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 III - The Tease

One week done, six to go...

I ended up selecting a plan that was very similar to the original layout with a few significant changes. We kept appliances where they were because that part worked and because it saved a good deal of money.

But, I wanted to have the kitchen relate to the adjacent family room in a better way. When the grandkids come over that's where they play and the adults drink wine. So the wall between the two rooms had to go. That created a cavalcade of additional stuff (read cost) like engineering, beams, and flooring.

Click on image for larger view.

There was also a powder room off the kitchen that would have been just odd to leave alone so that got swept up into the plan. And there was a weird door configuration such that two, uncased openings leading into the kitchen were right next to each other. Joe suggested we close the one into the dining room and move it closer to the family room. Excellent idea! Before, it bugged the hell out of me that people sitting at the dining room table had a lovely, direct, view into my dirty pots and pans.

 The most amazing transformation (other than all of it) was Joe's idea to create a wall of windows looking out to my back yard, which is basically a forest. I couldn't wait for any and all of this to happen.

It's still hard for me to imagine this is how it used to look. The wall
on the right would eventually go. Bye-bye wall.

There were many meetings. Lots of budgets. Updated plans and updated budgets. I had homework to do selecting finishes and fixtures and appliances. We planned for a mid-July/early-August start. I don't remember exactly why it got difficult on my end but Joe's life got complicated too. At one of our planning meetings he broached the possibility of splitting the project: doing the outdoor work in the summer as planned and finishing up the interior come January. What a great happenstance that we were both hoping for the same change!

Transformative. It already changed the way I used my kitchen!

So come mid-September, the first huge transformation happened. Joe blew out the back wall and brought nature into my kitchen. I lost a cabinet but other than that the kitchen was the same. The effect was enormous! The first day I came down after the window and slider were installed I just stood there for a good half an hour saying, "amazing!" And it was.

Can't wait until January!

Next: It wouldn't be a remodel without some unexpected stress, right? Part IV - What's Really Important?

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