renovation – Archives – Page 22 of 25 Plaster & Disaster

Now that we’ve officially looked back on our biggest disasters of 2015 and looked forward to all the DIY blog trends in store for us during 2016, it’s time to kick off some big projects! Today I have some super juicy content for you. And by “juicy content,” I mean I’m going to ramble about thoughts in my brain that mostly involve shopping for pants, and then I am going to awkwardly segue into talking about the kitchen renovation that I’m getting ready to kick off (because the blogosphere needs another kitchen renovation).

Before I start talking about pants and you click away, though, I want to mention that you should be sure to tune in for our Friday post and next week because something incredibly exciting is happening: we’re celebrating our one year blog anniversary (which I refuse to call our “bloggiversary,” even though I love portmanteaus)! We have so much queued up for you: joint projects, dueling projects, snark, answers to questions you didn’t ask, and more. MORE!

Okay, having dispensed with the requisite teaser, on to the pants. So, not only is it a new year, but it’s also the month in which I turn 30. Which I’m not really freaked out about — I’m excited for my age to finally make my level of introversion and homebody-ness more acceptable, and I feel great about what I’ve accomplished in life so far. I mean, I have a blog, how could I not feel like a total success?

Nevertheless, I do like to set goals for myself and I wanted to be sure I set some extra ambitious goals for this year. Here’s the list I made for myself:

I feel pretty good about most of the list. I’m already registered for the Boston Marathon and am solidly into training (it’s on April 18th), the ultramarathon (my first!) will be tough but I have confidence that if I train for it I can do it, and the two Ragnars are easy to slot into my training for Boston and the ultra. On the kitchen renovation front, I have a plan (a plan that I will be sharing with you today).

But guys, the pants. I am honestly not sure if this is an achievable goal. I currently have two pairs of pants I wear to work, and one of them is black skinny jeans (I’m an adult professional I swear). It really isn’t for lack of trying — I’ve gone pants shopping three times in the last two weeks alone, and so far all I’ve bought is sweatpants…which apparently doesn’t count. I’ll obviously be keeping you posted as this odyssey unfolds. It’s going to be an exciting and challenging year!

Okay, so now for the awkward segue to my kitchen renovation. I know that pretty much everyone and their mother is blogging about a kitchen renovation these days, and I can’t promise that mine will be the most creative, flashiest, or fastest moving out there. Here’s what I can promise you:

I will share every budget detail, in case that’s helpful as you scope and plan your own renovation
I will drone on about every tiny detail of product choices and the thousands of hours of research I did to make each individual decision, again in case that’s helpful
There will be zero sponsored content, so no element of the renovation will include free products or compensation
I will be using the brad nailer that Naomi got me for my birthday ISN’T SHE THE BEST?!?!

If that sounds interesting to you, I look forward to embarking on this journey with you! If that doesn’t sound interesting, frankly I’m surprised you stuck it out through the pants story (if that can even be called a story).

For the few of you still reading, I wanted to use this post to tell you about The Plan for The Kitchen. First of all, you might be wondering why we need to renovate at all. I mean, the room is already spectacular.

Lilac walls, blue counters, a window to the outside, a window to the inside — what more could this room need?

Some of our early readers might remember when I asked Naomi for advice about decorating our sunroom, and she did some awesome mockups that suggested I paint the room turquoise (which is always a winning plan in my book). Well despite what she proposed, she shortly thereafter informed me of her new plan for my sunroom, and she’s been steadily championing it ever sense. It involves knocking down the wall between kitchen and sunroom to create a big eat-in kitchen:

And even though I initially thought that knocking an opening into the wall between the kitchen and living room was the way to go, Naomi has totally worn me down won me over. I love the sunroom because of the great light it gets, but it’s an underutilized space which means we totally don’t enjoy all that great light. Meanwhile, our kitchen is rather dark, the table in there is cramped, and we have no actual dining room.

The offending wall is the former exterior wall of the house (the sunroom is an addition), so is most definitely load-bearing. Therefore, we need someone with more expertise than we have to help us (most other aspects of the project I plan to do myself). I’ve finally rounded up a few contractor estimates and we’re comfortable enough with the price tag to move forward. We haven’t settled on a final timeline and plan yet so the budget details are in flux, but we’re probably looking in the range of $4-5K to remove the wall, put in header and columns, repair the floor where the wall used to be, and relocate electrical as needed. We’re still figuring out how much more we will budget for the rest of the project — I’ll keep you posted!

In the meantime, let’s look at some mockups I did (I used IKEA’s kitchen planner because I was too lazy to use Sketchup, so I was limited by what IKEA carries — but it’s a good approximation).

Here’s how the floor plan would look (former sunroom is the left portion):

Looking into the former sunroom-turned-dining area, with the kitchen beyond that:

And the main kitchen area:

As all the question marks suggest, there are clearly some big unanswered questions.

And lastly, we’re planning a large storage wall that will replace the buffet, taking the space from this:

To this:

To be clear before anyone freaks out, the only place where I’m proposing open shelving is above the “Command Center/Landing Zone” (ie place to put our keys and spare change) — our dishware and foodstuffs are not nearly attractive enough for open shelving in the rest of the kitchen.

So in summary:

Knock down load-bearing wall, replace with beam and half wall to form breakfast bar (and columns as needed)
Turn sunroom into eat-in dining area with built-in benches
Storage in corner by entryway
Island
Maybe replace microwave with range hood
New wall of cabinetry
New fridge and relocated fridge
Paint all cabinets
New backsplash
New counters (perhaps two tone, ie something durable for the main cooking counters and butcher block/wood for the others)
Paint all walls
New lighting as needed

I’m projecting that it will take many many (many) months to do these projects, especially since they don’t play so nice with my other 2016 goals that involve spending huge swaths of my free time running (apparently training for an ultramarathon involves running 3-4 hours on Saturday and then 3-4 hours again on Sunday, plus 3 midweek runs…Naomi is not loving this development). Despite all this, I would bet good money that I finish this renovation before I find the right pants.

So, what are your 2016 goals?

(Sharing at Weekend Retreat Link Party and Tip Me Tuesday)

I can’t provide you with kitchen updates since I’ve never actually provided you with… well, anything much about my kitchen at all. To tell that story, let me take you waaaay back to see our house when we bought it. Back then, the house we love so much was bursting with the wrong kind of character. The walls were various beiges, the wall-to-wall carpeting throughout was shaggy green, and everything was coated with stale smoke and grime.

However, the kitchen was a brighter spot… because it was entirely yellow.

Yes, that is a laminate counter, backsplash, and floor all in different shades of yellow. Try not to get too jealous.

These were not the only features. We had handles in the middle of the upper cabinet doors, a wall cutting the room off from the rest of the house, and awesome boxy window cornices.

Even though we really wanted to MAKE ALL THE CHANGES right away, we prioritized other things in our renovation. Full kitchen renovations are expensive, and there were some things that we needed to do (like replacing leaky windows) and some things that we thought were more important for our enjoyment of the house (like an open floor plan and new floors).

It was also a mindshare issue: we had so many decisions to make about the house as a whole and didn’t have time or energy to plan our dream kitchen. And this is a room I want to get right.

Instead, we decided on a half makeover, where we would take advantage of some of the things we were already doing in our renovation and make some affordable or temporary fixes, but leave a lot of the projects for later when we have the time to really figure out what we want.

Fortunately, a lot was already going to be taken care of during our renovation. As part of creating an open floor plan in the front of the house, we were already tearing down the interfering wall between the kitchen and the dining room, solving the problem of the room feeling so cramped, dark, and isolated. (If you want the full story, you can check out my full post about my renovation.)

Rather than a small kitchen with a single window and a cramped formal dining room, we now think of this space as a luxurious eat-in kitchen with light from all sides.

We were also already installing new bamboo floors throughout most of the house, and it made total sense to tear out that orange and brown vinyl floor and run the bamboo through into the kitchen to go along with the open flow. (Bamboo flooring is pretty durable, and also naturally mold-resistant, so it is not a bad choice in a kitchen.)

But even with these major changes already taken care of, we still had the old-but-mostly-working appliances, the yellow counter and back splash, the chipped and scratched cabinets with handles in the middle of the doors, the vinyl baseboards, the leaky faucet, the boob lights, ugly sink, beige door, grayed vinyl replacement window, and beat-up trim and window cornice.

I’m getting stressed out just thinking about it.

We figured out what on that list we could live with, what we could take on now, and what we could chip away at through affordable upgrades or DIY projects over time.

The “live with” list included the appliances, cabinets, cabinet hardware, lighting, and sink. Why? They all work. We like the current layout and storage options, so we’re not sure yet whether we’ll replace the cabinets or just paint and upgrade the ones we have when we finally do a big renovation. And as much as we’d like shiny, new, efficient appliances, ours are working fine (besides a leaking dishwasher which we were able to get fixed). Plus, waiting has the added benefit of allowing us to hold out until we switch from oil to natural gas, so we can eventually get a real gas range instead of electric like we have now.

We also decided we could live with the gray vinyl replacement window so long as we took down the cornice and replaced the old trim to match the new stuff we were having put up in the other rooms through the renovation. It cost virtually nothing to add this on to the existing scope of work.

However, we chose not to live with the yellow counter and backsplash. We were already doing a lot of demo in the renovation so it was no problem to have the old ones taken out with the rest of the trash… leaving us with this when we moved in:

Kitchen when we moved in - Plaster & Disaster

You can just ignore my post-it note kitchen unpacking and organizing system, thanks.

It’s open! And look at that beautiful floor! And lovely blue paint color! But where’s the counter? We lived without one for about a month. It sure made unpacking and organizing easier (hello, open drawers) but it was a total pain for everything else… like cooking. Even worse, the dishwasher couldn’t work without the support of the counter, so everything had to be washed by hand in small batches (because there wasn’t a lot of surface to lay them out on).

After much thought, we chose to go with laminate counters. As much as I LOVE the look of wood or marble, I am not prepared to take on the maintenance. I prefer a counter that does not pick up stains or need water to be wiped up right away. Personally I think it is a good trade off to just avoid putting hot pans down on the surface.

Also, laminate has come a long way from that bad-imitation-of-wood-grain-with-a-persistent-brown-edge that you are all imagining right now. We got ours with a clean beveled edge, in a dark gray with blue undertones and a bit of shine. It’s from Lam-Art.

For the backsplash, we weren’t ready to replace it with something permanent like tile until we knew what we were going to do with our cabinets. I considered just painting it, but the surface was in too bad of shape, and I don’t love that look anyway. So I decided to try a DIY solution.

I considered fabric like Sage used on her stairs, but that would have gotten too messy in a kitchen, and setting it behind glass or fiberglass would have been just as involved/permanent as tile. Instead, I installed a temporary backsplash using renters wallpaper in a tile pattern.

I love how it turned out. A full tutorial on that is coming up next week! (Update: here!)

We also replaced the faucet – the old one was leaking and looked like it was on its last legs. I really wanted a cool commercial style faucet like this one.

However, the Advisory Committee (Brad) was not interested in that industrial look. But this might be one of those mythical cases where “compromises” are a “good thing.” We ended up with a faucet that we love, that is probably better suited to the overall style of our house.

Grohe Starlight Chrome Concetto Single Handle from Faucet.com - Plaster & Disaster

Via Faucet.com

At the time we bought this, it was priced at more like $200 – not cheap but not unbelievable. With the good quality and the simple and modern shape we’re confident that we’ll have it and love it for the long haul.

(What, you noticed? Yes, our plumber did install it the wrong way, with the control pointing toward the middle of the sink. That doesn’t make it any less beautiful. We’ll try to fix that eventually, but for now it doesn’t really bother us.)

So what did all this get us? Here is our kitchen today!

Not perfect, but it is bright and open, with natural light coming in from two sides and our bamboo floors flowing right into the dining area. The openness makes a huge difference in how much we enjoy the space. Just take a look at how much the “view from the kitchen” has changed!

And no one is sad to see that yellow go away. The counters look a bit bluer in these pictures than they really are – they are really more of a slate than a blue. The color looks pretty good with the tone of the cabinet wood, actually. If only they were in better shape, with different handle placement!

The backsplash really brightens up the room, and I love that it brings in a lot of the bright colors we use throughout the house – yellow, red, and blue – in a way that is not overwhelming. It fits in with our house, but is actually a little calmer in comparison.

However, as much as I love it, I cannot claim the space is done – not even for now. I definitely need to get off my butt and paint the baseboards, which are currently showing splotches of glue from where we tore out the old vinyl ones. It would take me like 5 minutes to just do this, and it would make such a big difference.

Also on the “short term” list is a change of lighting. When we finally pick and install our dining room chandelier, I also plan to replace the living room light (currently a temporary open bulb) and the two kitchen lights. I’d like to do a schoolhouse style flush mount for the central lights in the living room and kitchen, and then pick a cool pendant for over the sink.