BUT.

We're trying to shape up the kitchen, if you hadn't noticed. What with the new and refinished countertops, new sink, new faucets, and tiling project--it seemed like time to do something with the un-cabinet. THEN we just so happened to find the cheapest and most-appropriately-dimensioned wine fridge we'd seen yet. So, Merry Christmas to us:



If anyone's looked into these things you might be thinking to yourself, "but those aren't meant to be 'built-in'! It says so on the side!" Welp, thanks to the weirdness of this cabinet area (I still don't know why the door got cut off, whenever it did), there's actually built-in dead space to the sides and back of the unit. Its little vents have all kinds of room to do their thing. So, uh, chilled beverage anyone?

Today's the day: Countertop Installation

Well, here we go. We are waiting on the countertop dudes to arrive. Before the chaos ensues, I thought I would memorialize the laminate-that-was:

Ahh.

And here's the view from the other side of the "Cheeseburger Window:"

We got inspired the day the guy came to template the countertop and asked him to measure for the piece in the opening of the Cheeseburger Window, too. I'm excited for that; because it was less than 5 square feet, it didn't affect the cost of the project at all. (!) I've removed the moulding from the sides; the countertop guys will take off the sill-piece that's there, then we'll trim the old moulding and put it back.

So... that's where we are right now. I'll update as I can get more pictures. In the meantime, party in the dining room:

UPDATE:  Sink is out; the Mr. spent awhile on the floor.

In the foreground are tools integral to the job: drill bits, a spray nozzle, and a spoon.
UPDATE: Old counter is out.
UPDATE: OMG, SHINY!  Also, the new sink is HUGE.
UPDATE: Slight hiccup with the faucet-hole placement. Offset sink with bowl on left + faucet with attached lever on right + soap dispenser + sprayer thingie = interesting combination.

FINAL UPDATE: It's dooooone!!! Yaaaay!  We love it. Sorry for the blurry/dark/grainy/cropped pictures, we have a good bit of  'touching up' to do on parts of the cabinets that had been covered by the lip of the old counter and I was trying to find an angle that looked as complete as possible. We're not hooking anything back up tonight.. we figure we should let the silicone cure or whatever.  Also, the fumes are killing our brain cells and we need a beer to celebrate.

The enhanced Cheeseburger Window (it's like a wee breakfast bar!):

The installation guys were great--they did a super job with topsy-turvy cabinets, walls, and cutouts. Can't wait for y'all to see it!

Another Lamp Meets My Insatiable Desire to Spray-Paint Things

I'm getting pretty efficient with this, I found. Wasn't my first rodeo. To the pictures!

Another day, another brass lamp.  This one came from the Habitat ReStore, and was $3.

Enter gold-braid-trimmed Goodwill lampshade, bought with another $3 lamp.. 5? 6 years ago?  I didn't hang on to it on purpose, exactly... but it's managed to survive three moves. At least it's durable.

The living room rug came bound with these strips of woven canvas tape stuff. I saved them, to cover unsightly gold lampshade braid, of course. (Shrug.)

Wha-bam! 10 minutes with Rustoleum UltraCover in Slate Blue, and some hot glue. 
This lamp sits in the Captain's Quarters and didn't have to match anything; I just wanted to paint it blue. I.. like to paint lamps.  IS THAT A CRIME.

Counters, Revisited: Probably Ill-Advised Pre-Thanksgiving DIY Shakedown, Part II

We have had a scheduling delay on the new countertop, so we're spiffing up other areas while we wait. The granite arrives on Thursday, which gave us this past weekend to twiddle our thumbs and wander aimlessly around Home Depot.

The wandering, combined with a lovely Fall day, as well as pending kitchen spifferation, inspired us to refinish the wooden countertops again. Looking back at that post, it's been over a year since the first stain/finish experiment, and we have some lessons learned:

• Cabot Polystain (stain & topcoat combined) was indeed very durable, and held up to a ton of washing, dinging, food prep, etc.
• It did not, however, weather popping/splattering grease from the stove. At all. We figure this will be an issue with any product, and opted to put a glass cutting board over the side of the counter that got the most grease-splatter abuse. This has since worked out great (and given us another cutting surface), but the damage had been done:

We'd expected to have to refinish them again, and figured that our stain treatment (while maybe not as durable) would be much easier to re-do than the original--the Mr. went through a zillion rotary sander pads trying to get whatever marine-grade shellac the previous owners had off. (We even tried two kinds of chemical stripping agent, and both failed miserably.)

It did indeed prove much easier than the first time. In the space of about an hour they were all sanded back down and ready to restain.  The Captain kept an eye on the proceedings:

This time, we're going with Minwax Polyshades in 'American Chestnut' gloss, instead of satin. It's going to be a little richer of a color than before, and hopefully by the second/third coat it won't be too dark.  Stay tuned...

Sidebar: Spiraled! (Or, Why Didn't We Do This Months Ago?)

I don't know if I've mentioned the Cookbook Project or no--but chances are, all of you reading this already know we have this cookbook that we're trying to cook our way through 'Julie & Julia'-style. Only, you know, cooler... because we're not whiny about it. Most of the time.
Anyway, it turns out that softcover cookbooks aren't really up to that kind of daily abuse. Here it is, about  seven months and over a hundred recipes in:

After about the 30th page fell out this weekend, I finally remembered to take it with me to work (there's a Kinko's/FedEx Office/whatever nearby).  For about $5 they cut off the spine, punch holes and throw in a coil.


Giggle.  And look! It lays flat!  Win. 



That's all. Back to regularly scheduled programming...

Vanity on Stilts

About five years ago I bought a solid-looking nightstand from the local Goodwill for--and my memory is rusty--something in the neighborhood of $5.  I needed something to put my TV on in the apartment I was moving to, and space was at a premium. The drawers were deep enough for all myVHS tapes of recorded shows (no DVR for the graduate student, nosiree), and the TV was an exact fit. Sound odd? Somewhere I have pictures of it in its former function (will add if I can find them.)

When the Mr. and I set up house, it returned to life as a bedside table. Eventually, when we decided it was time to actually get a bedroom set (post forthcoming), it found itself without purpose. Alone in the world, long separated from its twin and (I presume) matching headboard. Probably a dresser or two, too.

With all the shuffling around we were doing in the bedroom, I lost the place where I used to keep all my primping paraphernalia.  Makeup, headbands, hair dryer, jewelry, etc., etc. Aha!, I thought.

Turns out the legs were held on with screws, which left some nice squared moulding around the bottom edge.

We found some legs at Home Depot, for $6 each, and the corner plates ($2) to attach them.

It was a pretty easy project; four legs, some glossy white paint, and "stainless steel" spray paint on the hardware:

It's now tall enough that I can do my makeup with a mirror sitting on top, and the space underneath fits a laundry basket.  It's happily sitting in what used to be dead space between our bedroom and our bathroom.

Before-n-after: Winged Rocker

Here are some shots of the new rocker (see LRoomarama Part II), before, during, and after the reupholsteration. Before (with a potential new-upholstery swatch stuck to the back cushion): Next we have the (nasty) pieces taken off and laid out on the new fabric as patterns. When I took them off I realized that the bottom used to be pink, and that the top was newer. I think somebody tried to reupholster the top to match the (already faded and yellow-looking) bottom. It was also clear that it had been reupholstered many, many times--judging from the number of nail/tack holes. After I got all the upholstery off (the cushion on the bottom was wrapped in muslin, and I didn't want to touch it. See below.) I cleaned the heck out of it. In the picture below, the left arm has been cleaned, the right not--all together now: "Ewww." So. Um, the cushion. I don't know how old this thing is, but it's definitely part.. hair. I only guessed at the seat cushion, but then when I had to take the back off because both sides where upholstered... The picture doesn't do it justice. We have batting. We have straw. And the brown stuff.. is hair. Disturbingly non-horsey-looking hair. I, um.. tried not to touch it. If you don't want to know whether I put it back, then don't ask. And... done! Fabric closeup. It's cream-y crosshatch-patterned nubbly stuff with sort of a mustard-yellow background. It looks much lighter in the pictures than it is in "real life." Sorry for the blurriness. It's late and I can't hold my camera still enough to take a picture when it's dark outside. It went well, all in all! I burned myself with hot glue (could have predicted that), and I'm going to put more tacks in the trim when my back recovers (there were some weird angles to get into, there). There were also some dicey moments with the back cushion (the one that may or may not still contain unidentifiable hair). I'm really happy with how it turned out--provided my stapling job holds up. There are a lot of half-bent staples stuck in that frame. Next up's the sofa... after a nice, long break.

Well, it hasn't fallen down, yet.

So we have a tiny (as in 7' x 8') "office." I'm convinced it used to be a pantry, or something, but the agent listed it as an office, so we went with it. When it comes down to it, it's plenty of room for a desk, a chair, and a bookcase. We also have two filing cabinets that are a little worse for the wear (one was originally my sister's, and is in good shape but for having been moved four or five times; the other came from beside a dumpster at my old apartment complex and claims to contain "Rob's Professional Files." Sometimes I wonder who Rob was, and whether he had another filing cabinet for his unprofessional files.) Right. Anyway, the point is, they're different sizes, so stacking things on top of them looks kind of weird. Eh, here's a picture. It illustrates the "problem" better than anything:

Yeah, that's ugly. Needless to say, none of our furniture quite offered a solution ("yea tall, deep enough for two filing cabinets, wide enough for two printers on top and a trash can underneath"), so we tried our hand at furniture-making. Anybody who actually builds furniture might suffer some sort of trauma seeing the following ("you used L-brackets where!?"), so.. warning. Construction pictures:

Top board, left, and legs. The top board was precut 2' x 4' 1/2" plywood (about $6, I think), and the legs were actually deck rail supports. They were way cheaper than the actual "table legs" we found at Home Depot ($3 apiece), and longer, which turned out to be a good thing. The top, put together:

It sat like that for a week or two. Then we got around to putting the legs on it:

Okay, so it's not going to win any awards. That back brace looks kind of stupid, we realize. But you won't really be able to see it, and if it keeps our printers from falling on the floor, bring on the stupid. I used some of the leftover quarter round from trimming the baseboards around the top edge, and painted the whole thing white to match the trim in the office:

I find I'm often painting things at, like, dusk. So if you come visit, don't stare at anything too hard. It's surprisingly stable. We got it in, festooned it with printers, and I made it a tiny curtain to match the valances I'd made for the windows in there. Here's the "after" shot:

With the paint and lots of L-brackets, it came to something between $20-$25, which is about as good as we could have hoped for. We'll just hope it keeps standing...

Less than $10: An Ode to Craigslist

Speaking of "less than $10," my sister-in-law informs me that somebody on HGTV recently spray-painted a chandelier like we did. Maybe we should demand royalties. But back to Craigslist: for eight bucks apiece, we picked up these two chairs from (as it turned out) someone who lives about three miles down the road from us. They're a neat shape, and the finish looks great with our dining table. They needed some cleaning up, and besides a minor flaw that we discovered when we got them home (their arms are about a quarter of an inch too high to fit under the table), I think they're going to work. I took off the cushions (one was red, one was green. I didn't ask.):

...and recovered them with upholstery fabric.

I may recover them again at some point. This fabric, despite how the picture looks, is not at all pink, but different shades of gold; some blocks are warmer, and some have a greenish tint I thought would blend nicely with the green chairs and the gold-ish walls. Ultimately, the checkerboard bit is a lot less subtle in our house than it was in the store and I still may keep my eye out for other options. At any rate, the Christmas cushions and stains and such are gone and I'm happy with that for now. We still have to figure out how best to fix the arm-height problem. So far our plan is to saw a half-inch off the bottom of all the legs. Either that or screw something into the feet of the table that raises it up enough. Suggestions?

Farming the Back Yard

Okay, other folks would call it "gardening." A couple of weekends ago the Mr. set out to tame a very overgrown pre-existing garden plot in our new back yard. It was already fenced off (and protected from the munching of larger animals by chicken wire):

The above was after a good bit of heavy weeding. And de-snaking. Yes. Snakes. That's when I went inside and said, "Tell me when to come take another picture. I'll be buying stilts off the internet." Here's part of the ridicumongus pile of weeds he pulled out of it (by the end it was about five feet in diameter and came up past my knees):

Tilled up, and ready for topsoil:

Note the monstrous rosemary bush in the bottom right. Other survivors of neglect included some chives and a spearmint plant. And... planted!

Because I'm twelve years old, I found the following hilarious. He mixed this into the topsoil before spreading it:

"We are Number 1 in the Number 2 Business."

And, voila! He was able to cram tomatoes, okra, several kinds of pepper, some cucumbers, some squash, and others into that space, and so far they seem to be doing pretty well. We also planted a nice little herb garden in an existing window-box-like planter on one of the fence walls in the back yard. It's going to be nice to read "fresh [insert name of herb]" in a recipe, and not roll my eyes. I don't know about you folk, but buying anything like that fresh at a grocery store in these parts adds up fast, so I never do. Ha, dried Basil. Ha.

Kitchen Countertop Phototacular

I've been promising this for awhile; here (finally) are some pictures of the kitchen, all put back together. First, a small (sorry) picture of the way it used to be. You can't see much, but the countertops were dark and had a thick shellac on them.

Now, after much sanding (thanks to the Mr. and his dad) and staining (thanks again to the Mr. and his sister):

(Picture 3 is pretty much a wall-o-wedding gifts. Y'all will probably recognize a few things, there. Thanks again, everybody!) We used Cabot Polystain (a water-based stain/sealer combo) in Pecan Satin and so far it's held up really, really well; it's really resistant to spills and made for a really hard surface. I'm not too worried about dinging it. I'm sure it will happen, at some point, but we're having to be much less careful with it than we expected we would.

Flatpackin'

I've already mentioned our trip to our local IKEA (sidebar, those of you out there who actually do live in one of the, what, six? major US cities to have its own big blue store of Swedish modern wonder: to us, "local" means "closer than the others," and a trip to one still means hours--yes, hours--on the highway listening to our own tailpipe rattling, because no matter who you are those boxes don't fit in the back of a Jeep and aren't we lucky that IKEA knows that about us and provides nylon cord for us tie down our hatches if we're unprepared to do so? For some of us, IKEA shopping takes determination and a certain amount of faith in complimentary insurance mechanisms), and there's not much to say, other than we bought a couple of very large pieces of furniture. It's always easier to put them together than I expect it to be. Our MARKOR still flat-packed:

It might sound stupid, but I find the whole thing less intimidating if I separate all the bits-and-pieces first (it's faster, later on, but also make us familiar with the parts so we're less likely to use the wrong thing at the wrong time). A gajillion pegs, bolts, etc., during the sorting process:

45 minutes (or so?) later:

"Bam." Okay, I stink at photojournalism. I was too involved to take pictures. It's now filled with books--really sturdy. We actually got this because what we were there to get turned out to be, like, two inches too big for the wall it had to go on. This particular one wasn't something either of us had picked out online; for some reason it looked a lot better in the store, and we're really happy with how it went up. The other giant thing we got was a wardrobe--the LEKSVIK 3-door, to be exact. We already had a dresser with the same finish. It's ginormous, but it does what we needed it to--we basically needed a second closet in our bedroom, where there wasn't one. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it.