Kitchen

I am taking a BIG breath as I start typing this. I will forewarn that this one is long. Although relaying everything that's happened in the kitchen will be a lot (and I won't even go into all of it), the work that has gone into this room is far more intense. The best way I can think to go through it is to subdivide the projects (just a bit) before getting to the finished (or at least, close to finished) project.

The first thing that got started in this room was adding a built-in. There was an area next to the refrigerator that had a low counter and some laundry/garage cabinets installed and it really didn't work at all. I'm willing to bet that at some point there was a super-cool built-in or cabinetry there when the house was built, but over the years, anything that was original to the house has been destroyed, removed, etc. It is the unfortunate part of an old house being used as a rental for so many decades. 

The area in question... Tiled low counter with garage cabinets.

While Sam was not thrilled with my insistence on another built-in project (see prior house project), he was willing to give it a go, so got to work removing the cabinetry and tile counter. The cabinets did not go to waste though, as they are now hanging storage in the garage. Always nice to be able to reuse an item.

The open space gets cleared out.

My hope was that we'd be able to use the full space to the floor for a built-in, but we soon discovered why there was a counter instead of a fully open area: the stairs to the basement are just behind this wall, so there would be no way to go any lower in this area, which hadn't occurred to either of us until we started dismantling things.

We went on a hunt for an old piece of furniture (or a couple) that would make sense as a built-in for this kitchen. It took longer than either of us wanted, but eventually, we found one piece that we thought would work as a center piece for the space. The piece ended up being about an inch (or a little more) too deep, so Sam did some "surgery" to make the piece work for the space and then set it in place.

The first furniture piece gets placed

There was discussion about centering the furniture piece, but instead we decided to offset it so that one side of shelving would be larger than the other. Whether it was the right decision remains to be seen, but it is the choice we made.

The second piece arrives to add to the built-in

Eventually, we found a second piece to place on top of the first piece and we were on our way to a built-in. The next part of the project would involve getting in shelving and figuring out how to make it look like a built in instead of just furniture stacked on top of each other. Fortunately, there was a lot of wood from the house that was reused.

The built-in takes its shape

After this, we had to decide on a color for the built-in. After taking some time to try out a safer and a more bold choice, we took a bit of a break from this because neither of us was ready to make a choice.

Ultimately, we made a decision, but we'll save that for the end. I think we'd both agree though that this one small area of the kitchen became quite a time-consuming project. With finding the right pieces, doing the actual work and then needing to tweak things to make them work, this became something far more than we anticipated.

One of the other side-projects in the kitchen was making a decision about the ceiling. Like most of the other rooms in the house, there are tiles made of a similar board that was used on the walls at some point in the mid-century. The problem in the kitchen was that there were two areas that needed repair. One of these areas was a light that had been cut in to the board at some point.

The rectangular shape cut-out in the ceiling is a light - that didn't work well at all.

The biggest issue with the light is that it produced nearly zero light. Neither of us are sure why it was installed because it could not have possibly provided any quality source of lighting at any point.

The broken vent fan.

The other issue was an old vent fan that no longer worked. Not knowing whether or not it could be repaired and because it was in a bit of an odd place, we knew that it needed to come out.

Both of these spots in the ceiling are pretty large, and frankly, I wasn't sure that we could repair the two areas well enough to make it livable, so I went ahead and purchased some ceiling tiles that we would need to put up over the old tiles. After spending so much time in the kitchen on other areas, I really didn't want to go through the work of re-tiling the entire ceiling (even though I loved the look of the tin tiles we chose), so Sam went to work trying to match up the already-existing tiles, beveling edges and tacking them in place.

Next, we needed to try to patch the seams that were created (and unfortunately, whomever did these cutout spots didn't chose a single tile, but rather cut into multiple tiles to make the holes), so I went to work patching and sanding, trying to make things look as smooth as possible. We knew that it would always be a visible line, but wanted to do our best to make it blend.

After putting in some filler and performing a lot of sanding, we were ready for paint and to see if it would work well-enough to be livable for us.

This is the fan spot after filling, sanding and painting. It's definitely still visible, but we did our best to make it blend and it saved us from having to spend extra dollars and a LOT more hours of work.

This is the other patch spot where the low-light fixture was installed. As you can see, from a distance and in the right light, it doesn't seem too shabby. 

When we first moved in, we knew that we were not going to start in the kitchen. As much as I really wanted to have a pretty, functioning kitchen, the whole of the house was overwhelming and we knew that starting with something simpler/easier would be our best shot at staying motivated to keep moving forward.

Although it doesn't look so horrible in the photo above (or below), the kitchen, like the entirety of the house was dirty, slimy/grimy, broken, and the appliances functionality was in question. 

The baby blue trim and gray-white cabinets were also not to our liking, so we knew that there would be much done to this room. After getting through the two projects from above, we started to work on the rest of the kitchen.

As you can see, the kitchen became a kind of dumping ground for tools and whatever needed a temporary home. We always seem to end up with one room being the storage room when we're renovating, and because this was going to be a later-in-the-house-project-room, this became that space.

Like the other rooms in the house, the trim on all the windows was flush with the drywall, so Sam went to work going over these with new trim, and then I followed behind with caulking and paint to get them to a better place. 

Even just having the trim painted white instead of the baby blue made me happy. I had also started painting the walls a light gray color.

Unfortunately, the gray that I chose was not one that would work well overall in the space because it leaned a bit too purple to work with other items going in, so I ended up taking some extra gray color that had been used in the mudroom/laundry area, and started repainting the walls I had just finished painting. Although it's hard to see in the photo above, the lighter gray I originally used does have a bit of a purple tinge to it.

I took a quick trip out of town for a few days and when I returned, Sam had put in the new counter tops. We had decided on butcher block because it's something that we like, it's relatively inexpensive and this room was definitely going to need some sort of natural element as most every surface would be painted or some other "unnatural" finish.

As can easily be seen in these two photos, there is a LOT of counter top space in this kitchen. Each side is over 9 feet in length, which is far more counter than we have ever had in our homes. Even one side is probably more counter than we've had in a very long time.

Also seen in most of the above photos is that the cabinet doors had been removed. When we bought the house, I really wanted to get new cabinets because the ones in place are not in the best shape and are dated in a way that doesn't really work with the house... but, after spending some time with them and realizing that we could probably shore up some of the issues, it made sense not to spend money on brand new cabinets, and we instead decided that we'd paint them instead.

But, what color should we paint them? That was a big question mark for some time. We've had white cabinets in kitchens in the past, and, particularly when they are painted, they don't always look their best unless they are constantly being cleaned. As grease finds it way around the kitchen and dogs with muddy paws come traipsing through, I wasn't sure I wanted to endure a daily scrubbing schedule of the cabinets.  So, we went for a fairly bold choice.

It is perhaps not a choice that some would make, and I was a bit hesitant when I first started putting the color on, but it's grown on me over time and I think because the other elements of the room are fairly subdued in color, we can get away with this.

Next up was the back splash tile. I fell in love with this tile many months ago and knew that I wanted to use it somewhere, but I wasn't quite sure where it would go. It has a sort of rustic-Spanish feel to it, and I think it was a good choice for this space, despite the fact that when putting the tile in, we only reaffirmed that every wall in this house is extremely crooked, making for some awkward gaps at points. A little frustrating as we so desperately want everything to be right. 

As a big, big bummer for me, as soon as the tile started to go up, I knew that I was going to have to repaint the gray in the kitchen yet AGAIN. Ugh. The more I looked at it, the more it bothered me that it was just so different than the shade in the tile, and so, round three of gray paint went up in the kitchen. It was definitely a rookie move, and I also know better, so I suppose I only have myself to blame for the multiple rounds of paint in this room. The lesson is - always take the tile sample to pick out paint colors - even when you think you know what you're doing. As one of my art teachers used to remind me when I was in school, humans don't have color memory.

I was not really in love with the center island from the get-go. I'd looked at several possibilities, including having something custom built, looking through vintage stores, Craigslist, and so on, but ultimately, our goal is to re-use as much as we can to both reduce our costs and to prevent more "stuff" from ending up in a landfill. So, we decided that using the existing island was the way to go. It was not an ideal scenario, but ultimately, it worked out well because with it's new top, paint and handles, it will work great for storage, extra sitting space and another work space when needed.

During the later part of the kitchen work, we also had a pane of glass replaced in one of the kitchen windows. When we first looked at and purchased the house, we noticed that one of the windows had a very large crack running through it (we still aren't sure how the tenants managed the damage it because the crack is on the interior pane), but wanted to get it replaced.

We talked about replacing the entire window ourselves, but were concerned that then this one window would stand out from the rest, or make the others look worse, so instead opted to have a glass/window company come out and replace the pane. Since the window still functions properly, really it was the best all-around solution. Of course, now that window is cleaner than any of the windows in the house... so, I suppose a good window scrubbing will be in order when spring rolls around.

One of the hardest parts of a kitchen renovation is needing to live in the house while doing the work. It feels often that in other rooms (other than perhaps a bathroom, if it's the only one), it's a bit easier to make concessions and find ways to work around spaces, but at some point, we knew all of the appliances would have to come out and that we'd be without them for at least a week (probably longer) while we installed the tile flooring. In some ways, it feels like things got pushed out a little because we knew this day was coming, but ultimately, in order to have the kitchen finished, we knew we had to complete the flooring, so, with the help of one of Sam's co-workers, we were able to get the appliances out so we could finish up what needed to be done.

Installing the flooring was not super fun, but after a couple of days, it was all in place. Then, the waiting game for the adhesive to dry. Next, we had to do a round of filling-the-holes because the tile is set on an uneven/un-level floor, so there are inevitably gaps between the tile and the substrate. After that cured for a day, then grouting was done and curing time was needed again, while Sam worked on getting the vent fan for the stove connected and properly vented (which was a multi-day project on its own), as well as getting more electrical work done.

Then we were on to moving the island back into place and bringing in the new appliances. Yay! The appliances have been sitting in the garage for about four months now, still protected in their original packaging, because we bought them during a sale in the late summer and didn't want to go through the work of bringing them in only to drag them back out when we started work on the kitchen. There's always a bit of concern when we aren't able to test the appliances right away, but fortunately, they all work just fine and nothing was dented or scratched in transit (WHEW!😅).

Getting to bring them in was an exciting moment (again, thanks to Sam's co-worker). More than anything, I was looking forward to the new oven because the old one was very sketchy with heat distribution (for anyone who bakes, that's not very much fun to deal with when trying to get an even cook). But fresh appliances are always nice and getting to finally use the dishwasher was pretty exciting too as washing stuff by hand for the last five plus months hasn't been ideal.

There are still things that need to be done. There's a trim piece between the dishwasher and oven that needs to be painted and installed, the baseboards need finishing details, we need to put up a hanging shelf for the microwave (which is currently sitting on the trash can, almost outside photo visibility), the kitchen towel rack is still in need of hanging, some pieces for the walls (like a clock) still need to go up, we're waiting on a couple of stools to sit at the island, and a few other small details that need to be resolved. But, and it is a big but, we feel like we've finally reached a point that it feels more done AND we can actually now USE the kitchen again. Woo hoo!!!!!!!!

We're both exhausted (and we both have multiple wounds from this portion of the project house), and the work isn't done (on this room or the house), but we're moving forward. Next on the list is the main bathroom, but we won't get started on that until we physically have all of the big items we need, so in the interim, we're trying to resolve electrical issues, we are working on some flooring that needs to be done in other rooms and we may even be able to get started on some outdoor items (at least a little), as we've been experiencing some fairly temperate days (especially for the middle of winter). We also need to get started on the guest room soon because we know visitors want to come for a visit. We're working on it - we promise.

*Post Script: At some point, I'll take some daytime photos, as it looks a little different during the day color-wise, but overall, this is fairly accurate as pictured.