Kitchen Evolution

Tags

floors, kitchen

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve updated around here. Between preparing for Thanksgiving away and a busy work holiday season  … and hosting out of town guests  … keeping this updated has fallen behind.

We’ve made lots of fun updates in the past few weeks. Ready for a kitchen update?

Here’s what we it looked like when we purchased it:

The first order of business was to open up the wall into the dining room:

Planning on taking cabinet space from the wall for the dishwasher, we needed some more storage in the room. We decided on assembling an island in the center of the room. We used a few cabinets from Ikea as the inner shell, and built custom shelving behind.

Next, we worked on new oak countertops and appliances. 

With the sink, faucet & dishwasher in, it was time for a fresh coat of paint.

Jed installed new island lighting over the finished product – our island with soapstone countertops and barn beam supports. We also decided to paint the ceiling boards white for contrast.

Since that photo in last summer, the kitchen progress more or less grinded to a standstill. We added some art here and there, but the glaring sore spot in the room was the floors.

They hadn’t been sanded or stained in years, and it was high time for a refresh.

As we did with the dining room, we rented a sander from Home Depot — this one wasn’t a belt sander (which we thought would be too aggressive on our old pine floors), and instead opted for a walk-behind random orbital sander. We had to hand-sand many of the dips and edges the larger sander couldn’t reach.

And the end result?

Voila!

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Kitchen Progress

Tags

island, kitchen, soapstone

Well- finally some photos to show some indoor progress! About time, right?

But first – let’s do a little walk down memory lane  ….

 And today…

New lighting, exposed beams, new countertop on both the island and sink area, new appliances.

Another view... obviously we're still in progress, seeing how the drill battery is still charging!

New center island built with Ikea cabinets, found barn boards, Martha Stewart hardware, and Soapstone countertop.

It seats 3-4 people and has plenty of standing room for others. Still working on painting the built-in side shelves.

We love the Soapstone. We were originally looking at white marble, but this was on sale and offers us that matte/rustic look we were going for.

Lights from Home Depot. These were installed from start (no electricity) to finish in 3 hours - amazing!

One of the cooler beams we've decided to use as 'legs' for the island. This one still has the marks of old screws embedded in its side.

 

 

Kitchen Progress

Tags

kitchen, remodeling, stove

Though it’s not done yet, I thought I’d post up the current state of our kitchen — the enticingly almost-doneness of it almost makes me want to pick up a paintbrush right now and get going on a second coat of white. Almost…

You might remember that I’d planned on doing a typical stainless range hood over the oven. I even bought this one at Ikea. But, when we took it out of the box to try to figure out how it’d fit – we ran into some serious issues.

The hole in the wall where the current exhaust was too big and too low, that the hood would stick right in front of your face if it was to be mounted in the correct place. So, we decided we might need to scrap that idea, and perhaps just work with the fan that we had.

Remember the little spice cabinet-hiding the makeshift range hood above the stove?

Behind it lives the black hole, which was covered in a kinda-cool retro faceplace. Except, it wasn’t cool and retro-looking just yet.

It looked like this:

Um… nasty.

Nothing my trusty Goo Gone can’t fix.

Meanwhile, Jed worked on giving the cabinets a coat of white paint. Another hiccup here – I had planned on removing the wood knobs and replacing them with something metal, but turns out they are actually wooden peg knobs, glued into the cabinet faces. If removed (and if damage didn’t ensue), the remaining hole would still be way too large to accommodate the normal screw-on knobs, so it looks like we’re just going to have to live with the wood ones.

And… all clean! Look at that shiny new plate. And that fan motor does some serious sucking — we tested it with some candle smoke and were pretty happy with the draft it created. We’re also thinking of carrying the backsplash around to this side of the wall and expanding it higher behind the stove for extra splatter-coverage.

 I love my new sink and dishwasher. Seriously – such a huge improvement. Now… how to fashion a curtain to hide the storage area?

And… we added a tablecloth to the lovely plywood-topped island for a Sunday brunch last week. One day it’ll be a lovely new stone-slab, when we can find enough time and patience to head down to the warehouse and make a decision…

But until then, we’re enjoying our updates! And … coming soon – the wood pellet stove arrives, is installed (and shortly!) will be running! WAHOO!