Still Working...

Remember this post? Yeah, I definitely failed on that. I didn't even finish the first project--painting the kitchen. I completely underestimated how much work getting ready for my last residency was going to be. Plus, I was trying to write every day, and then I traveled once a week for 4 weeks straight. So yeah, I got busy and slacked off!

The other night, while waiting the usual one-to-two hours to fall asleep, I ran through my mind all the changes I know that I'm definitely going to do or I'm seriously considering doing in my house. The list is long. Really long. And, being the scatterbrained messy creative person I am, my tendency would be to jump around from room to room. After watching my friend Lindsay's significant progress in her 31 Days of Finishing Rooms series, I realized it would be best to "finish" a room, before moving to the next. Now, I don't mean completely completely finishing the room. But all of the projects I currently have planned for that room. I'm not going to plan on spending every day working on my home, because I just got a new job. It's just part time--20 hours a week--but when I come home, I want to spend at least two hours a day writing (if not more). Plus, I'm trying to keep my house clean, and I have to work out, and spend time with Kurt. So you can see how these projects--while important--are not at the top of my list. But I want to make significant progress before summer comes. 

I've got to be organized about this. So I'm scheduling my rooms:

1) Kitchen

2) Master bedroom

3) Guest bedroom

4) Living room

5) Bathroom

Some notes: Living Room may trump Guest Bedroom, if I feel the urge or need. Bathroom could trump all of those, because I really only want to paint it, and it's a tiny room, so that will take me two days. (One day for first coat, a second day for second coat)

I'll post when I start/finish each room. And when I start a room, I'll layout my planned projects.

KITCHEN

-Finish painting trim (this includes buying kickboards for the lower cabinets and moulding for one of the upper cabinets)

-Make curtains for windows and door

-Repaint white walls

-Build trash/recycling bin
-Paint and upholster round stools
-Buy and possibly paint two comfort mats for the kitchen. My feet kill after a few hours in the kitchen (and I want to start write while standing up=better for my back).

So yeah, it's not like the kitchen has a ton that needs to be done right now. It honestly shouldn't take me very long. I'm thinking it'll be about three or four days to finish the trim (break it up into two halves, two days for each half, unless I get lucky and can paint the second coat on the first half and the first coat on the second half in the same day).

It should also be noted that there are some projects I might do out of order, such as building my trash/recycling bin. The reason for that is I have to wait until a Saturday when all the snow is gone from the backyard and Kurt is around to help me with the table saw. So, that project might have to wait for a few months.

Kitchen Wars: Curtains! Curtains!

     Now, I'm pretty sure that's from a movie. I swear, I have a memory of someone in a movie saying that. After someone else said, "It's curtains for (someone)." Does that sound familiar to anyone? Or am I crazy? (Don't answer that second question.)

     So, I've been thinking about the window treatments for our kitchen. We have three, completely square, 34x34 inch windows in the kitchen. And then the window on the door too. Now all of the regular windows have blinds, but not the door. This is important because we get crazy sun on that side of the house in the afternoon. West facing windows + no big trees in our backyard + super intense Denver sun = WHOA MAMA. I love that sun for the light and the warmth in the winter. In the summer? Not so much. Especially since we don't have central a.c.

     I like to visit Joann about every week (which is easy since it's 2 minutes from my house). I would NEVER buy $50 a yard fabric for curtains. No way, jose. (I guess, maybe one day if we're filthy rich, but even then i doubt it.) But I did spy this fabric on sale for half off $20, plus I had an extra 20% coupon (sign up for Joann emails if you haven't already!):

     It is pure perfection, let me tell you! First off: the design is TOTALLY my style. Second: GREEN and GRAY! Third: ummm, I just love it. But here's the funny thing about this fabric: it's indoor/outdoor canvas. So it's somewhat stiff. That obviously ruled out a lot of different window treatments (though I'd already ruled out drapes because two of the windows are above a counter). 

     First I was thinking fake roman shades on the windows and working a working roman shade on the door (since we need to be able to cover it up). But I decided that wouldn't work because even fake roman shades would cover up too much of the windows. See, I like the light (have I mentioned that already?). And the blinds effectively block it out when needed. So I want to be able to see out the windows as much as possible the rest of the time.

     I did some digging around and came up with these two options for the windows:

From Better Homes and Gardens.com

From Budget Wise Home.com

     The first one is more my style. I love the little bow, and I think I could accomplish this without sewing (and with the help of hem tape) pretty easily. But the bottom one is SO easy (click the link to see!). And it would show more of the window.

     But I love the pleats on the first one. And I could hang the curtain (a bit) higher than the window frame.

     But the second one would take me like 30 minutes per window to do.

     So, what do you think?

     And for the door window, I'm thinking some kind of roller-type shade, like this:

from Better Homes and Garden.com

     Let me know your thoughts! And here's a reminder of the windows:

Kitchen Wars: Gray Like My Soul

     Last week, on Labor Day, I painted the walls of the kitchen gray. And such a beautiful gray too! We originally picked a lighter shade, but as you can see in the pics, it was more of a grayish white. That wasn't going to work! The second gray, Silver Spoon by Olympic color matched to Behr's Satin interior, hit the mark. I love how it makes the white pop (even though the beadboard and majority of the trim isn't even painted yet).

     Also, I used Frog tape for the areas I was extra nervous about -- the tile and already painted cabinets. And it was awesome. Regular painter's tape typically does fine, but there were still a few spots where it bled through (onto unpainted trim). I'm a believe in Frog tape now!

     (On a side note: am I the only one who hates Blogger's new platform?)

 First "gray"

 The comparison: first on the left, second on the right.

 First coat

 All done! 

LOVE it with the white, glossy tile.

It was kind of a dark and cloudy day, but this was the brightest I could get all day.

Kitchen Wars: Well Tile Me Up and Slap Me Pretty

     Yeah, I have no idea where that title came from earlier. I'm weird; roll with it.

     So, back splash time! We knew pretty early on we wanted a subway tile back splash. There were a moments of uncertainty, but in the end we both loved the classic and simple look. For a day or two we worried the subway tile and bead board would be too much texture and would compete with each other, but decided they wouldn't. Now that they're both up, we're glad to see we were right. Why? Because they're both a) classic "patterns" and b) white. And there's only one place where they meet. AND I like the play of horizontal lines vs. vertical ones.

     We considered hiring this out because Kurt had heard from someone that doing tile was tricky. We priced out Home Depot and they told us $300 to $400. Then a lot of other, smarter people told Kurt that tile is easy. So guess what? All in all, including a tile saw, we spent about $150 in supplies. It took Kurt a little bit of time, but it wasn't that tricky (you know I was writing during all this!). And it looks FANTASTIC!! I love it so much. Do I say that about everything in our kitchen? Probably. Because it's true. 

Next up: paint!

Date: Ohhh, the last few weeks.

Kitchen Wars: Back to the Closet

     Well, the closet has been completed for a while, and we finally score our washer and dryer! All in all, we spent a Net of about $300 on the set, what with the recouped costs from selling our old set and then rebates. I lurve me some rebates. The washer and dryer aren't even the same brand, but since Amana is owned by Maytag, you can mix and match. Here they are all stacked in the closet where they belong! No one puts baby in the corner, but I definitely put my laundry set in the closet. Hah!

     Anyhow, all that's left with the closet is installing the accordion-folding door. It's the only door that will work with the tight space. 

That's probably the least exciting post of ever, but whateverIdowhatIwant!

Kitchen Wars: BEES? Beads. BEES? Gob's not on board.

     Our next step in our kitchen was installing the bead board. I love me some bead board. Convincing Kurt wasn't hard, but he didn't love it like I do until he installed it. It looks so incredible. Also, he built a wall on the backside of the peninsula to hide the pipes and backs of the cabinets. Cuz those things aren't so much pretty. It still needs to be painted, but since we're painting it white, it won't look that different.

Kitchen Wars: Our "Pantry"

     It's been forever since I blogged about the kitchen! And not for lack of updates. Mostly I've been pouring my blogging attention into my new author blog and my non-blogging attention into school work. Busy busy busy!

     During our reno, we stumbled across sundry extra cabinets in our house and sheds. Including a really tall one!  The tall one was a veritable treasure chest, filled with stuffed animals, camel backs, and kid-sized elbow and knee pads. I used to have a picture of the loot back before our computer crashed ... sigh.

     Anyhow! With all of the extra cabinets, we practically have a pantry! And, as luck would have it, we had an extra counter top. Okay, that sounds strange but here's what happened: I originally thought it would be cool have some open shelving across the new wall we built, so while at Ikea last summer, we bought an extra slab of counter but the less-thick slab. We were going to cut it up and use as shelves. Well, once we got the wall built and the cabinets moved, we realized that wouldn't work. But wouldn't you know it, we had all this extra cabinetry along the back wall that needed a counter top ... what serendipity! We didn't have enough cabinetry to stretch along the entire wall/under the whole counter top slab, so we left a hole to make a little desk like area that will be my writing area. :)

We're going to add molding to the top of the tall one so it looks built in.

Date: I give up. Sometime in May, probably. :)

Kitchen Wars: Staind

(...is a terrible band. Okay, maybe not terrible. They're definitely better than 30 Seconds to Mars or Good Charlotte. But, only marginally.)

So, sink was installed. Hooray! Now it came time to seal the counter top. What product? What color? These are questions that plagued our minds for a whole week. Actually, we'd been thinking about it for a while, just in the back of our minds, ready for its turn. There were a few options. A traditional sealer would not give us color options. It would just darken what wealready had slightly. And then we found another product that had food-friendly stains. We grabbed one of our counter scraps, snagged some stain samples, and tried out some of our favorites. We were thinking of a warm brown, since our floors are warm. And we'd already decided on a warm brown for our walls. We got red oak, red mahogany, gun stock, and dark walnut (not particularly warm, but I love me some dark walnut stain). 

A is the traditional sealer, B is the red mahogany, and C is the gunstock. We really liked B and C, but decided they didn't look well with the floor. And A almost matched it, which we didn't want at first, but decided it was the best option.

And honestly? We're so glad that they almost match. We thought the matchy-matchy would look bad, and if we were going to paint our walls a color other than brown, then it might not. But it looks great! Especially considering the fact that once we paint our walls brown, if we'd gone with a stain, then we'd have three browns in one room. And not just that, but three very big patches of those browns. That would not look bueno. 

So, the sealer we got (no idea what it's called off the top of my head--I'm at work) had a few different "versions." The original sealer, which could be used alone or under a different finish, was extremely shiny, as you can see here. It's still drying in this pic, but it was still pretty shiny afterwards. So then we added one coat (and we might go back and add one more) of a satin finish, so it still has a lustre, but it's not blinding! Especially because we get direct sunlight in the late afternoon.

 And there you have it. 

(Date: February 26ish, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Everything AND the Kitchen Sink!

You totally saw that coming, didn't you?

You totally did. You're so smart. And attractive. (You should totally keep reading my blog.)

Anyhow, as I have previously mentioned, the sink is my absolute favorite part of the the kitchen. Other than the openness and natural light. We decided on a porcelain apron/farmhouse sink. Kurt's coworker gave us the idea (she's thinking about it for her own house and mentioned it to Kurt). After we googled it, we fell in love. And then looked up prices. And quickly felt deflated. On average, $900! The cheapest we found was $700. And then ... Ikea. For $350 a pop! And then when we got there in July, it was on sale for only 300 bones! Sweetness! The day we put it in, I danced with glee and clapped my hands (actually, I don't remember but that's typically what I do when I'm happy). It looked so cool and decor-ish. I'm not making much sense right now, even to myself. But see for yourself!

The faucet is from Ikea too. We wanted something we could pull out (instead of the extendable sprayer you typically have), and Ikea had one. The only downfall, we thought at first, was that it doesn't have a button to turn the water from a stream to a spray. But once we turned it on, we realized that isn't necessary, because that faucet has better water pressure than our shower head.

You might also notice the extra upper cabinet (on the far right of the upper cabinets, etc) that we added. The arrangement up there is actually going to change, because we've found a lot of extra cabinets in our sheds that we're going to use, one of which is an upper cabinet. That will really help with storage space, since we don't have a pantry. Speaking of, we're busy painting and installing all of those extra cabinets!

Also, the dish washer is installed. That's the black thing in the middle of all the white cabinets. It was so nice to finally have a dish washer and sink again! Yay for running water! And exclamation points!!!!!!

(Date: February 14th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: The Main Event!

Okay, not really. I would say the sink is the crowning piece to our kitchen. Because I loooove it. But I was really excited about our counters. And "The Main Event!" sounds a lot cooler than "Counters!" Plus, then you might expect to see a certain lovable vampire on here.

Ack, no. Bleh. via

Much better. via

Do you concur? ("I should've concurred!") (Apparently my computer doesn't think 'should've' is a word.) (I like parenthetical statements.)

Anyhow, counters. We thought long and hard about what kind we wanted. In a perfect world, we'd get some kind of nice, black/dark gray granite. It would look so cool with the white cabinets, and the walls painted ... some pretty color or other. But, let's be honest here: our house is 60 years old (this year! Happy Birthday!) and our neighborhood, while a great neighborhood, is not really a "granite counter" kind of neighborhood. For the most part, it's filled with 50s ranch homes. There are a few $500k+ houses, but I think those people are stupid. Haven't they ever heard the mantra, "Buy the smallest house in the best neighborhood you can afford"? (We did, but couldn't afford any of those kind of neighborhoods.) We didn't want to make their mistake of building over the neighborhood. Plus, we didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on a counter we wouldn't enjoy the rest of our life. But didn't want something we didn't like. Eventually we found a good compromise that we liked: wood! I was leery at first--Kurt suggested it--but after some research found out they're actually very durable, cost effective, and look cool! So we looked around and saw that Ikea had nice looking, thick wood counters for super cheap (even with our flights out to Utah and our moving truck on the way home). We couldn't resist.

They sat in their boxes for a long time (July - February), but when I got home from work one day and saw them sitting on the cabinets, I couldn't help but squeal with glee.

GLEEEEE!

There was still a lot of work to do on the counters--cutting a hole for the sink and deciding on a stain(ish)--but for now, I was pretty happy to just look at them.

(Date: February 12th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Sweet, Painted Cabinets

To the tune of Elton John's "Sweet Painted Lady." Actually, no we didn't paint them again, but in a few paragraphs you'll see the wording that inspired that bad parody.

As you saw in the last post, Kurt was moving bottom cabinets into place. So, here they are, mostly installed! As you can see, we took our galley kitchen and made it into a U-shape. Way more counter space--huzzah! We also pushed back the cabinets on the right by a good foot and a half. Still not a large kitchen by any stretch of the imagination, but Kurt and I can walk by each other now without having to squeeze/shimmy our way past. Huzzah again!

As part of our budget-keeping initiative, the only new cabinets we bought were the two corner units and the sink unit. From--you guessed it--Ikea. They don't match exactly, but whatever. Although, apparently now they do have doors that match our other ones, so we'll have to hit those up when Ikea opens in Denver (this fall! Huzzah x3!). I was going to paint the doors so they have the same painted look (see what I did there?) as the rest of the cabinets. Buuuut, since we'll probably get new, matching doors in the fall, I see no reason to. The difference is subtle, so why bother? (Now I have Weezer's "Why Bother" in my head.) Although, it may end up driving me crazy, but we'll see about that. In the meantime, we do have to paint some other cabinets, so I'll probably go ahead and paint the boxes. 

And now, for the fourth time: HUZZAH!

(Date: February 10th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Lay Me Down

After Kurt primed the newly drywalled walls (er?), he laid down the flooring. We replaced the flooring in the main part of the kitchen due to some water damage from last summer, and then put down flooring in the annex. We just did wood-looking laminate because of two reasons: we already had it in the dining area and office and didn't want to two different wood floors in the same, small house, especially right next to each other; and we couldn't afford to lay down all new hardwood flooring. Actually we could, but let's face it, this house is 60 years old. It's in that awkward stage where it's too old to be considered cool but not quite old enough to be cool again. Don't get me wrong, we love our house. But one goal we've kept in mind with this project is to not build over the house and neighborhood. The flooring looks awesome though. We get compliments on it all the time. And I really love it, because if you get paint on it, you can scratch it right off. That comes in handy for a klutzy painter like yours truly.

Also involved with putting down new flooring was moving the cabinets on the right side of the kitchen (well, now middle of the kitchen).  

 

That plumbing is from/for the sink.

 Then after the new flooring was in, he started moving the cabinets back into place.

So, the color of this flooring is not our first choice. Kurt and I are cool wood people. We're cool color people, too. In case you hadn't picked that up from the white white walls, the greens, the blues. I just love cool colors on the walls and so does Kurt. Both of us get overheated really easily and I think the cool colors keep us calm. I can just imagine myself getting all hot and stuffy in a red room. Ack! Not good!

If we had our first choice, we would've gone with a nice lighter toned wood probably. And then walnut counter tops. And light gray walls. Ah, that sounds like heaven to me. But, we've made do with what we've got. Trying to stay under budget, you know! And what we've got is warm mid-tone wood flooring. If we hated it, we'd replace it. But we don't. We just don't LOVE it. But we like it well enough. Plus, it's forcing us to design outside of our comfort zone (there's been talk of dark, warm brown walls for the kitchen ... what??) and it's been fun to play around with it.

(Date: February 8th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Closet Freak

After all the plumbing was all ready, Kurt built a wall and a man came to do our drywall. That is the only thing we've hired someone else to do. It was just way faster/easier and less messy to do it that way. This was the day Denver didn't get above -3 all day. I worked from home. I really like sitting on my bed to do my work, while Kurt works out in the living area with classic rock playing. It was fun.

After 4 days of work, we had a whole new closet!

This closet is behind that extended white wall in the first two pictures. We bought a stackable, front-loading washer/dryer set and hid them in here. 

It's funny we diminished our laundry room so much, because I loved how big the laundry room (annex) was when we looked at the house. But I'd prefer to have a bigger kitchen than a bigger laundry room. Ideally, I'd have a big one of each, but that ain't happenin' in this old 1400 square foot ranch.

(Date: February 4th, 2010)

Kitchen Wars: A Missed Opportunity

The next step was tearing out the carpet so we could get everything ready to lay the new flooring (or so we thought ... more on that later). Kurt was still working at this point, not busy or anything, but usually getting home around 7 pm as usual. So, over the next few weeks we ripped out the baseboards, carpet, padding, and tack strips. Then we discovered that the sub floor in the annex had a small ramp leading to the doorway in the kitchen. You see, we theorize that the annex was once a patio that got closed in. One big clue was the insulation we found in the wall between the kitchen and the laundry room. (Note: I use annex and laundry room interchangeably to denote the same space. In case you're all confused and what not.) Well, that ramp would certainly not do! So Kurt chiseled it out, making a big ol' hole in the subfloor. Then he patched it up.

The next day I realized we missed a great opportunity: we should've put our dogs' paw prints in the cement. How fun would that have been? Seriously, more fun than a barrel of tacks. 

Somehow, I don't think Ruby (left) or Swift (right) would've enjoyed it as much as I would have.

(Date: January 20th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: And then, we waited...

Kurt made a little bit of progress through the middle of July. Mostly just tearing out insulation. At the end of July, we hit a road block that lasted through the middle of September: Fall Busy Season. Kurt used to work in public accounting doing taxes, and many corporations and individuals file for extensions on their taxes, pushing their deadlines back to September 15th (or October 15th for individuals). None of that is remotely interesting, except for the fact that it halted progress on our kitchen! After that, it was kind of out of mind. Plus, Kurt was still fairly busy with work. Still, by the time we left for Christmas, he had re-routed all of the light switches and outlets in the wall.

We were in Utah for a week for Christmas, then I went to my residency for my grad program on the east coast. While I was there, I got an email from Kurt with the subject line, "Well, there goes the wall." When I took a gander at the attached photos, I couldn't believe me eyes!

(Look James, not only did you make the blog again, but in a picture this time!)

I was geeking out! I showed everyone: my friend Lindsay who was sitting next to me when I got the email, all of my siblings and my parents (forwarded the emails to them), and maybe a few classmates as well.

When I got home a week later, Kurt led me through our front door and over to the kitchen with my eyes covered. When he removed his hands, I geeked out some more. It looked so amazing! 

Now the kitchen reno felt so much more real and I was so excited about it again!

(Date: July 2010 - January 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Demolition Day

At some point during our first year in the house, we decided to expand our kitchen into the laundry room. From there, we spent a lot of time pouring over design blogs and magazines, trying to decide what kind of counter tops, kitchen, etc., we wanted. When we had decided, we planned a special trip to Ikea in Utah to get counter tops, sink, faucet, and cabinets. Even flying to Utah and renting a moving truck to haul it all back, we still saved a ton of money. Yeah for Ikea! The day of the big shopping trip was July 5th.

And on July 10th, Kurt started his demolition!

(Date: July 2010)