Kitchen Project

On January 1, 2011 my wonderful husband began remodeling our kitchen. We had been talking about it for a while, going back and forth about how deep we wanted to go with it, how much money we wanted to spend and the overall finished look we were going for. After much debating, we decided to do a "mid-level" make-over. We would make new cabinet doors, but use the existing units, paint rather that stain wood, new countertops and a new floor. (I had just gotten new appliances the previous year so we were in good shape there.) I bought every kitchen magazine available and spent weeks online looking at pictures and reading articles. Those who know me know that I am a researcher. I had an expandable folder filled with pictures, sorted into categories like floors, cabinet style/color, backsplash etc... I was able to show my hubby idea pictures, then together we tweaked them to get exactly what we were looking for.

After the beginning decisions were made, we started by removing the old bar and all the cabinet doors. (I am happy to say that I survived living in a kitchen with no doors for about 4 1/2 months!) Then it was time to get material. for less than $500 we bought poplar for the door styles and rails, and a product called trupan for the raised panels. We are fortunate to have a very good friend who has a full cabinet shop, so he had access to all the tools he needed to make quality doors. The month of January and February were spent building...building doors, building a new pantry (more on that later), building a decorative vent hood and resizing a few of the existing cabinet bases. We worked on the kitchen every day during this time. Keep in mind that he is also the Chief of our Fire Department and we had a business we had to keep running! He was also able to keep the kitchen functional every day except maybe 4 or 5 days at the end when we were painting. I still cooked dinner in there an average of 5 nights a week. After the construction was completed, we hung all the doors and adjusted the hinges to make sure everything fit the way it was supposed to. Finally the clutter that lives in my kitchen cabinets was out of sight again...but not for long.

When all the doors and drawers were properly aligned, we removed them and began the VERY labor intensive process of sanding, painting and staining the doors and trim. When I say labor intensive, I mean lots and lots of tedious, time consuming, monotonous, pain in the neck kind of work. We started by priming everything and then sanding it smooth and then doing a final rub down with steel wool until it was as smooth as glass. Next, Jon painted them with lacquer paint, we let them dry and then sanded and steel wooled again. Then we painted, sanded and steel wooled again...and again. This process took a little over 2 weeks of he and I working 6-8 hours a day on them. Now we were ready to apply the glaze in the grooves. When he was building the doors, we used a special cutting knife that gave the raised panels extra detail and we used a lot of decorative trim. I wanted a lot of glaze to show so we had to create valleys to catch the stain. Applying the glaze is when things really got tedious. I know you can just slop some glaze on, spread it out and wipe it off...but not me! My OCD kicked in and it had to be meticulously applied to only the places we wanted it. We used his old t-shirts to wipe the excess and found that it worked best if they were cut into 2x4 inch pieces. Bigger pieces just left stray marks while we were trying to wipe. After a few doors we found a system that worked well for us. One trick is that you can't let the glaze dry or the clear coat will make it look crackled, but if you spray the clear when it is too wet it will run. There is a window of time when the glaze is just right and the clear goes on perfectly. The guys at the paint store were very helpful in explaining all of this to us.

After getting all the doors finished, it was time to move inside. Now we had to start the entire process over to paint the cabinet bases and crown moulding.

This is the only period of time when we could not use the kitchen. It was sealed off from the rest of the house with plastic sheeting and the heat/air vents were taped closed. It took about a week to get everything painted, sanded, steel-wooled, stained and cleared. Then we brought the beautiful doors in...and went wow.
With the cabinets and countertops finished, it was time to move on to the floor. I really, really wanted wood floors. I mean seriously wanted wood. I didn't even want to look at tile because I knew that wasn't the look I wanted. However, I live with a hard-working man who comes home dirty most days, two 12 year old kids a cocker spaniel and a cat. If I lived by myself, where my messes were the only ones being made, our kitchen would have beautiful hardwood floors, but luckily, I don't! We found a ceramic tile that looks like wood (don't judge until you've seen it). Most of the wood look tiles I've seen look like cement wood...but not this one. Almost everyone who has seen our kitchen thought we installed wood. I have never been happier with a floor! Every time one of my precious children drags a bar stool across the dining room, every time I find a puddle from a lost ice cube, every time the dog dribbles after getting a drink, I love it even more. How nice it is not to have to worry about scratching the floor with dirty shoes or constantly being on the lookout for wayward drops of water. When its dirty, I sweep or vacuum and run a mop over it...done. I highly recommend this kind of flooring if you love the look of wood but want an easy to care for floor.

The pull-out pantry...I love this!

Spice rack in a pull-out

This is the round bar Jon built. It was a LOT of work, but we really love what is does for the kitchen.

We put the oven and microwave in the utility room, just off the kitchen. This might have been one of the best ideas we've had. Not only did it give me more cabinet space in the kitchen, but the heat from using the oven isn't where I'm trying to work.

Our back splash

The silverware drawer organizer Jon built. The knife tray slides forward so you can still store "junk: like corn cob holders and odd spoons. :-)

We added intermediate shelves to most of our cabinets to increase storage. You wouldn't believe how much this helps with organization. Now we don't have to stack the saucers on top of the plates and it seems like we have so much more room.