Cabinet Doors and the Start of a New Countertop

This weekend has seen several advancements in the kitchen area. I now have all of the upper cabinet doors (with the exception of the two over the wall oven) in place and I have most of the backerboard down on the countertop. I also went to an auction on West Pine Friday night and bought 2 wooden decorative posts, although at this point I've no idea what I plan to do with them lol. I figure I'll eventually find a use for them or, if not, I can put them up for resale in one of the antique stores.

As for the cabinets, I finally finished painting the 10 upper cabinet doors and finished installing them this evening. Some don't hang quite right, but they didn't when I removed them in the first place. I'll have to fiddle around with them to make them hang correctly, but for now I'm just glad they're in place.

In addition, we also worked on the sagging cabinets today. The fix we came up with was to screw a length of board along the back wall of the bottom shelf of the wall cabinets, then screw the shelf to the bottom of that board. It ended up working fairly well; we had bracers in place holding the cabinets up while doing it, and had to go and purchase some 3" screws for the job, but it works!

So now I'll just need to paint it so it'll blend into the wall lol.

In addition to that, we also put down some backerboard along the countertop and the backsplash. Still not sure what tile we're going to put down; I'm leaning towards black tile, but it's not set in stone just yet.

The most fun with that was cutting out the various areas for the sockets and the sink!

While the sockets were difficult enough, the sink posed a special problem. It needed to be removed so the backerboard could slide underneath it. So, much fun was had as my friend crawled under the sink to turn off the water, disconnect the hoses, and then begin to remove the clips holding the sink in place. We were both quite surprised (and fortunately no one was hurt!) when we found the hole the previous owners had cut for the sink was just a little bigger than the sink itself, and the sink fell through the opening! He grabbed it from below, I grabbed it from above, and we managed to avoid having to take him to the emergency room lol. So, once it was out of the hole and safely lying on the floor, we put down the backerboard, and then I crawled underneath to outline the hole on the underside of the board so we could cut it. Here I am posing for the camera while tracing the outline:

You'll notice the sink lying on the floor near my feet. Once we had the outline, we then brought that inwards by 3/4 of an inch so the lip around the sink would have something to rest on. Then, we proceeded to actually cut out the hole, which was by no means easy! Typically to cut backerboard, you score it several times with a razor, then carefully break it along that score line. When cutting out the smaller rectangles for the outlets, we scored it then used a hammer and a flat-head screwdriver to chisel out the hole. For the sink, however, this hole was much larger and not nearly as easy. We started out by scoring around the outline and then using the jigsaw, but figured we could find an easier way. So, we experimented with various things, like using a handsaw (great idea, but ultimately not workable), the chiseling method, and I don't even remember what else, but finally we just went back to the jigsaw. The main reason we didn't want to use that is it tends to burn the backerboard while cutting, which creates a smokey mess in the kitchen (and it was just too much trouble to take the board outback, get the extension cord, yadda yadda), but it turned out to be the quickest and easiest method.

And now the sink is back in place, just kinda floating on the backerboard for now. And we also decided I really do need to get a new sink, that this one has pretty much seen it's last days. But for now, it's in place and is usable, except for hot water. We ran into a problem with the hot water line, and it started leaking, so for the time being, since I wash my dishes in a dishpan anyway, I'll just draw hot water from the bathroom for dish washing.

Here's a pic of some of the sink clips after they fell out of place:

Most were so badly rusted that they just popped off before he could even unscrew them lol. As for the rest of the backerboard, we'll most likely finish that on Wednesday.

And that's been pretty much my weekend. Oh, except for the fact I painted the wooden outlet covers in the kitchen Dust Bunny (the same as the cabinets and what trim is currently up):

Needs a little touch up, I now see, but otherwise looks really good against the green wall. I'm definitely loving my kitchen so far and am glad to see it all coming together as it has been!

Green With...Valspar

Well, I've finally gotten around to painting my kitchen. I narrowed down my paint options to a shade of khaki green called Grandma's Linen, and decided to go with Valspar from Lowes, since that's the company that makes the shade I wanted (instead of going through the whole color-matching thing like I've done with all the other shades). And I have to say, I like Valspar paint. It's thicker than Behr, and seems to provide better coverage. Granted, I did end up getting the variety with primer in it, simply because they were running a sale and that type was only $2 more than the type without primer (normally $7 more). Anyway, when we got to Lowes, while waiting for the paint guy to be free, I perused the other paint cards and found a shade called Green Tea Leaves which just happened to be almost exactly the same shade as Grandma's Linen - but lighter. So, that's what I ended up going with lol. I'm very happy with it too! At first, I wasn't sure if it was really going to go well with the Dust Bunny, which I had decided was going to be my cabinet and trim color, but I'm thinking now that it's going to go very well indeed. Ok, enough chat, here are the pics!

You'll notice the rectangle of white in the third picture on the overhang; that's where I'd put a hole in the sheetrock when removing that horribly-ugly sunflower border. I'm going to fix the hole soon, but don't have the materials to fix it just yet. Close up of that here:

And you'll notice in fourth picture that the counter has tile on it; here's a closer view of that:

Those are temporary only. I was just testing it out to see how I would like the same tiles that are on my bathroom floor to be on the kitchen counter. As you can see, they're too big to go on as-is, so if I go with them, they'll have to be cut. My friend suggested turning them so they'd have a diamond pattern, which might be doable, but I'm leaning heavily towards using black tile. Sometime this week I may go get some black spray paint and paint the formica top of the counter to see if I would like black or not. I'm really thinking the black tile on the counter and on the backsplash would give a very dramatic look in contrast with the Green Tea Leaves walls and the Dust Bunny cabinets and trim. But we shall see. :)

I also went ahead and put Dust Bunny on the door casings for the living room and bathroom doorways, although I saw some very pretty, and very inexpensive, mouldings at Hudson's Dirt Cheap yesterday that would make exquisite door casings, and which I'll probably end up using before too long. Anyway, here are the pics of the two doorways with the Dust Bunny on them (if you can even see it in this light):

And as a final parting shot, I took a closeup of the overhang and wall cabinets:

 

So far, I'm lovin' it! Anyway, that's pretty much it until next missive!

Along Came A Kitchen II

Well, I've done some more work on the kitchen. I finished priming the cabinets (except for the doors - gonna have to buy some more primer before I can do those), the overhang, the ceiling, and the walls. More importantly, I also put the actual ceiling paint up today, so the kitchen ceiling is a finished product!

 The large black thing above is the paint pan; I was draining excess ceiling paint back into the bucket lol and didn't realize it was there when I took the picture. :)

 You can see Maverick in the laundry room doing what he does best (eating).

This ceiling pic isn't great, but I think you can tell it's at least been painted lol.

And now let's get a little upclose and personal with the cabinets:

The first one here is the cabinet above the venti-hood of the stove. And I'm only now realizing I completely missed doing the ceiling of the left side of the cabinet! Oh well, I'll get to it shortly. :)

 The next pic is of the wall cabinets in the corner between the sink and the stovetop.

 This next is of course my small kitchen window and the trim and sides around it. I haven't primed the window casing yet because I'm not sure if I'm actually going to paint it or just leave it natural. Although since I did get some primer on it, I'll most likely paint it too.

 Next we have the long section of wall cabinets to the right of the sink above the countertop.

 This next picture is a closeup of where those wall cabinets are coming apart from the wall and ceiling a bit. Not sure yet if I'm going to worry about addressing this now or just let it go for the time being and possibly replace these cabinets in a couple years.

 And next is the base cabinet under the counter. You can see the electrical wiring that goes to the outlet on the backsplash.

Most likely I'm going to paint these cabinets the Dust Bunny shade that trims out my bathroom. The walls will most likely be one of these shades of green (if the colors come through true, which they probably will not):

 Hopefully I'll make the decision this week on what shade to go with, and hopefully not long after that I can get the paint and get it done.

Two more things to add. One is to show how well the water stains around the vent are hidden now:

And two, just a closeup of my 1950's oven. :)

I wonder if I can ever get that broken glass replaced? Ah well, that's it for this posting! Less text and more pics! Until next time!

Along Came A Kitchen

Hello all! Yes, I know, this is the first posting in a very long time! What can I say, the holidays slowed me down quite a bit! ;) In any case, the new year has spurred me on to get my kitchen going. I believe my last post was with getting the beam in place under the kitchen and then getting most of the plywood laid down on the floor. Since then, things have moved slowly, lol, at least until this week. This week saw us getting the lauan up on the kitchen walls, and even getting them primed already!

So goodbye ugly yellow paneling and ugly yellow clapboard walls! It appears this kitchen has always been yellow (except for however many years the wallpaper was the main feature, and who knows, it may have been yellow too once upon a time!), but I'm definitely going to change that history! I'm leaning towards a khaki green or perhaps even a light green. But I'm not ruling out a darker green or even a brown at this point, although they're pretty low on the possibility poll.

So, in between getting the lauan up and primed and the other stuff I've done, I now have a medicine chest in the bathroom:

And we also put up the cabinet I'd gotten at the Salvation Army. It now graces the wall above the toilet, and looks great (I painted it with an enameled brilliant white) in place!

Finally a little bit of storage in there!

Anyway, back to the kitchen. I have samples of the colors I'm considering doing for the kitchen, so I hung them up on the casings of the doorways going into the bathroom and the living room. Not sure how well the colors are going to look in the pictures, but you can probably at least see the variety and type I'm going for. The kitchen receives so little natural light that I'll most likely go with a lighter shade just to brighten things up in there a bit.

I spent some time cleaning off all that, well, crap I had on the countertop. I threw a good deal of it away, since it was just stuff that I was saving that had come out of the house that I really had no need for, like the round glass globe that came off the ceiling light in the bathroom and the old johnny ring from the toilet. I debated trying to sell the globe in my booth at Marketplace, but it was cheap and ugly, so I just tossed it as junk. So the kitchen started looking somewhat better:

There's still that horribly ugly yellow overhang at this point. Fortunately, when I was priming the cabinets today, I "accidentally" primed the overhang as well. Oops! Although I noticed later that I missed the end piece (the piece in the above pic that's to the left of the oven). Well, I'll just have to "accidentally" get it tomorrow when I finish priming the cabinets! Today, I got the wall cabinets to the right of the sink:

As well, I primed the facing of some of the cabinets, both base and wall, to the left of the sink as well. I still need to clear the contact paper from the wall shelves on the left of the sink before I prime them, and of course gotta get that overhang end. Oh, and you'll notice the lauan just to the left of the oven hasn't been primed either. That's because I'm not sure if it's going to work or not. I put it up yesterday, but I don't think it's quite wide enough. I'll have to get my expert to take a look if he's able to be here Sunday (since Sunday is supposed to be quite a nasty day, he may not be able to make it) and let me know if it's going to be acceptable or if I'll need to get another piece of lauan to put up there.

Oh, and I nearly forgot that I spent a good deal of time priming the ceiling today too! No pics of it (couldn't really tell a whole lot of difference, except for the water stains around the central h&a vent), but that was quite the adventure, at least when I removed the vent cover so I could prime the stains better. I took the cover off, after scraping off some paint from the screw slot, and was attacked! LOL, or I thought I was being attacked anyway. A hunk of dried mud, a little bigger than a golf ball, hit me smack in the middle of the chest and bounced to the floor! When I examined it, I found it was a dirt daubers' (or mud daubers') nest! Only one of the chambers had opened, so I guess the other chambers contain the remains of some dead dauber young! I didn't even think to photograph it, but it's out on the porch, so maybe I'll do that tomorrow lol.

I can't wait to get started on the countertop. We're going to put backerboard directly on top of the formica that's currently there, and then put tile on top of that. It's going to raise the counter by approximately an inch, so we're going to have to raise the sink and the stovetop that same amount. I'm almost reluctant to hide the formica, since it's so retro, but I think the tile will look tons better!

  Oh, on a side note, while I was removing the contact paper from the cabinets to the right of the sink, I discovered there were two layers of it: the topmost layer is of geese (from when that was popular, and I'm so glad it no longer is), while the layer under that was some ugly flowers that appeared to be from the '70's. However, I found another layer in the cabinets on the left side; a paisley pattern that I assume to have been from the late '60's; I removed a small piece and photographed it on my computer desk:

Anyway, tomorrow is a new day, one I'm looking forward to tackling!