That's one small step for man, one giant leap for kitchenhood

So this happened today ....

We finally have our soapstone counter tops. It might not seem huge, but it is. All of the next steps hinged on having a them installed.

Counter tops (and sink) starts the trajectory of projects...

• Stove can be hooked up.
• Backsplash can be installed.
• When the backsplash is installed, we can have the electricians come up to finish up the switches and the rest of the lighting.
• Now that we have a sink, we can install the faucet and dishwasher.
• Once the dishwasher is installed, we can add the bottom kick-plate molding and finish other moldings. We will also be able to add the front panel to the dishwasher (actually being held up by me being scared of putting the order in for the cabinet hardware).

As you can see, we picked soapstone as your choice for the counter tops as well as a farm-house sink. Why soapstone? I wanted something that had a nod to the old, was pretty sturdy, and had a bit of warmth since I generally lean toward cool finishes. And it's purdy.

It's almost laughable that I thought we might be done by Halloween. Perhaps, New Years? Should we start taking bets?

Just in case you forgot what we started out with... I leave you with this beauty.

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!

The Plan - Layout

It took us about a year to seriously decide on a layout for the new kitchen and the looming expiration of an IKEA kitchen sale to push us to make the move. Since it's a weird shape and pretty small, after many drawings on scrap pieces of paper, we decided to stick with a very similar layout with a few minor adjustments. Yeah, not that exciting.

We kept the appliances on the right side of kitchen in basically the same spots. The stove and sink are the same locations, but the dishwasher moves over a bit to be next to the sink. The big change for that side of the room are for the cabinets that are under the window at the end of the kitchen - they are gone! and the kitchen goes to a true galley layout. With the cabinets under the window gone, we will be able to have a better view of the backyard - primary to make sure that the dog isn't eating a squirrel or a rabbit. 

You'll also notice that we are living on the edge with having no uppper cabinets flanking the stove and no microwave/fan combo (more on that below). I know, CRAZY! Depending on how it goes, we may add open shelving to that wall if we need more storage. What we are adding, are two 24" wide drawer cabinets for plates, bowls, pots, and pans.



Now for the other side of the kitchen! In the picture below, we have the fridge, a pantry, and then an upper and lower 12" wide cabinets. Our microwave will be going into the pantry to keep the counter tops free of appliances.

Due to code regulations, we have to change the swing of the door that currently goes over the mudroom steps (located near that upper/lower cabinet. It's the ivory door that you can see here) and have it swing into the room which eats up precious kitchen space. In order to make it work, we are going to switch the location of the fridge and pantry from the rendering above's layout and hopefully still be able to get a shallow depth bottom cabinet in there too. By switching the fridge and pantry, we will not need to have 7 inches on the left side of the fridge (for the filler strip) to be able to open it fully and will only need 2 inches for the pantry doors to open against that wall.

I'm depending having that single upper and lower cabinet for the coffee maker and baking supplies as well as having a home for an USB outlet above the counter top. Since the room has been gutted, we have done a lot of double and triple checking our measurements and it will be close. Fingers crossed it works!

Hi, remember me.

Hi, all! Remember me? Lisa from southern New Jersey, owner of The Pilot, partner in crime to the Dude?

Well, it's been some time since I posted last but I'm starting up the old blog again to share what's been going on with our house projects and to share a new project we are currently working on. 

A few weeks ago we finally got our act together and decided to create a bit of a mess with a full-gut of our lame, sad, kitchen from 1984. Who doesn't like some organized destruction...perhaps our neighbors who could not park in front of our house for a few days?

I think our old kitchen had the potential to win one of those "World's Worst Kitchen" contests but we aren't that motivated to make a stupid video, send it in, and be actor-y.  I'd rather pay good money for a kitchen that I like than be stuck with one of show's "designer's" wacky ideas.

Here's our kitchen all cleared out and in it's former state of being...

Okay, let's discuss the ugly:

• faux parquet floors
• faux butcher block countertops
• faux wood cabinets
• faux brick paneling
• faux wood plank ceiling
• two boob lights
• no good soffit
• peeling painted over wallpaper (my mother decided the day we moved in to start ripping off the wallpaper because it was "fun" - that was nine years ago)

This kitchen was filled with fakes like a New York city street corner. 

After we filled up those two Bagsters, our kitchen became a shell of a kitchen. You'll note that prior to the kitchen's last remodel in 1984, there was a large window to the right. That was the only surprise we found and lots of bad electrical wiring.

Thanks for reading to this point and I hope you stick around for more updates at a higher frequency.

Yay for a kitchen remodel!

Bathroom Vanity

We picked out a vanity on Sunday at Home Surplus. They didn't have the exact one we wanted but the one we picked out will be okay. It is smaller than our last one ... which is what we wanted to allow for more space in an already tiny bathroom. Why is it such a challenge to find a quality vanity and a good price? Thank goodness we found a store that actually had a nice selection.

Next step is to "flag" the granite slab that will be used for the top and have the granite people do the template.

I'm just crossing my fingers that everything will look okay when it is all put together. Now, on to sconce shopping! Do you have a favorite resource for bathroom sconces?

Waiting

We are now waiting for the electrician to come (in the middle of June to assess) and do some rewiring (at the end of June). The dry wall can't move forward until the electrician does the work and we can't tile the floor until the dry wall is up on the walls.

On Tuesday of this week, we adjusted the shower plumbing by making the shower head location a bit higher and converting the tub fixtures from a two-handle to a one-handle system. We also put in some of the insulation and worked on the floor (self leveler and luon).

We are also on an unexpected holding pattern with our floor tile. The tile (12x12 travertine) that was gifted from a relative will not be enough to complete our floor. So, we are trying to track down more tile (that may be sitting at the dude's father's house) and might try to mix in a similar travertine if we do not have enough. Fun times!

While waiting for the electrician to do his magic, we can put the cement board down on the floor and maybe tile the bath surround. Is there anything else we can do for busy work that I'm missing? I don't want to loose the momentum and have the project stall. I also would like the dude's bathroom to get done so he will not have to use my bathroom for much longer!

Chicken or the egg?

We may not have walls in the bathroom, but we do have the tile for the bathtub surround.

from Lowe's

A bathroom demo long weekend

We both wear inappropriate foot wear for demo.

Shoe Storage

We are making some progress!

After lots of measuring, building, carrying the towers up the steps, carrying the towers down the steps to trim - we have the shell of our shoe storage.

A bench seat will be between the towers for even more shoe storage - similar to this.

We have lots of shoes.


Click on the upstairs bedroom label to see our very slow progress over the past year-ish.

I hate drywall dust

Yeah, I know...waahh!

We lived with a hole in the downstairs bathroom ceiling for over a year until we could replace the roof (need to find photo documentation). It was a classy hole too. We put some pots and pans in the rafters to collect the water from the roof leak and put up some plastic sheeting. After we got the new roof, we lived with a light purple piece of drywall on the ceiling (a left over piece that was cut out of the upstairs bedroom wall to make the built-ins).

We've been putting off finishing off the ceiling because of the stupid drywall spackle dust.

Yesterday, we tackled the project through a grin-and-bear it method. We acknowledged it was going to be a disaster to clean up, that white ghost foot prints would be tracked through the house and the dog might look like he had bad dandruff.

Primer is up... now time to find that can of bathroom paint.

Sorry for the bad iPhone pictures. Sometimes it's just too hard to find the real camera!

Before



After



Some how my car was also covered in drywall dust.

Out with the old, in with the new

Yesterday, we celebrated our "5 year owning our house" anniversary by putting in some new lights in the downstairs bathroom. Since this bathroom is way low on the list of remodeling projects, I figured by adding some new lights and doing some small projects in there will make the space more tolerable.

Old lights...



(sorry for the poor iPhone photo quality...I really need to get a new camera!)


New lights...

Refinishing the floors: Part 2

After all of the prep and sanding, we were finally ready to poly the floors on Sunday night. We chose a water-based polyurethane in a semi-gloss from Behr. I wanted to use a water-based poly because it dried quickly and did not really have much of an odor.

Unfortunately....the tool rental guy that we purchased the poly from was not aware that 1. it was the last gallon at their Home Depot and 2. the reason it was their last gallon...because the product was being discontinued. We did not realize issue one or two until we needed another gallon the next day.

The poly was put down with a lambswool pad. We thought we could get away with not sanding and re-cleaning the floors between coats, but after the second coat we realized we really should sand. While the Dude was out looking for more poly, I went to our local Ace Hardware to get the sand paper, sandpaper pad attachment, a scraper for the corners (the edge sander could not get in the corners) and a microfiber cloth.

The Dude secured two more gallons (one extra for "just in case") and we put down two more coats with sanding in between.

Now we have to wait 72 hours after the last coat for the floors to cure. Ugh, I can't wait to get the room and house back in order!!

Sorry for the crappy iPhone pictures...













The next post will be lessons learned and other fun tips! Wheee!

Refinishing the floors: Part 1

Over the long weekend, we decided to finally tackle the floors upstairs. Our upstairs is a 330 square feet finished attic space (plus a full bathroom) in a cape cod-style bungalow. We started pulling up some of the carpet in January (wow, time flies!).

When I got home from work on Friday, I started taking everything downstairs and created a crazy "Hoarders" look on the main floor. That night we continued to pull up more carpet, staples, tack strips and molding. We gave up that night with the bed area because we were dreading taking apart the bed and removing the mattress.



Saturday morning we pulled up the last of the carpet and took apart the bed and removed the rest of the items. We attempted to shove the mattress down the steps but it was not working out how we planned. I have no idea how we got the mattress upstairs in the first place. In the end we covered the mattress up and left it upstairs on the staircase half wall.



Around 3:30pm we arrived at Home Depot rental and picked up a drum sander with all of the expensive sand paper (in the end, we were able to return 8 unused sand paper rolls). By 4pm - we were sanding.

Since we started off the project with very low expectations, we were happy with just the first pass of the sander. As you can see, our 80-90 year old floors were never finished but had tons of drywall mud and paint from a previous remodel in the early 1990s.





The floor boards did not have too many surprises. We filled a large section of one board (above) with wood filler. We knew it would not look like the other boards, but since we already had lowered expectations, we just described it as "character."







We sanded until 9pm on Saturday and started back up around 10am on Sunday morning. By 1:30pm we were back at Home Depot to return the drum sander and to rent the edger sander. We thought we could get away with not using the edge sander and just use our hand sander and cover the edges up with molding. But...fail. The edge sander was really necessary and we were able to finish the edges within 45 minutes.



Tomorrow's post will be our poly adventure!!

More Knee wall storage

We finally finished getting the knee wall access door installed. It's such an improvement from the old "doors" (which were just two pieces of thin fiberboard leaning against the opening). The panel is held in place with magnets and has no hinges (so when you take it off you have to place it to the side).

Now I gotta figure out what kind of handles to install. Please comment with suggestions!!

Do I stick with the stainless European pulls that are on the other doors or switch it up? Should the pull(s) be installed horizontal or vertical?

Also, the door is pretty heavy. It's mdf and is backed with board insulation.

Check out flickr to see what it looked like before.

Here's some old posts about creating the built-ins in the knee wall and some about the upstairs.

Exterior house colors

I've never been really "sold" on the exterior colors of our house. What I do like about the exterior color is that it's different than the other boring houses on the block.

About two summers ago, we updated paint of the bottom portion of the house with just a slightly darker color than the original color. It's sort of a dark newport blue. We also painted the porch a light gray and freshened up the white railings.

After - from summer 2008

Before - summer 2008

Our front door is now painted black and the dude has plans on making a new screen door this summer. We also have plans on a new walk way (once our street is done being dug up from a massive sewer project). I would also like to get new spindles and railings too.

So the question is ... should we change the porch and bottom paint to this...

via Design Sponge

What do you think? Or is there a different color combo that would work with our yellow house?

What they never show you on those home improvement shows...

Staples! The amount of staples that await you when you rip up carpet = total fun.

Carpet in the process of being removed (upstairs):

Carpet is up!

We decided to start with removing just 1/3 of the carpet and baseboards in the upstairs attic/bedroom. Since we have a lot of stuff on the other side of the room, my next step is to clear out the downstairs office to make room for storage.

Originally we were going to paint the floors but now we are thinking about sanding and staining. Our goal is to get everything done by the summer so we can move our master bedroom upstairs.

Any advice for refinishing the floors?