Kitchen Update

Alright, at long last, here are details of what we've done to the kitchen in the last however long. This post will mainly include pictures...hooray if you hate reading, and boo if you like witty banter :)

We got new floors!

A note on the new floors: we chose to go with Dura-Ceramic. We initially thought we had hardwood under the many layers of carpet, but that turned out to be false. There were a few more slats of hardwood between the kitchen and living room, but not many. We then moved on to tile. We figured we'd tile the kitchen but first put in a radiant heating system so the floors wouldn't be cold in the winter. After some research, we (by "we" I of course mean Andrew) decided those systems are expensive and often heat only a direct area--meaning the heat doesn't spread out over the whole tile. Our neighbor installs floors for a living, and he pointed us to this Dura-Ceramic stuff that looks like tile but is lighter, easier to install and warmer to the touch. Sold!

Andrew installed the recessed lighting and hanging pendants. Still on the hunt for globes...

We started building and placing cabinets. 

Credit for building the cabinets goes to: Brett & Jenna, Aaron and Andrew. Yep, I never touched a one. I don't think. Brett & Jenna built the first one on July 4, after which we decided it would be really fun to bring engaged and married couples over to the house for a rousing game of "Marriage Challenge." The idea would be that each couple had to put together one of our kitchen cabinets, according to the instructions and in a condition acceptable for install. We envisioned a few arguments, some wives walking away from the project, some husbands breaking our cabinets...so we nixed the idea. Then in August, our friend Aaron lived with us for three weeks before his wedding. Most mornings he woke up, ate breakfast, put together a cabinet or two, then headed out. We rarely saw him, but man, those cabinets got done! Andrew put together some with Aaron and did a little on his own.

 Aaron and Andrew determining where the bottom of each upper cabinet would sit. They nailed a board in to keep them all level. The holes will eventually be covered with backsplash, though I forget they're even there.

 The boys building and gluing.

 Two cabinets are up!

Confession: Some of the cabinets may look a bit off to you in the final pics. Or you may have no idea what I'm talking about :) Our cabinets are where they are because our house was built with an interesting structure. Studs are where they shouldn't be and aren't where they should be. Not sure how it happened, but the cabinets had to hang where there were studs for them to be screwed into. Because of this, they are not centered around the window. I've dealt with the issue and moved on. Mostly. At the time I just left the house until the project was done, and I couldn't do anything about it!

 The first countertop delivery came!

 Andrew and Brett checking out the countertops. Unfortunately, they were bowed by a quarter-inch and had to be sent back. Three-ish weeks later we received another delivery.

 New countertops! Andrew installed them alone (I did help...by sitting on them to hold them in place!) He then drew on them with Sharpie (eek!) to mark the cut-out for the sink.

Sink note: So glad we chatted with Brett before ordering the countertops. We were going to order them with the sink hole already cut out. If we had done this, the hole might not have centered up under our window. By doing it ourselves, we were able to get it exactly right. Otherwise we would've been out of luck if the placement was slightly off. Most sinks come with a template to help homeowners do this, but you can also measure the sink and draw it out like Andrew did. The good news is, you can be off by almost half an inch and it's all good since top-mounted sinks have an overhang.

 Cutting the sink hole

 Now that's focus...

 Home stretch!

Empty hole for our new sink!

Now for some after pics. Remember, the kitchen is nowhere near "done." But it is in workable order--minus the fact that our pantry cabinets have yet to be secured to the wall. So our food is crammed in on one shelf per cabinet. And strewn on our counters. 

Also, I debated on whether to clean up the kitchen before taking pictures. I decided that since vulnerability is a good quality, I would just give it to you like it is. Plus, I wouldn't have gotten this post up for another few weeks days if I had taken the time to clean. Andrew brewed beer last night (which is now on the list of things not to do at night/pre-bedtime due to the smell and pregnant wife combo) and he hasn't quite finished cleaning up. I'm being a good wife and leaving it for him when he gets home from work :)

 The fridge/pantry combo. Another cabinet will go above the fridge. 

And yes, Sherpa's ears made it into the pic as well...

 Living room side: the trash can will eventually be in a special cabinet. For now it helps keep Sherpa blocked into the kitchen/mudroom when we leave the house.

 The other side. Those holes in the sink cabinet will have drawers "glued" in place.

The view from the living room. The bar will be in place and barstools will be where the camping chair, microwave/toaster and buckets are. That big box is also used to block Sherpa in the kitchen. We currently have two microwaves--neither of which work 100%. The buckets hold cider that Andrew and his BFF Caleb are making and the beer Andrew brewed last night.

So hopefully that brings everyone up to date! Maybe one day I'll show you the inside of the cabinets...I should probably do that sooner rather than later while they're still organized. My lovely friend Sarah (who is a math teacher and crazy-organized about nearly everything) came over one day to help me fill them up. I still have one empty drawer and two big cabinets with lots of room left! So excited to have double the space of the previous kitchen...maybe even more!

And, we're back in the game!

The game of dishes that is. Most of you have no idea what I just [mis]quoted, unless your name is Mike Thomas, but it's from one of my favorite movies--Ten Things I Hate About You. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character kisses Larisa Oleynik's character, she gets out of the car and he says, "And I'm back in the game!" and simultaneously hits the steering wheel for dramatic effect.

I apologize for that brief tangent, but since my last post lacked random humor, I felt it was needed :)

Anywho....our dishwasher works! Let that sink in...

OUR DISHWASHER WORKS!!!

Well, we hope. Our first full cycle has yet to complete. But we're 10 minutes in and no flood yet.

I realize these pictures will show a bit more work than what I've told you about to this point, but the news is so exciting I had to share this first. Expect some more backlogged-work-updates soon.

We woke up Saturday morning with nothing major to do until later in the evening, so Andrew decided to do some plumbing. And plumb he did. My beautiful husband hooked up our dishwasher in only a couple of hours and two trips to the store.

blurry....he caught me taking pictures

All I know is there was something about drilling holes in the floor, hooking up some PEX tubing, the use of teflon tape and voila, it worked! He ran a quick rinse cycle to make sure nothing leaked, then we loaded her up!

Because we don't have our countertops in yet, the dishwasher isn't "built-in" so to speak. When you open the door it becomes top heavy, so Andrew had to hold it while I loaded it. I've never seen dirty dishes look so beautiful.

Even better, free soap included!

And that green light and the minutes on the face mean it's working. Clean dishes minus the bathtub, here we come!!

Weekend Update (minus Tina Fey)

Several steps of our kitchen process were not documented on the blog, so in this post you'll see two steps we took that were not previously documented. Here we go:

Insulation Install


After we tore down the '50s motif wall paneling, we discovered that the current insulation was pretty nasty. We should have expected it I suppose, since our house is old and hasn't been updated in decades. When we pulled it out we found most of it was flat and starting to deteriorate. I'm also pretty sure the pellets I found belonged to a rodent at some point in time. I can't find the pictures I took of the process but here are a couple of the new, fluffy insulation:

This is an interior wall that was previously an exterior wall. We removed the insulation from this wall, and Andrew started work on the electrical. 

Turning a window into a door


When Andrew and I first talked about redoing the kitchen, we couldn't decide what to do with the large window. You can see it in this picture back behind Sherpa.

To the left of this window was the door out to the deck. It and the basement door opened into one another--a small problem but not one that we initially felt we should address.

As we made plans and had the fabulous Rachel Whitehurst draw up plans for us, we talked about maybe putting in a smaller window. That way we could possibly put counters underneath it or put a bookcase or something else. Rachel drew up a plan with the same size window and one with a smaller one. We finally decided to just leave it the way it was.

That was until we were at the Bargain Outlet (where we purchased our beautiful cabinets for $3,000-5,000 less than our other estimates) and saw some sliding glass doors for pretty reasonable prices. We decided to buy one and get rid of the window. The decision also solved the problem of the basement door opening into the deck door--we'd just board up the deck door.

We finally had a sunny afternoon so Andrew and our neighbor Vinnie put in the new door. Andrew started by removing the siding on the outside of the house.

He took out the window and then cut a larger hole in the house.

Then Vinnie got here, and he and Andrew put in our door. They built some supports above the door, too, but I don't remember what they're called :)

Here's a view of the door from the outside:

While we were at it, we replaced the other kitchen window with a newer, more energy efficient window:

We finished up the day by caulking around the new door and window. It's not the first time I've done this, but I'm not fabulous at it as you can see by the gobs of caulk on the floor:

LOVE the smell of paint

 I love the smell of paint. Maybe not all the time, but the paint smell means that something is happening. Something that you can visibly see. I'm talking about progress!

We painted the entire kitchen (minus the mural wall that needed extra attention) pretty quickly. I picked out the color on the 4th of July, and we started priming the walls that day, too. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to use textured paint because the mural wall might need some cover-up, as well as the fact that I just wanted to use something new. It's basically sand added to paint, but I'm not confident enough to try that on my own.

Jenna helped me pick out this great blue color that really looks amazing now that it's all done. I think we did about a coat and a half one afternoon because the stuff dries pretty quickly, which is nice. I followed up the next day with another coat. Here are a few before and afters:

 infamous mural wall

drywall-ed room

no more mural wall! (don't worry about that white spot...2/3 of the wall will be covered with cabinets and a refrigerator)

Yay for painted walls! (again, no worries on the white spots...we just decided to work smarter!)

Wrangling the wallpaper (part 2)

So much has happened to the kitchen in the last two weeks, but I want to give the final details of the fate of the infamous mural wall. If you need a reminder, reread this post for details of the beginning of my hatred for wallpaper.

When I last left you, we had begun steaming the wallpaper off, only to find that at times we were beginning to scrape drywall.

This is what the floor looked like after the steaming and scraping:

Due to the mess that was left on the wall, I ended up having to mud the wall anyway, something I didn't want to do in the first place. We had plenty of joint compound left over from putting up new drywall so it didn't cost anything, but I'm really wishing we had just torn down the old drywall with the wallpaper on it and started fresh.

I first sanded everything to even out some of the paper tears. Then I mudded the weird seam as well as most of the wall minus a portion that no one will see once the cabinets are in. In addition to this wall, I had to deal with a small portion of wall around the basement door. There was wallpaper on most of it, and some old glue spots in other places. There were also two really gross places that I didn't take pictures of. In a couple of 10-inch or so sections was this nasty brown stuff. It smelled when I tried to steam it off, and it smelled when I tried to sand it off. I decided to just sand it and mud over it. This was how it looked after the mud dried:

The brown seeped through! Eww!

I'm hoping it was old glue, but it sort of reminded me of tar. I should've mudded again after sanding the bumps, but I really just wanted to get it done and painted. So I sanded the walls and painted primer. I did two coats of primer on the mural wall to completely cover the mural and only one coat on this basement door wall. Again, I should've done more on these brown spots.

This is what the wall looked like before I sanded and primed. The weird spot in the middle with some leftover wallpaper will be covered by a refrigerator and cabinets. Work smarter, not harder, right?

The big wall needed about two coats of paint, but unfortunately, the tiny portion around the basement door needed so many I lost count. The darn brown goo kept seeping through. I think it's finally about gone--and I'm out of paint so at this point I don't care. 

Point of this post? Wallpaper is a bad idea. If you have to remove it, save yourself a lot of hassle and tear out the drywall or just hire someone to remove it and repaint it. Doing what I did cost me $0 since I borrowed the steamer and already had joint compound and tools, but again, it was a huge pain!

Wallpaper is the bestest ever!

I don't know who invented wallpaper (a quick search of the Internet reveals early forms were used in China but printing began in Europe) but it has to be the greatest thing ever. It comes in so many colors and patterns--from stripes to floral--and if it was good enough for my mom then it has to be good enough for me, right?

Okay seriously, does anyone believe I'm being for real right now? I hope not, because after this week wallpaper, in my mind, should only be associated with Satan, Hell and 6's. Yeah, yeah, it may not be as bad as the devil, but there's a reason people started using painter's tape to create their own stripes and different sponges and brushes for various textures and designs. It's because removing wallpaper is a huge pain.

We've been painting (I'll post soon about the work we've done that I've failed to write about), and we've done every wall except the one with the fancy mural. See picture:

My friends and I have joked for a year about the origins of this mural. You only get part of this because my iPhone doesn't have a wide angle lens, but part is more than enough. My thoughts? Someone with some serious ADD* had various stencils and sponges and began creating a masterpiece. S/he began with one stencil, got bored and switched to another one. Despite the creation origin, this wall is something special.

The bottom half was covered with the fun green paneling, and after it was removed, we found some great textured wallpaper. I researched several ways to cover this, mainly through talking to Larry, the guy who works in the paint department at Lowe's and deserves as many raises as corporately possible. He's about the only one who really knows what he's talking about in the whole store. Anywho, my initial thought was, textured wallpaper to textured paint. I had tried to peel it off, but that didn't work so well. So we moved into researching textured paint.

The lady at Sherwin Williams told me I needed to first use an oil-based primer to seal everything in. Then I could put the paint over it. I've always wanted to use textured paint somewhere, but I wanted to do a small room. Our kitchen will mostly be covered with cabinets or appliances (especially this mural wall) so it seemed like a good shot. Bathrooms are small, too, but the whole moist situation can sometimes create problems depending on the home.

Sherwin Williams amazingly has very few options in the textured paint world. And they cost a ginormous amount. Yes their paint is good and all, but $150 was my estimate for the two products I needed--and that was only one gallon of each. With textured paint you definitely need to do two coats to achieve a finished look. Our kitchen is way too small to justify spending that kind of money. So we moved on.

Our friends have used textured paint from Lowe's and Home Depot in their kitchen and bathroom so we decided to give it a shot. While picking up color samples one day I found Larry and asked his advice. He encouraged me heavily to try and remove the wallpaper with a steamer. Renting one would cost $55. I didn't want to spend that so I asked what else I could do. He said I should do the oil-based primer, then skim coat it. We have a ton of joint compound left over from the drywall escapade (to be written about in the near future) so that would be fairly cheap. Once I did that, I could use any kind of paint I wanted, Larry said, giving me lots more color choices. 

I left with my plan in mind. 

Then I talked with our friends Pat and Kim who build houses. Pat said oil-based primer is a huge pain to deal with, and they both encouraged me to remove the wallpaper. I decided to go that route, only because they had a steamer we could borrow. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I have the steamer, ready to use:

You plug it in and wait for the coil to heat up the water and create steam. Then you run the black rectangle part over the wall, peeling as you go. I read up on it, and the longer your wallpaper has been there the more difficult it is to get off. Larry also said that if it was done poorly (ding ding! our house!) it would take awhile. We've done about half of the wall, and it does take time. We've had to steam each part multiple times to remove the wallpaper and glue (and I think there may be a couple of layers of wallpaper...I can't tell because everything is old and gross).

We also have to use a scraper to remove it in bits and pieces. It's sort of sad when you experience excitement pulling a large scrap off--it doesn't happen often with our wall, so rejoice when you can. Our floor is currently littered with paper bits. I could have cleaned it up, but I want to take a picture once I'm completely done. Hopefully that will be tonight. Then we can prime it and paint it.

I still wanted to go with textured paint even though we're removing the wallpaper, mainly because if we don't get it 100% clean we can cover up a few mistakes. There's also a noticeable delineation between the top part and bottom part, and I really don't want to tape and mud again, even for a really small portion.

Here's a picture of Andrew. He came home and rescued me from my steaming mess. 

I'm not ambidextrous so steaming with one hand and scraping with the other didn't work so well for me. I had to lay the steamer down after each pass--which caused really hot water to build up and get everywhere. The following is a list of tips I've learned from my one day of steaming:

1. Don't wear flip flops. The steamer will drip and burn your foot.

2. If you do wear flip flops, think really tough thoughts in your mind.

3. Hold the steamer to each part for 20-30 seconds before trying to peel or scrape. The more saturated the paper gets, the *easier* it is to remove. Again, ours is pretty bad, so we still have to make multiple passes, regardless of how long we steam each section.

4. Cover the floor with something. We have the subfloor showing right now, so I covered it with plastic to protect it from water build-up. When I was working alone I had to set the steamer on the floor to scrape, and water would spill on the wood. Get a dropcloth or something before starting.

5. Make sure you turn off the electricity to the outlets/switches where you will be steaming. Water + electricity = bad idea. 

*Disclaimer: I realize attention deficit disorder is real and real people suffer from it. I am in no way seeking to offend those in that category. If you were offended, write me for a list of ailments I suffer from, contrived or real, and I will allow you to make jokes at my expense. 

Oh no she didn't...

Yes, yes I did. Just what did I do, you ask? Well, I gave in to a slightly unattractive cleaning option that might solicit a wrinkled nose or even a few "eww" comments. Yep, I washed my dishes in my bathtub. Now's your chance to shriek and ew all you want--that's the beauty of the Internet.

The dishes have been piling up despite our efforts to reuse in whatever ways possible--sharing dishes, using them more than once without washing, eating directly from the ice cream carton/other food containers, using paper towel plates, etc. etc. I've washed and rinsed several spoons and plates in the bathroom sink, but the pile was growing and gnawing at my sometimes-order-driven mind. And so I gave in.

It wasn't that bad actually. I had the thought of filling up the tub which, though you probably weren't asking this in your head, is dirty as is most of my home because I'm content with only spot cleaning until the kitchen is DONE. I realize all cleaning could be viewed as "all for naught" since inevitably things return to a messy, dirty state; however, that process happens three times faster due to the renovation. Instead of turning my entire tub into a large receptacle for soaking dirty dishes, I just turned on the hot water, soaped up a sponge, washed, rinsed and placed clean dishes on dish towels on the floor. Then I dried them all and returned them to their temporary home--the guest bed.

Here are some pictures of my set-up:

dirty dishes and dishwashing liquid

method of obtaining water and bubbles

clean dishes!

I figured using the bathtub was cheaper than buying rubbermaid containers and creating a temporary wash/rinse station outside. You might also be saying "paper plates, Jen." And I've thought of that. But I just can't justify spending the money. We did get some awesome red plastic cups from our friends so we're using those sparingly.

Now I'm contemplating washing the barbeque-infested crockpot I mentioned the other day. I've given Andrew the task of cleaning it since it is not only infested with barbeque remains but also...mold. I know, I know--gross, ew, ick--get it out of your system! I'm not a high-maintenance princess for crying out loud--most of you should know I take fewer showers than most guys anyway, so this shouldn't come as a surprise. I'll let you know how the crockpot turns out, but I probably won't post any pics so you'll keep reading. I hear the skeletons grossed a few of you out :)

Wahoo! My space was replaced!

I mentioned in a post following our trip to Bolivia that while we were gone my three amazing friends Kristin, Laura and Sarah broke into our house (okay, Sarah has a key) and transformed my office from a temporary storage space to an actual office. I'll let Laura and Kristin tell the story of how they did all they did (and for about $130) on their blog plant. eat. create. Check out this post for the first reveal and this post for the details of the remodel.

One part of the office they couldn't go into detail about was the desk because Andrew and I did the work for it before leaving. Here's a pic of the final product (that I did steal from Laura and Kristin's blog...you guys still love me, right?):

The idea for the desk began shortly after I moved here in 2009. Laura and her husband, Caleb, have a desk from IKEA that I absolutely loved. I don't have a picture of theirs, but I can show you similar items from the IKEA site. Check out these two...

So imagine the tabletop from the first image with the legs of the second. Laura and Caleb bought the flat top and the sawhorse-like legs separately. Their legs are a bit nicer--they have slats across the bottom to provide a shelf. They bought all three pieces in a lighter wood I believe and stained them a dark brown. 

Later, I was telling our friends Brett and Jenna about the desk and how I wanted one. Turns out, Brett has a much more industrial version of this he created for probably $10 or less. They bought an old door from ReStore or somewhere similar and added two sawhorses. Ta-dah! A desk. 

I liked the idea of getting a door, but Brett has the sawhorses that have metal on the top, which wasn't appealing to my "vintage-y, comfy" design style. I decided to find wooden ones.

Remember, all of this happened before we even had a house. I kept the idea tucked away--because there was no room whatsoever in our condo/apt in Florence--until we had the house. Last summer we found a door at ReStore in W. Springfield (now Eco Building Bargains) for $5. I was even excited about the hole from the knob because I could run all my cords through it. That door sat in our mudroom for almost a year before we had time to get to it. All the while I kept searching roadsides for sawhorses--they don't sell wooden ones at Lowe's--to no avail. I then decided I would build them.

I found plans on About.com and started. Here are some pics of the process:

Step 1: Build an I-beam. I altered the measurements for my sawhorses because I wanted to be able to sit under the desk. To build the I-beam you nail three boards together: top and bottom are flat, the middle board standing.

Step 2: Add some legs! Again, I did some "imaginary sitting" to figure out the height. Then we cut 4 boards the same length to nail to the ends of the I-beam. (I keep saying nail, we technically used screws.)

Step 3: See if it stands! We used a level every step of the way to ensure each piece was going to work. The sawhorses weren't too level in our garage because the floor isn't level. If you miss by a bit, there is some wiggle room to pull the legs out a bit to make it work.

Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3 for another sawhorse, then add the door!

Step 5: Sit on the desk to make sure it will hold things :)

I wanted that shelf aspect Laura and Caleb's desk has, so I used more scrap wood to create a place for storage. 

Like I said, the door was $5, and we bought some scrap 2x4s from ReStore for the sawhorses. We didn't spend more than $10. The lighter wood for the shelves came from the packaging our front door was shipped in. 

The final steps involved sanding and staining. While I was at work one day in Connecticut, Andrew sanded the door down for me, which I didn't know until I was surprised with my entire office. I could never decide if I wanted to stain it or paint it white, but I really like the natural color it has after being sanded. I tried to stain the sawhorses, but the driftwood color I bought didn't do much to the dark scraps. Now that the desk is in the office with decorations and supplies on it, I really don't notice the different woods. Let's admire that finished product once more:

I forgot to mention. Andrew also carved our initials in the wood right where I sit. So sweet :)