Let me just say that not much could top the finish and luxury of the half-inch plywood that has been standing in place of counters in the kitchen for, oh, four months.

And as it turns out, I know from experience that plywood counters are perfectly acceptable when getting your house appraised for a loan, but the lack of a kitchen sink is not.

Since the house is being appraised on Tuesday it meant those fabulous plywood counters needed to be replaced by something slightly sturdier. Lucky for me there was 24 lineal feet of butcher block hanging out in the living room.

The kitchen layout required one long stretch of counter on the left side, two smaller sections of counter on either side of the range, and a bigass square piece on that corner cabinet that was so fun to install.

While the straight runs were pretty easy (just cut to length) the corner piece required joining two sections of counter together which was an excellent use of the portable Kreg jig setup that came in my kit. (For a step-by-step look at using the jig, check out this post.)

The pieces were joined together first, then cut to size for the corner piece.

Looks beautiful, but seems to be missing someth… oh yeah, there needs to be a hole for the sink there, right?

Now, normally I don’t take the easy way out of projects, but given the circumstances I might have gone with a drop-in style sink, but for the first and only time while building this house I was not the one that had a crazy moment and said, “Oh, you know what would be awesome? Undermount sink!” But someone else totally did.

If anyone else is considering an undermount sink in butcherblock, I’ll give you the same recommendation I gave MysteryMan just after the have you lost your mind look.

Use a jigsaw to cut the “rough” opening for the sink, 1/4-1/2″ smaller than the final hole. Then cut a template out of 1/4″ plywood the exact size and shape of the sink hole, and use the router with a 1-1/2″ straight bit and flush bearing to trim out the rest.

He actually did a fantastic job at this (something I probably wouldn’t have attempted… that’s role-reversal for you) and the hole for the sink looks awesome.

As you can see, attaching all of the pieces together was a little tricky, but almost anything can be accomplished if you twist yourself into a pretzel inside a cabinet, apparently.

The counter was attached to the cabinets by drilling 1/2″ holes through the blocking under the cabinets, and then using a 1″ deck screw with a 3/4″ washer on it to pull the counter snug to the cabinets.

In the midst of all this counter craziness I was also dragging my step ladder around the room touching up the paint job.

There will eventually be a backsplash between the counter and wall cabs, but that’s be a project for MysteryMan to finish later… so for now I painted everything with Revere Pewter to make it feel more finished.

The kitchen is clearly not done yet, but it looks like I may be able to wash dishes somewhere other than the laundry sink in the near future. It’s not as exiting as washing dishes with a garden hose, but a girl has got to get her kicks in where she can, right?

Having the kitchen cabinets in makes a world of a difference in the way the house looks, even if its a completely non-functioning space as far as anything more complicated than opening a granola bar is concerned. It is working well for displaying my paltry cookbook collection, however.

Here’s a little tour of the kitchen evolution.

The original kitchen:

It stunk, and once the cabinets were ripped out I figured out why…

That’s basically a colony’s worth of mouse poop. Do we all need to take a quick break and go shower now?

So you can see why I basically tore the entire room down and started over. The wall front and center is where the kitchen was added on to.

Old kitchen on the left, new kitchen addition on the right:

Cleaned up:

Drywalled:

And with cabinets:

Considering where it started, this is pretty exciting. I spent a lot of time pondering the many mysteries of kitchen design and lighting, and got plans from three designers before settling on the final cabinet configurations, and then promptly forgot all of that when my brain space was needed for other projects, like cutting the diagonal tiles for the master bath.  So having it all put together was like rediscovering all of the brilliant decisions I made months ago.

Like this…

Those are two 2-bin waste cabinets. My garbage is now the most organized thing in my life. One of the interesting things about country life is no garbage pickup. Its amazing how quickly you can break life-long habits of just tossing things in the garbage when all of the sudden someone isn’t going to come by in a truck and haul it away for you.

The waste is actually separated into five types: burnables (you’d be surprised how much garbage can be burned), glass and can recyclables (which in Michigan can be turned in for cash), plastic recyclables, compostable food waste, and then actual “trash” which is mostly non-compostable food waste and plastic.

Burnables end up here:

Do you know how much less I hate getting junk mail, now that it goes in the burn barrel? It’s almost exiting… “Hey look, more things I can use to start a fire!”

Also exciting is this light, back in the kitchen.

I’m going to get the single version to hang over the “table” part of the island when the final thing is built, but I might go for something different over the sink.

For now, I moved my old dining room table in to simulate the future island since it has roughly the same dimensions. It gives me somewhere to sit, and lets me check out the spacing of everything before building the island.

I’m also pondering color and backsplash options….

I’m actually very seriously considering using the same type and color of tiles used in the full bathroom shower, except in a subway size.

The kitchen is occupying one of the top spots on my priority list, and there is definitely work to be done. A few of the cabinets just need their glass doors installed and the crown molding needs to go in on the uppers. The counters (probably concrete) and getting a sink installed are high up there on the list as well.  However, seeing as how I’ve been living with a hot plate and mini-fridge for over a year now, I’m actually not in a rush for major appliances.

Like the living room, its far from being done, but I think it’s a definite improvement over where it started.

This room deserves at least one exclamation point for being the first (and currently only) room in the house that can be considered “complete”. Which, in this case, means it doesn’t have a door knob or door trim, but does contain finished tile, flooring, and has working fixtures.

For anyone unfamiliar with how this bathroom started out… yeah.

Let’s let that be the last time I have to post that image on this website, so I can stop involuntarily shuddering from disgust. It was significantly worse than it looked, and I’m sure it beat my personal best for “years gone without a cleaning.” The only bathroom I’ve actually personally owned that was worse that this one was the prison bathroom in the Station before it became the ultimate man-cave hideaway. (That one was well past “shudder” and far into “dry-heave” territory.)

Okay. Enough about dry-heaving, let’s talk about how I could spend the rest of my life in this bathroom if I didn’t have seven other rooms in this house to finish.

The Style

The look of this room was something new for me. It required, you know, a theme… instead of picking whatever color struck my fancy that day and slapping it on the wall.

Right around the time I was pondering the many mysteries of a rustic but not cave-like bathroom, I was introduced to Leyla and Kevin’s blog The Lettered Cottage and the fabulous wood wall in their dining room. Shortly thereafter, Robin from Three Acres–sent me this  inspiration picture she had bookmarked… (which I cannot for the life of me find now. But if I do, I’ll post it here.) and was kind enough to resend to me when I couldn’t find it. I don’t know what I would do without internet-friends.

(via)

I wouldn’t normally have said I’m a “beachy” kind of girl. (Can you use power tools at the beach?) But having one lighter room in a house full of what will eventually be wood ceilings and industrial accents was appealing.

I started with some leftover wood flooring and a teak mirror from Viva Terra that reminded me of driftwood… and a lot of drinking pondering later came up with a color scheme and plan.

Colors

• Benjamin Moore Valley Forge Tan – Base for the vanity and “weathered” wood
• Benjamin Moore Soft Chamois – Top coat for weathered wood
• Benjamin Moore Maritime White – Walls
• Olympic Granite (diluted with clear glaze) – Top coat for vanity

Materials

• Mannington Heritage Hickory flooring
• Winchester Tile Company hand-glazed tiles in Canvas
• White standing stone “tiles”
• 3/4″ travertine mosiac tiles for vanity counter
• Kohler Archer tub
• Kohler Archer sink
• Capiz hanging pendant from World Market

Extras

• Pottery Barn Vintage Ticking Stripe curtain
• DIY vanity (see how I built it here)
• Urban Outfitters gray rag rug (but if I had to do it again, I’d probably get the white one)
• Viva Terra Teak Mirror

The Build

When it comes to renovation instead of building from scratch, “the build” really starts with “long and grueling demolition of previous bathroom”. Let’s just say there was a cast iron tub that did not make it out in one piece.

Since the closet for one of the original bedrooms was taking up a lot of valuable bathroom space, some studs had to come down too. Then we put another sheet of OSB plywood on the floor since the old subfloor had rotted through in several places.

After that I got to loll about and drink umbrella drinks while someone else installed the tub (which I wasn’t going to attempt) and hung the drywall (which I could have done, but am really glad I didn’t have to). And by “loll about” of course I mean “helped frame the rest of the interior walls.”

When the tub and drywall was in and the walls had been painted, the first “finished” thing that went it was the floor. This is an engineered hardwood which will make it more durable to the moisture in a bathroom. I wouldn’t have done this in a more frequently used bathroom, but once the master bath is done, this shower will probably only be used sporadically when we have guests.

(For more info on installing engineered hardwood using this room as an example, check out this post.)

I might have picked a less-red wood for in here, but I used a leftover box of flooring from my old kitchen and  definitely don’t mind the color when considering the $500 I saved on materials.

The next thing I tackled was the weathered white wood on the walls. These are actually new rough-sawn cedar 1x planks that I painted with a base coat of gray and a white top coat. More info on how I created the weathered look and installed them here.

Originally I intended just to put the wood on the wall opposite the toilet and vanity, but I liked the look of it so much I decided to carry the wood behind the toilet and also integrate it as part of the sink backsplash.

For the tub itself, I’ll cover the tiling portion completely as I finish up the DIY Shower series, but here’s how it went down (pictorially):

Tiling the surround was quite the project, and it makes me glad there are only two bathrooms in this house.

At this point the only thing stopping us from having a working bathroom was getting the vanity built, and since I couldn’t bring myself to pay $1499 for from Pottery Barn, I took a couple of weekends and built it myself. (Step-by-step instructions on how that went down here.)

Finishing Touches

There were a couple of finishing touches that needed to be included for the bathroom to be functional. The Ticking Stripe shower curtain was one of them, and then having somewhere to hang the towels. I used a couple of cheap single robe hooks from target for an informal look, instead of a towel bar.

I tried not to be to overt with the “beachy” theme. No shells on the shower curtain or soap dispenser or anything like that. But I couldn’t resist a couple of starfish and this driftwood ornament that was a birthday present.

There are still things that need to be done in here like creating some art for the blank wall, and getting baskets for under the vanity, but it’s usable so it will have to stay as it is for a while since I need to move on to other more pressing projects so that we can actually move into this house.

Until that happy day arrives, if you’re ever looking for me, it’s a sure bet I’ll be soaking in this tub with my eyes closed pretending the sound of a bulldozer in the front yard is actually ocean waves crashing against the shore.

Making an impromptu decision to install the kitchen cabinets last weekend was one of the most fun and satisfying projects that has been tackled in this house for a long time. But of course there is always that one hurdle to overcome that takes longer than the rest of the project combined, and in the cabinet hanging adventure, that hurdle was the corner cabinet.

The rest of the installation went smoothly, and not just because this once I lolled about and watched boys do the heavy lifting. Literally. Although technically because they were smart enough to install a wood board under the cabinet to rest it on, it wasn’t that heavy.

After the wall cabinets were in, the base cabinets were a breeze. We put 1/2″ plywood “lifts” under the bottom cabinets so that once the floor is installed the appliances– dishwasher particularly– still fit under the counters. Alternatively you could put your floor down first, but why pay for hardwood under cabinets that no one will see?

Much easier than holding them on the wall.

The problem was that the workers boys got to the corner, but before they could make the turn and install the final cabinets, someone (read: me) had to deal with this:

These are the pieces that came for the sink base. The cabinet front, a toe kick, one bigass piece of plywood, and two mystery blocked.

There was a lot of head scratching at this point as I tried to determine how exactly this was supposed to be assembled. Did I need to build a plywood frame? Attach the cabinet face directly to the cabinets next to it? Why on earth is that piece of plywood so large? And what the hell are these little blocks for?

I gave up at this point, and even after a few fruitless hours searching on the internet I couldn’t find any clear instructions on what Kraftmaid expected me to do with these pieces. There was nothing in the manual, nothing on the website, and apparently not one other person who has ever used a computer has needed instructions on this.

After sleeping on it I decided some new research methods were needed. In my Mothers condo she has a large corner sink base that I am intimately acquainted with after spending an evening installing her new disposal.

Not that I trust anything that the people who built her condo did, but regardless, after some investigation (which included making my mom crawl under her sink with a flashlight at 8 AM) I determined that the plywood was meant for the bottom of the sink base only, that the face was to be connected directly to the adjoining cabinets, and that the back sides should be left open to the drywall.

Still no idea what those little blocks with the predrilled holes were for, but I decided to get started anyway. This meant a lot of finagling to install the second cabinet adjacent to the corner, so that both “sides” of the corner base were in place.

Then I cut some scrap plywood (4 pieces total) and ripped it down to the exact height of the toe kick.

The objective was to make braces for the bottom piece of plywood to sit on. These were installed with drywall screws to the studs on the back walls, and the cabinets (being careful to install the screws low) next to the sink base.

The plywood base was cut to fit along with trimming 45-degree angles off of the ends of the toe-kick so it would sit nicely against the side cabinets. Unfortunately my first thought was to attach it on the outside of the cabinets, which was completely wrong, so my miters ended up being the wrong way. Luckily I could just install the piece backwards since the toe-kick veneer will cover it.

After the base was in, holding the face in place while it was predrilled and attached to the side cabinets was definitely a two-person job.

It just took a little patience though, and I was left with this.

You’ll notice I also installed two pieces of scrap plywood level with the backs of the other cabinets so that our counter will have something to rest on.

You may also notice that I did not use these two mystery pieces.

And I gotta tell you, I don’t think it would have been nearly so hard to figure out how to do this if I wasn’t worrying about what I was obviously doing wrong because I wasn’t using these.

Clearly I got over it, but still. I’m perfectly confident that what I did will work, but I’m curious if any one else in the universe has done this a different or “right” way.

If you follow DIYdiva.net on Facebook, then you know exactly what MysteryMan said after he helped the dudes unload this veritable sea of cabinet boxes from the delivery truck on Friday. As you might expect, it contained an expletive.

As you also might suspect, I had to tear one open the minute I got home from work.

I am completely thrilled with all of the decisions we made so far on color and door style, although we’ll have to wait another year until they’re installed to see if we aced the layout as well. But there’s no turning back now.

MysteryMan also commented on the lack of knobs and was quite astounded that cabinets didn’t come pre-knobbed. Which the rest of us can respond to with a resounding thank god because who knows what cheap ugly drawer pulls the cabinet makers would leave us with?

Plus it wouldn’t give me the chance to pull my hair out over yet another decision to make about the house. Here’s what I’m looking at:

I originally thought I wanted cup pulls like these rustic pewter versions from Restoration Hardware

But, let’s be honest, I want to be able to buy a stove one day, so I’m probably not going to pay $18.50 per knob for drawer hardware.

From CSN stores, this pull rings in at $6.80 apiece…

And this one also from CSN for $7.68…

Overstock.com also had some basic cup pulls for a much more palatable $2.50 apiece (or $12.89 for a pack of 5)

I’m also not entirely sure that cup pulls are the right answer. All of the bottom cabinets are drawers instead of doors, but the space on the top drawers might not be quite thick enough to carry these, so I’m also looking at handles like these:

Label pulls from Pottery Barn…

At $9 a pop, I won’t buy them, since I don’t love the finishes. And I was hoping for something with expose screws, kind of like this…

(For under $6 from CSN.) Again, not in love with the finish. This one may be a little closer to the mark…

And for a slightly higher price, this is more what I had in mind.

But the truth is that I’ve got a bedroom, a big closet, and two bathrooms I have to finish before I really need to start worrying about this. Which won’t stop me, but helps put things in perspective a bit. Maybe I should go tile something now.

I mean, not the “done” list… I’m ambitious, but I’m not superwoman. Most days, at least. But I can check “kitchen cabinets” off the the list of decisions that have been buzzing around in my head for the last, um, eternity.

For those of you who’ve been following the kitchen saga from lighting choices, to the great black vs white cabinet debate, to the final details about the layout that needed to be hammered out… we finally pulled the trigger.

On Cabinet Manufacturers

So I had some great advice from you all on cabinet manufacturers. Some of the advice was, in fact, not to go with the Kraftmaid cabinets from Lowe’s. While I had priced out the Merillat Master Series as well, really our only other option would have been to go with an Amish cabinet maker.

In the end, we went with the Kraftmaid cabinets, and here’s why:

1. I bought Kraftmaid all-plywood cabinets for my last kitchen (dear god, how I miss that kitchen) and I abused them pretty regularly for four years without a problem. No issues with the finish even though I splashed the sink base pretty constantly with water and the hardware stood up to the abuse of someone frequently using the doors on the wall cabinets to help leverage herself up on the counter so she could reach the top shelf.
2. If the Amish built them I would have finished them myself, which would have taken a couple of weeks to a month after they were built. Not that I’m opposed to the work, but as you know, we’ve got a deadline. With the Kraftmaid cabinets, we can have them here in 4 weeks and install them right away.
3. The original quote for these cabinets was $9500. For the next two weeks Lowe’s is running a special on premium finishes, so we could subtract the 25% upcharge and until the end of the month they are taking additional dollars off depending on how much you spend (we got an additional $1200 off). Added to which we put them on a no-interest credit card so that we could buy them now instead of waiting for our tax credit from the geothermal system.

I also think there are plenty of circumstances in which we would have gone another way. If the rest of the house was done and we were just finishing the kitchen I would have taken a swing at building them myself, but as it is I’ll have to settle for building the bathroom cabinets and the kitchen island. (Which I don’t expect to be any cheaper, if not more expensive, than buying them from a mass manufacturer… do you know what cabinet grade plywood goes for these days?)

On Color and Style

We went with the distressed black, and I am thrilled with the decision. I think the black cabinets with the wood ceiling in our garage apartment is what sold me.

There was a lot of last-minute debate at the door-styles display. Our final options included:

The Kendall:

It says no image available, but the illustration in the background is correct. MysteryMan really liked this one, but it was a 30% increase in price.

The Briarwood:

I still like the beadboard look, but MysteryMan liked it better in wood than painted. We also took your suggestions to heart when it came to cleaning these and that the style would get dated more quickly.

The Durham:

I, in fact, love the Durham in wood tones, I really think the basic mission style cabinet door is underrated. We both took into consideration the rustic/vintage look we were going for with the finish though, and we weren’t sure this would show it off to its greatest advantage.

The Parkhurst:

The Parkhurst is the kind of door you don’t look twice at, which is exactly what I found appealing about it. I like basic, square edges, and not too much detailing. MysteryMan didn’t love the raised panel interior of the doors, but as you’ll see our plan is mostly drawers, not doors.

(As I typed this I looked at our cabinet plans and then had a coronary small panic attack that resulted in a call to the long-suffering Doug at the Lowe’s cabinet desk so that he could reassure me that the cabinets we ordered included four waste bins. It’s possible I’m a little high-strung about this whole thing .)

This ended up being our final answer, and we kept in mind that you really only notice the style of your cabinet doors the first day you install them. After that, like everything else, we’ll probably never take a critical eye to it again.

On Finalizing The Plan

Some of the big questions about the cabinets when I shared my red-wine soaked kitchen plan with you were:

• What to do around the range hood. Cabinets? No cabinets? Open shelves?
• Whether or not some of the upper cabs on the east wall should be of varying height, depth, or glass fronted.

Check it out…

I went with open shelves, which I expect will hold nothing but cookbooks. One of my secret ambitions is to have a place for books in every room of the house, because let’s be honest, they’re there anyway. I think having the shelves with colorful books will help keep the black-cabinet-kitchen from looking too much like a cave.

This was also my theory with the glass cabinets on the East wall. We went through about fifteen iterations of these cabinets: Glass on the outside, solid on the inside, and vice versa, with varying heights and depths for all of them.

What it came down to was that if we made any of the cabinets shallower, they were basically good for nothing but holding glasses. The cabinet designer said he’d never seen a configuration like this before, where the cabinets were aligned at the top and shorter underneath, but what I liked about it was that it opens the working space under those cabinets (ie I am less likely to ram my head into an open cabinet door in that one spot in the kitchen).

We went with plain glass in the doors (no fancy mullions or leaded glass), again, just to keep the room from looking like one big black wall.

And that, my friends, is the last you will hear (or I will think) about this kitchen until we install those cabinets, and probably for a good deal longer than that. I have tile to pick, and closet shelving to build, and showers to finish, and walls to texture, and a builders exam to pass, after all.

]]> http://diydiva.net/2011/01/kitchen-check-this-off-the-list/feed/ 7 http://diydiva.net/2011/01/kitchen-cabinet-plan/ http://diydiva.net/2011/01/kitchen-cabinet-plan/#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:00:37 +0000 Kit http://diydiva.net/?p=2027

So we’re planning on taking the big kitchen cabinet leap soon. Soon-ish. Maybe this year sometime. Or, you know, I might just set up some sawhorses and plywood in there and call it a day.

Lowe’s is running their “$1500 off your cabinets” deal until the end of the month, so we are trying to figure out if we should pull the trigger now or wait until we get our geothermal tax credit in a few months. We’re tentatively hoping for a March move-in date, so…

So as usual, we have some decisions to make.

As a small refresher, I’ve come crying to the internet a couple of times for opinions about our kitchen in the last several months. First, when I was debating between black or white cabinets. (Black won.) And then when I was breaking out into cold sweats over the island lighting situation. (Still somewhat unresolved, but I have this gorgeous double pendant stashed in a box somewhere right now.)

I’ve also met a couple of times with a couple of different kitchen designers in the last eight months, and I fully expect to finalize my plans on Friday. For a slightly terrifying look at what that entails, this is the kitchen plan I’ve been working off of, plus a little red wine soaked into it for good measure.

This really is an accurate representation of what it’s like inside my head; Fuzzy pictures, random notes, and drenched in alcohol.

We’ll visit each of the areas of the kitchen in turn here shortly because believe me when I say, it gets worst than this.

Ironically the kitchen in real life is in a much cleaner and more organized state than the kitchen in my head.

Well… kind of.

The shot above is facing the stove/sink wall pictured at the top of the plan. This next view is facing the closets at the opposite end of the room.

It’s not a huge room, but it’s got an open layout and it’s a fair sight better than what it started out as…

Which was basically a hallway with a strip of cabinets. Just looking at this picture brings back the smell of 15 pounds of mouse poop we found under those babies when we ripped them out. Gak.

I need to cleanse my mental palette now by showing you a couple of the inspiration photos I’m working with:

I really just love the wood ceiling in this kitchen from Elle Decor (Elle Decor, really? I was shocked), but we also toyed with the idea of ditching the wall cabinets around the stove/range hood, and we liked the way this full-tile wall looked.

This house from Country Living also resonated, since I think we’re going with the distressed-black cabinet/ wood island combo.

Up Close and Personal

Here are some individual style elements I’m considering, though I’ve made my mind up on exactly none of them.

Starting with the sink, I’ve got my heart set on one of these convertible numbers, like the Kohler Stages, or the Blanco I just learned about in an article from Joseph @ CFT411.

There is nothing I would like more than a draining pan, built in colander, and a cutting board right on top of the sink.

To the right of the sink is the trouble area in the kitchen…

I’ve had a lot of thoughts about this wall, including: getting rid of the upper cabinets entirely and tiling (or putting stone) on that wall, getting rid of the range hood entirely and putting just a wall of cabinets up there, or making both wall cabinets open shelves for cookbooks and the like.

The image on the far right is my old kitchen (blue tile and stove, how I miss thee). I loved having the open shelves and with black cabinets in the new kitchen I want to make sure it doesn’t look like a cave. A library of cookbooks might be just the thing to brighten it up, don’t you think?

I’m hoping for a big industrial looking range hood to fit my rustic/industrial theme, but I’m trying to figure out how that would mesh with a tile backsplash. Right now I’m in love with the mini subway tile like the DIYNewlyweds used in their kitchen.  I think the brown/cream colors will work great with the black cabinets, but I’m not sure about how that would work with the silver/black hood.

I also plan to have pots/pans drawers flanking the stove. In the old house I was all about hanging everything out in the open, but I find that requires more cleaning in the end. (What good is it to have a pot within arms reach if it’s full of dust and cat hair?)

Moving clockwise around the kitchen we come to the fridge…

The fridge space is built in to the wall. I considered for a while Jenn-Air’s line of bronze appliances, but when I saw this wood door fridge I knew I needed to go another direction. There was also an example in a (currently MIA) magazine of a couple who made their fridge look like a swinging barn door, and that is exactly what I’d like in the new kitchen.

So far this Jenn-Air fridge is the only one I’ve found that accepts a full custom panel and handle (not those ones that have the metal frame around the outside and take a cabinet insert.) It also costs the equivalent of two kidneys and a firstborn child. We could be fridge-less for a while.

The closet end of the kitchen is the wall causing me the least worry…

Because I don’t need to do anything with it right at the moment. The space was made for built-in cabinets, but I think we’re going to end up building a bulkier version of this Pottery Barn buffet/bar instead. I’d like to modify it so the shelves in the back will have glass doors and the depth of the piece is a full 24″ so it will make a nice buffet.

Completing the circuit of the outer wall of the kitchen is the dishwasher area…

There will be two double “trash bin” cabinets on the lower left for a total of 4 bins. We’re in the country where there is no trash pickup, which means everything gets separated into garbage, compost, burnables, and recyclables, and if you don’t have the proper space for this mess it will take over your kitchen. Those two cabinets are the most important feature in the house.

I’m considering a couple of different options for the upper cabinets. Again, I’m trying to avoid a wall of solid black, so I may add some glass into the doors… I love the way fabric was used in the picture to hide the clutter but keep the open feel.

And all of that brings us right here to the middle of the kitchen…

The island is going to be another DIY job. With an attached “table” and seating on one side of the work space, we’ll actually be able to fit more people than if we put my old dining room table in there. Well one more person, at least.

Under the island, I’m hoping to create a built-in space for the microwave and then I’m debating about something like the pull-out mixer stand, or just a really big storage area with sliding shelves for all of those miscellaneous appliances.

The chairs are a bit of a conundrum. For everyday use we’ll probably only have 4 at various spots around the island. Aesthetically I’d prefer bar stools like the CB2 Contact Stool (which is just the right look but unfortunately doesn’t come in counter-height), but for a nice sit-down meal, it seems like you’d want a back on your chair. The Anthropologie Redsmith chairs are appealing, but they also are not counter-height and I really think the high backs would clutter up the kitchen.

Since this is a long way off, I’m keeping my eyes open for the perfect thing.

And that concludes the tour around my brain hypothetical kitchen. With a pantry, two closets, and twice as many cabinets as I’ve ever had in a kitchen before, I feel pretty confident about our storage space, but I have a couple of large unresolved materials issues, including:

• Countertops. Originally I wanted butcher block on the outside and granite for the island. After researching the butcher-block further, I’m hesitant to put it around the sink and over the dishwasher. Other options include the reverse: Granite on the outside and wood over the island. Or some sort of granite/wood/tile combo… tile on the outside, wood on the inside, or granite on the outside, tile on the inside. This is like one of those math problems where you can carry the remainder on for infinity, so I’m just going to stop myself now.
• Cabinet style. I know I want distressed black, but I’m waffling between a traditional door style and a bead-board door style.

• Cabinet supplier. I’ve gotten quotes from a couple of different brick-and-mortar stores and Lowe’s has the best price, added to the fact that I bought Kraftmaid through them for my last house and it was an incredibly easy/smooth process. I’d like to find a half-off internet deal, but I’ll be honest… I’m leery. If any of you have had cabinet success on the internet, I’d love to hear about it.

I will say that even though it’s absolute insanity, I do feel like I’ve got a better handle on the kitchen than on any other room in the house at this point. What do you guys think? I’d love your opinion on anything I’m missing or haven’t thought of yet.

At some point I’m going to want to be able to cook somewhere other than the back yard. Possibly.

And that’s going to require doing some serious work to this room…

So, I’m thinking of keeping the linoleum. Right?

Okay, no. I’m actually thinking of buying cabinets. With the wood ceiling in the great room, and some seriously gorgeous wood floors I hope to be able to afford in the next, oh, five years, I decided wood cabinets were going to be going a little too monochromatic.

I have nothing against log-cabins, but I want more contrast in our house.

I want painted. I want distressed. I want black cabinets. Or white cabinets. Definitely black. Eh, I really like the versatility of the white. And welcome to my brain for the last four weeks.

I’ve been trying to solve this dilemma by perusing kitchen photographs at my leisure. And by “perusing at my leisure” I mean that I’ve started manically hoarding design magazines like an old lady hoards cats. It’s become a compulsion.

Black

This inspirational image is from Hooked On Houses, and I think these cabinets are technically blue. But I can picture them black, so that’s all that matters.

Oh, and I’m in love with them.

And these. I’m not opposed to having a wood island, and in fact I have delusions of grandeur when it comes to thinking I can build the island myself.

I really love the black with the wood floors and ceilings.

But then…. then there’s this.

White

Ever since I first saw this “practical magic” inspired kitchen months ago, I’ve had an overwhelming urge to look these people up, bring my sleeping bag over, and live in this kitchen for the rest of my life.

You just can’t beat the cream and dark wood, with contrasting floors. And that oven that costs more than the foundation of our entire house.

Looks good with the darker wood floors.

And makes a perfect country kitchen. I do live in the country you know. Where there are mice. That make little mice-forts in my shoes. I think the mice would like this kitchen.

Something Else Entirely

So I was totally dead-set on having black or white cabinets. Until I saw this picture and then offered our first three children to have that refrigerator. That range hood. Seriously. Seriously?

I’m not cut out for building from scratch. I’ll take a nice avocado-green kitchen that needs a little paint and love any day. And way less decisions.

What’s your vote… black cabinets or white ones? Or do I blow my entire cabinet budget on that refrigerator and just store the dishes in cardboard boxes next to it for the next, oh, three decades?

As you can imagine, I used the long weekend to my advantage, working 10 hour days between the Memorial House and Garrison Road. I actually spent quite a lot more time at Garrison than I have been lately, because MysteryMan and I have about reached that stage in the “consolidating our lives” program.

That’s right… it’s sellin’ time.

I know the housing market is crap, but it is picking up a bit, and I do live in an absolutely adorable neighborhood. The people across the street (whose house isn’t nearly as awesome as mine… not that I’m biased) just sold their place in two months for $10k more than they bought it for three years ago.

Not that I want to sell this place in two months. Six to eight months would be great. First, because we have nowhere else to live. And it’s not that family wouldn’t let us shack up with them, it’s that half-demolishing and rebuilding a house is enough stress on a relationship, and shit if we’ll be able to add “living with our parents” on top of that and survive it. So we’re working on a plan B. And secondly, it is appropriately terrifying for me to sell my house, and I need to do it in stages okay?

Stage one is getting it into a shape that is, oh, say, hospitable to people who like trim around their doorways. I started by finishing the trim in the kitchen, fixing the big drywall crack, and giving the whole room a fresh coat of paint. And that was just Sunday.

Looks warm and inviting doesn’t it?

(Uh, yeah, that window still needs some help.)

But not bad, considering that when I bought the place, it looked like this…

Yes, there is a word for it…

YIKES!

As always, stories that end up with me demolishing the hell out of something start out with, “What happened was….”

So.

What happened was…

I decided it was time to plan and build a fully functional workshop in the Station. Right now there’s one bench and a couple of sawhorses and plywood set up in a two-car-garage’s worth of work space. I envisioned the way we worked on the roof last summer, dragging the miter saw and other tools inside, outside, and everywhere else on the property to get things done. It’s no good… we’re about to get down to serious work here, and we need a serious work space.

So I sat in the station and hemmed and hawed for a while, thinking of the materials I was going to need to buy to build a proper work bench, and then…

I walked into the kitchen to get a drink.

If you know me well enough, you can almost see the way I stopped in my tracks, cocked my head to the side, and had my eyebrows involuntarily wing up under my hair. It only takes a slight bit of imagination to see the lightbulb going *bing* over my head.

Which is why I spent a good portion of last Saturday in this tiny-ass space, removing cabinets that will become the foundation of our future workbench.

And let me just say one thing about those little black spots you see all over that picture. If my face ever comes that close to the fecal matter of rodents for an extended period of time ever again, I’m finished DIYing shit. I don’t care. I’ll pay someone else to spend 3 consecutive hours in a oversized hamster cage.

You want to know what was under all those cabinets when I* finally got them out.

Yeah. It’s no wonder that I couldn’t remove the stink from this house for the last year.

However. I do have to say that about the only thing more cathartic than chopping off massive quantities of my hair, is beginning demolition.

Ohmygod, don’t you just feel better inside looking at that? I do. It’s totally my happy place, and it was just the kick-in-the-pants we needed to begin the rest of the demo.

And you know what that means?

Removing all of the wall and ceiling drywall in the place.

That’s right. Starting Saturday I will alternately be building the new workshop and removing every square inch of plaster from this house one wall at a time. People, the fun has just begun.

*Okay, okay. MysteryMan came in from his tractoring and provided some real assistance (in the form of being He-Man) to leverage the counter off those cabinets, which otherwise would have been there until the end of eternity. Glue and nails every 1.7 inches? Seriously people, no one was going to try and run off with your yellow speckled formica.