Making a House a Home: Part VI - Design Kumbaya

Every single kitchen remodel I've lived through was filled with surprises and delays, cost overruns and missed deadlines. Not this one. As a matter of fact, if not for a holiday and subsequent inspectors' vacation schedules Joe would have had the project wrapped up a week early! Even the New England January weather pretty much cooperated. Amazing.

Countertops in, appliances going in, floor in progress!

The last couple of weeks were full of banging, drilling, more banging and great progress. On day 16 (!) when the cabinets went in, everything began to take shape. But five days later when the counters were placed, I had the kind of response I'd had when the windows were installed...all I wanted to do was stand there, admire them and run my hands across them!

After that a cavalcade of events took place. Floors stained and sealed, appliances tucked into place, walls painted (another of my jobs), nails driven into heating pipes...OOF, that was a small disaster, but quite literally the only one on this job.

I cannot express how much sleep I lost over some of the choices I made. I also cannot express the relief I felt when it all fell into place. I'd made this sketch to see if I'd like the furniture placement. There were some minor changes but overall I was pretty spot on...except for my wonky perspective.

There's plenty of space to move around the table which extends to seat 8 comfortably (or 10 "intimately"). You can see how great the beam turned out...I did dust it a bit with some vacuum debris to tone down the shine. Worked just fine until nature takes over.

There are still a few more things to do, like have the rest of the hardwood floors stained and refinished to match these. I'm not sure I love what I've put on the wall behind the island, and I miss not having a bulletin board. All very small things.

Before I treat you to the "after" photos I want to circle back to where I began, having a vision of what my kitchen could be and finding someone who breathed life into it. Thank you Joe Cracco of Modern Yankee Builders for making it all possible.

Some Housekeeping

My house has recently been featured in a blog post by a local realtor, Grey Almeida, where you can see more photos of my kitchen as well as some of the other rooms in my home.

Please feel free to visit my Pinterest page to see some of my selections. I have received a bazillion requests for the red that I used. It is a discontinued Martha Stewart color that I had matched at Lowe's. I can provide you with the color mixing code if you're interested. And if you have any questions about any of the other finishes or fixtures, please do write me a note!

After Photos

Making a House a Home: Part V - Go Time

No rest for the wicked, A whirlwind of activity

Joe gave me a six-week schedule. Within a week the rest of the cabinets were gone, a support beam spanned the opening between the kitchen and the family room and I was cozy in my little apartment upstairs.

Imagine this guy in a brushed
brass finish. So happy I
took the risk!

Weekends were spent doing my little "homework" chores. First off was to resurrect my current pulls by painting them antique gold. I'd decided to use three metal finishes in the kitchen: wrought iron, stainless steel and brushed/antique gold. It was risky and for most of the project I doubted the decision but when I found the object of my desire...a swanky kitchen faucet I found on eBay...there was no going back.

Top to bottom: sconce
pendants and
chandelier.

I tried to keep some things consistent. All light fixtures were wrought iron with white linen or white glass shades. The half-circle motif in the sconces informed the half circle globes of the three pendants that would hang in front of each of the three windows looking out to the back. It was harder to find a chandelier that fit the specs that our design left me with.

A small digression: Remember that beam that had to go in to achieve the opening between the kitchen and family room? Well, Joe convinced me to install a deep rustic wood beam there. I was extremely nervous but in the end agreed with him. We purchased an amazing faux beam that I stained (another of my homework projects) and am so glad to have taken that leap.

Back to the chandelier which left me with an interesting conundrum. The table would now run perpendicular to the beam and the chandelier would hang from it. So, first, it needed to have a 5" canopy (that thing that covers the wiring and junction box in the ceiling) and second, it couldn't hang down too far or we'd all be looking through the lightbulbs at dinner or too wide or else people would clonk their head on it getting up from the table. Lucky for me, I found just the ticket at MyUncleBuck.com.  Love the name of that website. All of my selections are on my Pinterest page.

Top: a product sample for testing finishes
Bottom: finished product

I highly recommend the faux beam product. You have a ton of options with regard to design and finish. I opted to stain mine myself to both save money and to end up with the color I wanted.

The product is hollow and, since it's made out of high density polyurethane, it's very light. Staining was easy, the difficulty was getting a finish that wasn't shiny. I attempted to dull the shine that came with the stain but to little avail. I'm planning on recycling my vacuum dust next time I need to empty the canister!

Next: Getting it done: Part VI - Design Kumbaya

Making a House a Home: Part IV - What's Really Important?

Drama in a drama-less remodel

Thanksgiving was a whirl of family commitments, houseguests, entertaining and trying to keep up on holiday preparations. I'd fulfilled my remodel commitments by making all my selections (appliances, knobs, lights and more). Right after Christmas I needed to box up my kitchen, family room and dining room. Every piece of furniture had to be moved into my living room and study. Construction was due to begin on January 17.

A month before I'd be sequestered upstairs along with my cat, microwave and toaster oven, I got some scary news. I might be facing a life-threatening illness. Or, or course, maybe not. Suddenly I was thrown into a maelstrom of fear and anxiety, tests and waiting amid holiday vacations and mislaid test results. I tried to stay away from Google but I succumbed. There was a tentative surgery date the last week of the month. Throughout most of December I had no idea whether I'd need to cancel the project or not.

It's amazing how a little taste of mortality will prod one into not just asking the question "what's really important" but answering it. I wondered how many more times I'd see my children. How many times I'd feel the sun on my back or sleet on my cheeks. Things came into sharp contrast. I wandered outside at night to ponder the stars and try to find my place among the cosmos. And more mundanely, I asked myself "what the hell do I do about this remodel?" I had visions of me having to climb over the cat gate at the top of the stairs in my compromised post-op condition. I wondered if it made sense to spend a ton of money like that. Surprisingly, it made me incredibly sad to turn it all off. I decided that regardless of the final diagnosis I'd keep it going. I reasoned that it would keep me going. I also reasoned that I was nuts.

At the end of the year the test that would tell me how bad it really was came back...eh, not so bad. I rejoiced! Full steam ahead! Surgery still loomed but not with the same dread.

My studio turned into a cook space. A small room with a pull-out sofa turned into my dining/living room. Huge sheets of cardboard along with a kiddy gate prevented the cat from squeezing down the stairs. Finally, Day 1 of Phase II of my kitchen remodel came. When I came downstairs that day some of the cabinets were gone and so was the wall. The transformation had begun.

Even in the murky late afternoon's winter light I
could really see how great this was going to be. 

Next:  What could possibly go wrong?: Part V - Go Time

Making a House a Home: Part I - An Idea

It all started innocently enough

I know that I usually talk about my paintings but something has taken hold of me over the past year plus and it still hasn't let me go. It's my kitchen.

I can't say I bought this house in a state of duress. I'd rather say I was a "motivated buyer." Truth be told, I gave myself one whole week to find a house here and, in hindsight, that was a bit ambitious. I am prone to set unrealistic goals. 

Once moved in, I found the kitchen a bit, um, lacking in certain respects. I later learned they'd taken it off the market for a while to make some quick improvements for sale. Emphasis on quick. I was suckered in by their efforts.

 Sure, there was new granite and a newish stove but upon move-in I learned the original 1985 oak cabinets had been hastily painted, likely over 30+ years of gunk, as I scrubbed away swaths of unprimed paint. Closing the dishwasher for the first time I realized it was never properly installed so it just kind of floated around in its space causing me to speculate as to when it would eventually come loose from what few moorings it did have. 

Yes, it looks pretty good, right? Except kind of like
me in 7th grade, it didn't live up to its potential.
I bought the fridge, the existing was missing parts.

The lovely wall color kind of reminded me of a pale raw skinless chicken thigh. Pink-ish, beige-ish, blech-ish. It had to go.

The offending wall. 

But what really irked me was the wall the refrigerator was on.  Too much space was taken up by the phone nook/desk with mail cubby and a totally dysfunctional wine rack over the fridge (where it would surely keep the wine toasty warm and where only Kareem Abdul Jabar could grab a bottle down for me). I was just barely able to squeeze a new refrigerator in there. It eventually became home to my toaster oven and microwave as well because there really weren't many other options and, besides, who really uses a desk in the kitchen when there's a perfectly good table the room?

I won't go into the peeling cork board or vinyl floor tile with various layers of floor "shine" entombing untold crud and small animals that no amount of ammonia and scrubbing could make better. Believe me, I tried.

For three years I pondered the total lack of space in this kitchen. My last house had a 10'x10' kitchen that had WAY more storage space than this 12'x18' one. I'm a cook so something had to be done.

Give me some graph paper
 and I'm dangerous.

I began picking up magazines at the market. I looked for ways to do it on the cheap. I looked at cookie cutter kitchens. I drew designs and fantacized about what to do about THAT wall. I definitely watched way too much HGTV. Finally I started looking for a true kitchen designer.

The Snag 

I didn't expect what I found, which was nothing. Not nothing really, just nobody would talk to me for maybe a couple of years. I tapped some Facebook contacts, combed the local papers, did more internet research and came up with just a few leads that didn't pan out. Either they didn't listen to my needs or they could only take me half way or, I don't know, I wasn't "feeling the love." Didn't find what I was really looking for until I found Joe's company, Modern Yankee Builders, on Houzz, a website I'd come upon some years ago while looking for ideas for my last house. So while I felt that I'd hit a snag on my way to a new kitchen, I ended up snagging a gem. Okay you cynics out there, no, he isn't paying me to write this blog. I'm giving him credit here because your relationship with your contractor is paramount and I happened upon a good one. Giving credit where credit is due.

It's been a largely unblemished year. Let me take you on a tour.

Next: What's the plan Stan? Part II - The Wonky Part That Wasn't