THE CAVENDER DIARY

This year we are going to buckle down and really change something about our house.

Our master bathroom has been used for storing ornaments, unused wall art, and a smattering of Jamies clothes for almost 2 years now. We don’t fit in the shower, the floor joists are loose, and I’m not really sure if the sink works or not. It’s also the only room left in our house that still has a popcorn ceiling. This year, we have decided, will be the

“Year of the Master Bathroom”

So naturally, last weekend we tore up the kitchen.

I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either. But It just fell into our laps. Our realtor, Andrea, suggested a gentleman that could help us with a few slightly larger projects at the house. Like replacing the front door. One conversation led to another…..and the next thing I knew we were headed 45 minutes outside of Dallas at 6:45 on a Saturday morning to look at granite for the kitchen countertops.

I can prove it, I took a picture of the sunrise…..ON MY DAY OFF.

Once we found this hidden granite yard, we started looking for a kind of slatey-concrete-grey. Since we are leaving most of the cabinets, (this isn’t a complete kitchen remodel; just a slight overhaul), I brought a cabinet door to match the color. Again we are at the mercy of the previous owners tastes…..like birch cabinets. Not something that we would have picked, but we are making them work for us…and they do seem to fit the style of the house.

The only one we liked was barely enough to do 1/3 of our kitchen counters. You can pro’lly tell from my expression just how thrilled I am.

The second granite-yard had just what we needed.

Maybe I should explain just why we were are working on the kitchen right now. This is a pic from the house listing 2 years ago….described as a “Chefs Kitchen”…

Not really terrible, but not very memorable either. The upper cabinets are too short. The light fixtures are cheap…and florescent. When they applied that not-quite-stained-the-same-birch-color crown moulding every single brad shot through the top of the cabinets.

Here’s a shot of the other side that I took during the house inspection…

Black appliances? Seriously? Did he feel a need to constantly wipe off appliances? Who wants to look at the side of a microwave? That refrigerator, that looks like a big black after thought, is too big for the space…the door doesn’t open all the way because it hits the garage door handle. Did I mention that the light switch for the garage is behind the fridge? How freaking awkward was that? Well it was…our friend Chuck moved that switch for us a few months ago. And just what the hell is up with that combination counter/backsplash???

I’ll give you a closer look…

12 inch granite-ish squares with some sort of pine trim that looks like it was mitered by a third-grader, and with a grout line even…I was thinking the same thing you are, why even bother installing this crap? On top of new cabinets?….Honestly.

Let me give you a shot of the Never-Clean-Enough black sink…..

I wiped it down just before I took this picture. Can’t tell, can you? It always looks like that. When we asked our plumber why we didn’t have any water pressure in the kitchen faucet, he said with a sneer, “Try putting in a decent faucet.” Like we choose the plastic faucet in the first place.

Just so you know what the previous owner had to deal with when he moved in (he left a couple of pictures in a drawer for us)…..

If this is what the kitchen looked like during our first visit…we would have kept on looking at houses. The gingerbread, the linoleum brick, the wood panneling….EEWWWW. Those stylish details are there just to remind us that this house was built in 1972. At least the cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. You can’t tell so much from these pictures, but the fridge is just slightly in front of the window. UUUmm …..pretty sure that would have driven me ape-shit.

So we can give the previous owner credit for the gas range…that is definitely a “Chefs Kitchen” feature. The terra-cotta floor is decent as well. Not sure it fits the style of our house, but it hides every bit of dog drool that Harley can dish out. It also reminds us of houses in Southern California…like the house in “It’s Complicated”. The greatest movie kitchen of all time. Hands Down. I can’t begin to imagine how Steve Martin could possibly build Meryl Streep a more amazing kitchen. But I digress…

Back to the counters…

It didn’t take long for the contractors to make the room look like this …

Luckily the old counters weren’t adhered in a super way, and were easy to remove. If your idea of easy involves chisels, crowbars and pick axes.

The backsplash? Well……..the drywall suffered a little bit, but I was planing on digging through it to install cabinet lights anyway. I still have extra drywall in the garage just for patch jobs. Since kitchen back splashes don’t need to be green board, we should be set.

Enough teasing already…..here’s the finished counters.

The guys cut the sink hole on site, right behind our garage in the freezing rain.

And that new sink looks just like this…

This undermount sink was the compromise from a farm-house sink. I have always dreamed of a farm-house sink, but the cabinets would have needed to be jig sawed and reconfigured. We left the lower cabinets…so we got this modern-looking huge bowl undermount sink. LOVE IT !!!! Look how clean the edges are…..you just push counter debris right in. It definitely fits the style of our house.

And the faucet, AHHHH. It’s been sitting in our garage for a while waiting for a new kitchen to go with it. The pressure is sooooooo much better now, and I just love the restaurant look…..It brings back memories of waiting tables in the faculty club at Texas Tech, the first time I ever saw a faucet like this. Of course, when the guys opened it to install, it was used. We bought a second-hand faucet with half the fittings from Ikea. This sent Jamie speeding 45 minutes up the toll road in the rain to exchange it for the only one they had on hand and refused to hold for us…..while the guys just waited. Yeah, that part sucked. Lesson learned. Now we double-check every box before we leave Ikea. You should too.

Here’s a decent shot of the island (really more of a peninsula or possibly a breakfast bar if you sit on the sofa back). The previous owner gave it that slight overhang because he didn’t want to cut ant 12 inch square tiles. We are used to that extra couple of inches of space…so we left it the same size. I do enjoy places to put more crap.

It’s so difficult to photograph/describe the color. Our friend Ivan hit it on the head when he called it “MINK”. That’s it! It’s silver and chocolate mixed together. Very silky and rich……a little milky, a little speckled….with a slight hint of silver veins. Mink indeed.

Next step is upper cabinets.