Full Speed Ahead

 The past week we've come along way from a room with no drywall to now having a refinished floor, painted drywall, and cabinets starting to be placed in the room.

First the floors....

They came out okay and show lots of "character." We are fine with the results, but are suprised that they came out lighter than other floors in the house. A few years ago, we refinished the floors in our office and they came out more amber and matched the rest of the hardwood floors in the house. We used the same sandpaper, floor belt sander, poly - with different results. Weird.

On Friday night we started to prime the walls and ceiling after putting three coats of poly down on the floor. By Saturday afternoon, the walls and ceiling were all painted. It was the fastest completed paint job ever. I'm guessing that we had a nice breeze going though the house that helped speed up drying times and it was not our awesome paint skills that gave us quick results. We used Benjamin Moore's Bunny Gray (but mixed into ACE Hardware paint) and the lightest color on the same color swatch for the ceiling.

The dude is the official photographer around here and he apologizes for the distorted colors in the kitchen due to poor lighting as we only have one bulb in the recessed lighting. The walls do not really look like a Lisa Frank folder in real life.

A few nights ago, the dude cut some 2x4s to act as a back leg support for the cabinets and then we started to put them in place. We haven't fastened them to the wall yet (we are a bit scared making them so permanent and have measured the appliances a number of times to make sure the range and dishwasher fits perfectly). There was a slight freak out about the range dimensions - my Ikea layout and the actual measurement were two different numbers. Yeah, fun.

They (Ikea and the internet) tell you to put on the cabinet fronts at the end of the process. We defied their sage advice and decided to go for it! I started having second thought on my cabinet hardware choices after I read many reviews on the white Ramsjo cabinets that we chose. The cabinet fronts kind of read a bit pink. (Just tell me it's not that bad, please). Since we own all of the cabinet fronts, we are taking a deep breath and soldering on.

This weekend we need to continue placing cabinets and I need to order cabinet hardware. Eek!

Next post...the fun details - lighting, hardware, and inspiration.

Floors and Walls

We've been at a slow pace with the kitchen due to the crazy amount of inspections our town requires (like an insulation inspection!) and scheduling some of the subcontractors.

I know on many renovation blogs, some people have mixed emotions about hiring some of the work out. After working on a few rooms in our house, I learned that I won't touch electrical and professional drywallers are magic. When we opened the walls of the kitchen, we found knob and tube, some interesting 1980s electrical fixes, and singe marks from some old lighting fixers on some of the upper beams. Deciding not to burn our house down by doing the electrical ourselves was an easy decision. We found a local company that are known to work with knob and tube and so far we've been really happy with their work.

On Sunday, we tackled a project that we knew how to do well. Refinishing the kitchen floors!

As you can see, we've replaced the old window, the electrical is roughed-in, and insulation has been added. So, back to the floors. They weren't bad but there was an old slightly sticky layer of dark glue that was probably put down on the floor when the house was built. When we did the demo of the room, we were lucky and only had to remove a layer of luon and peel and stick tile. I'm assuming that when the room was last renovated in the 1980s, that they removed the original linoleum but left the glue remnants.

A little glue wasn't going to scare us (although in the end the glue kept sticking to the sandpaper). This was our third go at using the drum sander in our house. Remember when we refinished the floors upstairs?

Under the window, hidden beneath the cabinets, was a nice hole. Perhaps they cut it out for a vent...who knows?! Finding 2 1/2 inch width heart pine became a bit of a task. After calling around to a few salvage places in the Philly area, we were blessed with finding stock at Provenance Architecturals. Seriously the dreamiest place in the world. Not only do they have cool salvaged items but they also have a nice stock of live edge slabs that are exquisite. We gathered some floor boards from the store (and tried not to purchase anything else) and feathered them into the space where we had no floor.

So, why am I not sharing beautiful refinished floor pictures? Because they aren't done yet. On Sunday night, we added the first layer of poly onto our freshly sanded floors and then found out the next day that the drywallers wanted to come on Tuesday (they were originally scheduled to come on Thursday). We let that first layer of poly dry and today we covered the floors up with paper. But today, today we will have walls!