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!

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...

So It Begins

Hello, again. And welcome to episode one of the "Probably Ill-Advised Pre-Thanksgiving DIY Kitchen Shakedown." Yes, it's November. And No, we haven't started yet. All in good fun.

Item number one on the agenda: countertop.  You may remember from past postings that half of our kitchen is charming (and lovingly re-finished) hand-crafted "butcher block." The other half is scary wood-trimmed laminate.

After over a year of scrubbing away the stains (and I mean STAINS.  This counter has been known to soak the printing off of plastic bags. Seriously. For weeks it advertised "AT&T Wireless." There was also the Maraschino Cherry Juice Incident of '09.)... we're finally doing something about it.

I should have documented the whole tortuous process, but here's the summary:

US: Quartz is cool, give us some samples.
[a few months pass]
US: Right, we forgot. Quartz is still cool. Let's get more samples.
ME: I like the brown. No, the gray. No, the gray-brown. The brown.
LOWE'S: Your kitchen is too small.
HOME DEPOT: So, the brown?
[crickets]
ME: AAAIGH! NO BROWN!
THE MR.: Seriously?
[there is much shuffling of samples.]
US: We meant granite.
HOME DEPOT: Your kitchen is too small.
LOCAL PLACE: Hello. We have nice slabs.
US: Our kitchen is too small.
LOCAL PLACE: We love you anyway. Also, we cost less.

We went skipping around the slab yard, and despite being momentarily dazzled by some sort of Chilean silver-impregnated something-or-rather that we would have had to sing to sleep every night, we made a decision.

Say hello to Slab.

So, yes, it's brownish, but it has a lot of black in it and a lot of depth.  The picture is kind of bad. Trust us--it's a lot more exciting than the flattish brown Quartz we were initially after. (I started thinking of it as 'mouse putty,' and, well, that's not what you want to prepare your meals on.) 

They came to measure for it a couple of days ago, and it'll be installed next week sometime. (Another plus to Local Place:  both HD and Lowe's claimed it would take "at least" four to six weeks.) In the meantime, I'll be taking 'before' pictures...

Sidebar: Fun with Bacon

I heard some giggling from the kitchen this afternoon. I found the Mr. working on this: Coolest. Thing. Ever. The Captain didn't get why This Bacon was different than Other Bacon.

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.

Back in Business

We're lucky enough that this house came with an attic fan. It's truly fantastic, with a few windows open it's like having the A/C on full blast. However.. it either hadn't been used much in the last few years or this past winter was particularly rough on it, because the first time we ran it the belt broke. Considering that for all we know that belt was as old as the fan/house (it certainly looked it), this wasn't too much of a surprise. It gave us an excuse to visit the local hardware store, which we'd do with or without an excuse for the experience. (I have no idea how anybody ever finds anything there unless you've worked there for.. 40 years? More? Really. I'm not exaggerating. We've given up, we just ask for things we need; this time, the Mr. said, "Attic fan belt broke," and held it up for inspection. "Sure did," was the response; the proprietor disappeared into another room, and after some rustling and the sound of something small scattering across the floor, returned with an intact version of the exact same belt. We figure there's a good chance the 'new' one is as old as the 'old' one, but does it matter if it works?) The Mr. reattached the belt and the fan (big, loud and scary-looking as it is) is back in business. Ahh, moving air. It's great--except that we underestimated how much pollen was still floating around in the air and having it on all day yesterday meant that everything is now covered in a quarter-inch dusting of yellow fuzz. Live and learn.

Dear Blue: It's not you, it's me.

So, an update on the kitchen. I last left you with an oh-so-tantalizing teaser about painting the newly-installed textured wallpaper. Mom and I worked hard on getting it painted before moving weekend, but that ended up learning me some lessons:

1. The cheapest paint you can find is thin, drips a lot, and doesn't cover well. Which is, you know, why it's cheap.
2. That wallpaper sucks up a lot of paint. You need more than you think you do.
3. The right blue is really hard to choose. I was going for a lighter-toned gray/cadet/robin's egg blue, that wouldn't be too dark or overpowering and wouldn't look pastel. Then you have to worry about it looking too purple sometimes, or too green... Anyway.
4. Our kitchen has about twelve light sources, and every one of them makes the color look different. (The overhead lights, the light over the sink, the range light, the window... not to mention the shadowy areas under the cabinets.) I found a color I was happy with in one area, that looked wrong in two others.

I was trying to be adventurous and use color and all that, but in the end, the color I'd spent so long choosing was all "It's a Boy!" powder-blue, which managed to make the taupe in the rooms on either side of it look pink. So we stepped back a bit, and in the wee hours of the morning the night before the new floor came and the move was to begin, we repainted it a safe cream. Here's a wall, against the new floor, RE-painted in Ralph Lauren, "Chalk White:"

I have very carefully not shown you pictures of the opposite cabinets. They're topped with, we think, handmade "butcher block" countertops (2x2s bolted together, apparently). They had a dark stain on them and a crazy-thick layer of shellac, which wasn't in too great shape. I'll save the rest for a post with pictures, but they have undergone a magnificent transformation, thanks to the combined efforts of the Mr., my sister-in-law, and my father-in-law. The countertop that IS pictured is laminate with an edging that matched the old countertops; our hope is to replace that whole thing with a stone or solid-surface top. That way, we get to keep the great wooden countertops, but we'll also have a harder-wearing surface. More to come!

Goodbye, Tile Floors (The Resolution)

The Tile is Gone. The guys came a day early and started ripping it out, and it turned out to be pretty much as bad as we thought (or worse); they basically had to chip out the tile with something that looked like a crowbar, then come back the next day with things that looked like giant car-window ice scrapers to scrape off tile cement that was underneath. They kept having to sharpen the things on a saw to make them useful. Anyway, scraping out the cement and tile meant that the kitchen, family room and screened porch were completely coated with a substantial layer of orangish tile dust for about 24 hours there--and tile dust, I might add, neither smells good nor does it make for particularly nice breathing. I'd be lying if I said we had any regrets about not doing this ourselves; I'm pretty sure we would have given up when the scraper got dull. Anyway, I took some pictures mid-scrapeage. But first, a visual reminder of what used to be:

Inside, with the tile gone but a lot of the cement intact:

The pile of tile accruing in the driveway:

After all that was done, the flooring went in pretty quickly. We were around, trying to complete some other projects, and it seemed like every time I went back there was another third of the floor done. So, (drum roll, please:) THE FINISHED FLOOR.

We absolutely love it. It's beautiful--it makes such a difference in those rooms; they're so warm and inviting now, even without anything in them. SO much better than "public restroom" tile. The Captain, however, is reserving judgment. But then, he's generally resistant to change:

It seems really, really solid and we really love the texture of it. We found that none of the samples we'd seen (even the 3' x 6' one in Home Depot) really did it justice--the variegation is really cool and the color is much warmer on-site than it seemed under the home-improvement-store halogens. Three cheers for new flooring! Where 'toughness' is concerned--we moved in this weekend, and it did withstand a washing machine falling off a dolly with no scratch at all. We tramped in and out many many times from the gravel driveway carrying boxes and pushing handtrucks, and I haven't seen any signs of wear--though right now, most of it's covered with boxes, so I suppose we won't really know until we can see it again. (MWAH, HA HA HA HA! Ha. Ha. Sob.) So, to summarize, we used Home Legend 3.5" Click-lock engineered hardwood in gunstock oak (as far as I know, only available at Home Depot), all-in-one pad/moisture barrier underlayment, and white composite quarter-round. We hired out the tile removal and the floor laying, but we took responsibility for buying/hauling all the flooring and materials and the Mr. did the quarter-round trim himself. He would like me to mention that hammering composite quarter-round (which, apparently, is harder than the regular stuff) into the space between the bottom of the kitchen cabinets and floor is somewhat less than fun ("If this crap was on Facebook, I'd reject its friendship," I believe he said) and the process may have resulted in our second home-improvement related injury. We're hoping he regains the feeling in that thumb. I think that's it! It was our big pre-moving-in project, and having it done is amazing. More pictures to come when the boxes are gone and the furniture is in.

Goodbye, Tile Floors! (Almost).

So there's no longer a question of whether we're getting rid of the tile or not; Saturday's the day. I'm a little bamfoozled that somebody comes to your house and where 5 hours before there was one floor there is suddenly another. Bamfoozled, but excited. We chose option number 3 (see the tile post from before):

It was a tough pick, but in the end what tipped the scales were three new product reviews on Homedepot.com. That sounds ridiculous, but somewhere three people have no idea they just helped us make a huge decision. It's somewhat a leap of faith, too, because, well, these people could have nothing in common with me taste-wise, but we really were having such trouble deciding that it really did come down to that. Ah, social web media. So anyway, mom helped me heft 15 whopping boxes of hardwood floor into the house, which looks like a lot, and isn't really; only about 300 square feet. Here it is, looking all full of potential and ready to go places:

Sidebar: my advice to ye-who-might-be-considering-the-costs-of-putting-in-hardwood: don't underestimate the cost of the trim. You can get away with white (or whatever color your baseboards are) quarter-round moulding, but the transition pieces (t-moulding and reducers) have to match. The floor itself may be super cheap per square foot, but they sure as heck never discount the trim. AND it adds up, because you pretty much need one length for every doorway. That's the update. More to come!

Wallpaper, or: "Sometimes it's there for a reason."

The previous owners of our new house had pretty great taste. The wall colors are nice, neutral and understated (not to mention well-painted). The trim is a nice creamy white, even the window treatments I'd have probably picked out. In the kitchen, though, below a piece of trim about four feet up the wall, was a faux-tile wallpaper (...that I rather famously thought was real tile--yes, until I actually touched it. Score one for the wallpaper). I'm not a huge fan of wallpaper, so first item on the agenda: down she comes. We highly recommend 'WP CHOMP!' brand wallpaper stripper, which not only works well, but is fun to say when particularly large parts of paper fall off with little effort. ("Narghnarghnargh-wp!-CHOMP.") It also smells like Bacardi O, but I don't recommend drinking it. So.. the problems arose the more paper we got down. It turned out that the backsplash, the wall next to the refrigerator, and the wall behind the stove used to be tiled. How could we tell? There was still a good bit of grooved adhesive on the wall. I have no idea how old it is, but it's pretty petrified and chemicals haven't seemed to make any difference. You'd be able to see the texture under the paint we'd picked out. We thought briefly about sanding it--as messy as that might be--but in the end, decided that the slim chance that the stuff contained asbestos was worth pursuing other options. 'Other options' turned out to be 1) removing the wallboard and replacing it, or 2) recovering the areas. Since we'd like to retile at some point, but can't afford it immediately, we opted to 'recover.' Beadboard, likewise, is a little expensive for our needs--so we decided to go with a paintable wallpaper. Yes, wallpaper comes down, and more goes up. That might seem inefficient, but I'm telling myself that this stuff is 1) made to be painted over, and 2) mostly vinyl, which sounds good from a kitchen-cleaning perspective. It's available in a lot of goofy textured patterns, but we took a chance and went with one that's supposed to look like pressed tin. I was surprised by how well it went up, actually; I've never hung wallpaper before and I think we managed to do it pretty well. (The true test will be when we go back this evening to see how it's dried.) Here are some pictures of a wall, still wet; once it's painted, the contrast between the raised vinyl parts and the backing won't be visible, but for now it looks kind of interesting. A closeup: From the other side of the room: Next steps are painting, and a good washing-down of the floor and baseboards (wallpaper goo gets EVERYWHERE). Oh, and don't underestimate the the dangers of wallpaper: I managed to sustain my first home-improvement related injury from the stupid trim guard. Post-painting pictures to come.