Kitchen Fun

I was just looking through my blog and noticed that I recently said, "The house is almost all painted. I think another two days or so and I will officially be able to put everything where it belongs." HA!! My house is an ever bigger mess than before. And the reason why is the kitchen.

Here are the before shots of my kitchen, taken when I was doing the house inspection (in other words, that's not my crap everywhere!).




The cabinets are in good condition, although we have since noticed that the cabinets themselves are a lovely maple from KraftMaid, but the doors seemed to be added later and are a not-so-lovely pine. For a future project I'm thinking of staining them darker or maybe painting them white, though I hate to cover the wood since it's in good condition. The countertops are fine. They are actually a laminate on wood, but they look and feel just like some kind of silestone or manmade product. The backsplash tile is horrendous. You can't see it from the picture, but they have seashell "fossils" in them. The floor is blue tile, which again is actually good quality but pretty ugly. And the blue walls will have to go.

I also very much don't like the soffits above the cabinets. Not only do I think that style is ugly (sorry if you like it!), but it makes the cabinets a few inches too low, so they look funny being close to the counter. So... the painter saved the kitchen for last, and when it was time to paint the kitchen I thought, "Why don't we just see what's behind the soffits - maybe it would be easy to take them out. There isn't any ductwork in that area, so it should be fine." So we tested it on the small soffit above the refrigerator. To my delight, there was an actual wall behind it!



It did continue to make me wonder about the decorating choices of the previous owners - they first painted it lime green and then added soffits. But I was happy that they would be easy to remove. So off I went to dinner and came home to find this:



There was only a wall behind that one little piece of soffit. Sigh... But now that the walls were totally open, and drywall was going to be involved, I might as well do it right! So we removed the tiles and the cabinets. This revealed many lovely layers of history.



My kitty was intrigued by the plastic sheeting trying to prevent the plaster (yes, I have plaster walls, not drywall, so it needs to be mudded up now) from getting all over the place.



And the final product:



While we were at it I removed the very ancient and grease-laden vent above the stove, creating a beautiful hole to the outside. This is currently patched up with a piece of cardboard.

(Note: When I say that I did all these things, I mean that I had my new best friend Jim the contractor do it :))



Also, while the walls were open we discovered that the electrical wasn't up to code - the whole kitchen was on one breaker. So you can't really use two appliances at the same time. Code is that each outlet has it's own breaker, so I went ahead and had that done. And then you might as well take out the ugly ceiling light and patch the ceiling, and add can lights. My kitchen is currently lit by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling hole.

And as long as all of this is happening, I might as well move the appliances around, right? The stove is currently up against the wall, which isn't a huge deal, but it is a little annoying to not be able to put the pot handles that way. So I am going to move it over a little bit, switching it with the cabinet that is next to it. Then the refrigerator is too big on that wall, so I am going to move it to the wall it is next to, and make it counter depth. All of this required a few new cabinets, but fortunately I found a hardware remnant place that had cabinets that are nearly a perfect match for super cheap, yay! I will need a little piece of countertop, but that's a problem for another day. Anyhoo, all of this repositioning required moving back the corner wall between the fridge and cabinets. When we opened it up we discovered that previous owners had marked their renovation project there!



Yes, that is a quarter from 1999. I do find it a bit amazing that they were so proud that they wanted to retain credit over the years. I am tempted to write a snarky note below it. And the year is interesting, because I believe that is the year that the guy I bought the house from moved in. So this renovation must have been done just before putting the house on the market.

So currently my kitchen has no upper cabinets, open walls, a bare bulb for lighting, open outlet holes, and missing countertops. All of the food, dishes, cabinets, countertop appliances, etc. are located in various other locales around the house. Delightful! And drywall/plaster dust is super fun to have all over the place. But it is probably a good thing to get this all done with early on and then I will have a very beautiful kitchen!

After pictures to come whenever "after" happens.