Kitchen

This shall be a long post. It will update the kitchen to its current status (which is to say we're nowhere near finished). When we bough the house, the kitchen was in need. While the appliances had been updated with okay models, the cabinets were the original hardware from the 60's and were in rough shape and the counter tops were falling apart from poor craftsmanship. The floor was recently laid with new tile, but it was a REALLY ugly pink. Pink? Not for this ax wielding kitty lover.

This is the kitchen when we bought it. This pic is scalped from the webz. I didn't take any pictures of my own before getting started. Stupid man...


So, while imbibing in some tasty beverages and discussing the general plan of attack for the FUTURE plans of the kitchen, my friend just decided to start ripping the cabinets off the wall. Twas a great plan except for the fact that we didn't want to do the kitchen yet. For about a year. However, now that the cabinets were destroyed, there wasn't much left to do other than continue the process. So, with the aid of Super Buffman (who propagated the extinction of the dinosaurs)and my militarily bad ass sister, we tore the remaining fixtures out that evening.


After the apes


Tearing out the tile was something I've never done before. I dragged my feet for a long time trying to figure out how to go about it without completely destroying the subfloor/plywood. Finally a friend of mine came over and just started manhandling it with a crowbar and hammer and showed me the finer point of barbarianism. Two days and many blisters later, the floor was up.



Claire also decided that since we had to put in new tile for the kitchen we should also pull up the river rock entry way and have the floor match. Can't argue, the river rock was pretty hammered on and in poor shape. Only issue was that the subfloor in the entry way was completely uneven. And messy.


Upon inspection, it was discovered that the subfloor was merely 1/2" plywood. It was sagging from regular foot traffic and had a few points of dry rot. This pretty much was unacceptable. So, we cut out the dry rot and super weak sections.
And yes, this is the ass of a bacon worshiper.


I didn't take pictures of the next part, but I added a second layer of 1/2' plywood across the whole floor to bring the total thickness up to an inch. With the hardy-board, cementing material, and tile that floor was plenty solid. We can now have kitchen dance parties.


Now for another part I neglected to photo-document: cabinet installation. We had decided to get our new cabinets from Lowes from an outfit called Shenandoah. Pretty good cabinets and sized out really nicely. We got the lacquer finish and plywood boxes since we would be installing a heavy granite countertop. Coincidentally these boxes were so tough we kept snapping HD screws trying fasten things down. My brother-in-law does this for a living and basically did the hard part. I was a nail holder. We bought our granite slab from a company called Cosmos Granite down in Federal Way and had it shipped out to my BIL to cut to size. He brought it back as pretty as can be and we got it installed. That was a heavy rock. Lifting rocks is pretty Paleo, though.

I decided that I didn't like the support beam that ran through the kitchen being painted. It looked bad and I wanted it to show the wood again. So I stripped, and sanded, and beat the paint off that beam.


Then added a little mahogany danish oil to darken it a bit.

Next was installation of the appliances. We went with new stainless steel everything from Whirlpool. Gotta admit, I'm not as impressed with the fit and finish of those items as I thought I'd be. Bottom draw of the stove sits off kilter despite many attempts to straighten, the dishwasher handle isn't so robust, etc. Not horrible, but not stellar considering the price. Anywho, got to wiring things up.


While trying to get things under the sink moving along, I had an assistant hiccup. The help got lazy.


Fast forward about two months. We've been living in the house for a little over a month and we decided the windows suck and need replacing. We didn't want to do the work on the backsplash if we were going to rip the windows out anyway (which is the plan for the whole house, at some point far far in the future which hold green stacks of cold cash) and decided to bite the bullet and throw up some new glass. Out with the old, in with the new.



And this is about where it stands. Backsplash is on the block, we're just saving up a bit before jumping into that. We've already decided to repaint the kitchen to lighten it up a bit. Can't seem to get it light enough since its such a small space. We have to sand some spots in the walls and touch a few things up. It'll get there, it's that perpetual project I was talking about. Its dark and my kitchen is a mess. I'll take some good pictures once I clean it up and get some sunshine in there. This will be a decent kitchen someday soon!