A Renovation Story

Love Hate Relationship

2012-01-29T10:19:00.001-05:00

I hate the cabinets in my kitchen. I dislike the color - that orangy wood color and the hinges and handles are so dated. And then there is the ugly soffit.

However, the cabinets are well made, solid as a rock. They hold a lot of stuff and are well laid out (for the most part). There is a lot of dead space but they are here to stay.

Replacing them is not an option. So I went on the hunt for ideas. Many of my ideas come from watching home improvement shows on TV. (warning - they are addictive and have this strange side-effect of adding items to the project list!)

One idea was adding simple strips to make them look like shaker cabinets but frankly the doors are just to wide to get the right effect.

Shaker style - clean and smart

Another idea was to cut out an opening in each door and insert beadboard or adding beadboard and trim to the front of the doors. After discussing the mechanics of that job, I scrapped it. Here is a good tutorial on how to do that if you think it would work for you...

Kitchen cabinet makeover

Was there anything I could do to make this cabinets look better?.... I searched the internet and found a limited budget kitchen makeover. This lady is a genius! With some paint and molding, she turned ugly cabinets (don't they look a lot like mine?) into something classy!

Before

After

Having a game plan for the cabinets is such a relief.

Bottoms Up

2012-01-24T19:59:00.000-05:00

We had a lot of dicussion about the floor. My priority on kitchen floors is ease of care.

Troy likes ceramic tile - but I think it is cold on your feet. Underfloor heating would solve that problem but our budget doesn't allow for it.

We saw this really nice cork at Homerama this fall

but after some research, it proved to be too expensive.

We settled on linolium tiles.

We went to the big box store and looked at the selection and chose three possibilities. We bought one of tile in each of the patterns to bring home and see how they worked - $4.00 well spent. Since we are redoing the color of the cabinets, we had some flexibility there. I did want to see how the tile looked with the woodwork and the flooring in the adjoining rooms.

Here are the choices

too light and too grey

I like this one but it doesn't look good with the adjoining floors

the winner is this one - Izzy likes it too!

The reason I chose this one is because it looks great next to the adjoining rooms and with the woodwork, works well with the my #1 pick for the paint color for the lower cabinets, has enough brown but is not too dark, hides dirt - a big plus - and adds a terra cotta color to the color palette.

The floor choice was a key piece that helped the picture solidify in my head. I am very happy with the choice and the price - .99 a square foot!

The Picture in My Head

2012-01-22T10:51:00.000-05:00

I may be crazy to divulge this little tidbit but I think I an getting pretty close to having the complete picture in my head for the kitchen. Yes, I said picture in my head. See that is how I design. Before I even demo a room (unlike Troy who demoed whole bathroom without a clue what to do next), I have a picture in my head of the nearly finished product. Usually one key item allows me to fine-tune the picture - for example, choosing between two color schemes. The picture is detailed, textured and keeps me on track.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, the picture emerges in my brain over time. I’ve never been able to successfully translate the picture to paper (except once) despite buying software to do it.

During the process, because of unforseen circumstances (like Troy buying the wrong color tile or budget contraints (do you have any clue what floor to ceiling curtains cost?), the picture sometimes has to change – but ever so slightly. Don’t mess with the picture! It might cause my wires to short-circuit.

In the case of the kitchen, the key item is the flooring which has now been chosen and I will share that in my next post

BTW, Troy doesn’t really get the picture thing – it’s because he is a man and as we all know men and women’s brains are different – we think this guy explains it well –enjoy!

Two Brains - why men don't understand women and women don't understand men

PS Go Patriots!

My How He's Grown

2012-01-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

This is my cat, Izzy, as a kitten

and this is Izzy now

My how he has grown in just 6 short months

And so has the project list!

Remember the brief list

undermount the portable dishwasher
replacing the countertops with new laminate from a big box store
replace the kitchen floor
the cabinets would get a good cleaning and some new hardware
a fresh coat of paint on the walls

Now the new list

undermount the portable dishawasher and install a garbage disposal
pour in place concrete countertops
replace kitchen floor
strip cabinets, remove soffit, add molding, paint and new hardware
tile backsplash
add beadboard behind stove
build microwave ledge
build pantry and over fridge cabinets
build large spice rack
replace lighting over the sink
build some shelving for additional storage
paint walls
put a pet door in the door to the garage
new range hood/fan?

Game Plan

2012-01-20T06:50:00.000-05:00

So before I unveil the game plan, a little background.

This is not our first reno. One Tuesday evening, I went out for drinks with a couple of friendsr from work and I started talking to this nice guy. We were talking about hobbies and he mentioned that he liked to target shoot - shooting a pistol was on my bucket list - and I mentioned that one of my hobbies was interior decorating. Just so happened, he had just torn out his master bathroom and was kind of stuck. So before the evening was over, in exchange for a target shooting lesson, I agreed to help him with his bathroom project.

Reno turned into romance, and now almost three years and 3 1/2 projects later- the garage us still a "work in progress - we are going to tackle our next project. Oh, and his kitchen is also my kitchen.

The original game plan was a mini-makeover which consisted of:

undermounting the portable dishwasher
replacing the countertops with new laminate from a big box store
replace the kitchen floor
the cabinets would get a good cleaning and some new hardware
a fresh coat of paint on the walls

Notice I said original. More on that later....

In The Beginning

2012-01-19T17:52:00.000-05:00

I have decided to blog the story of my upcoming kitchen renovation. Call me crazy but we are going to do the work ourselves.

First the before pictures - what I have now

Pretty scary! Dated doesn't begin to describe it! And yes we cook in this kitchen. I actually love to cook and we actually have a lot of fun in our kitchen. So tomorrow I will start to share the gameplan.