New Appliances

Posted by James on April 3, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , . 11 Comments

We discussed buying new appliances.

It was agreed that we definitely didn’t NEED any new appliances…..that it was entirely a “want” situation.

Since we had been aiming all our cash towards this kitchen upgrade, we just didn’t have the extra funds for new appliances right now. Maybe in a year or two.

With Jamie out of town, I thought I would surprise him and buy a new stainless range the old-fashioned American way……..on credit. By “Surprise”, I meant that the shiny new range would just be sitting in the kitchen when he returned from his trip….weather he thought we needed a new one or not. It honestly never occurred to me that if I listed him as a credit reference that the store would actually call him.

Of course they did.

So much for the surprise…..

This Samsung range has everything we could need; a convection oven, 5 burners – including a huge one in the middle for making paella (like that will ever happen…but it could), it’s self-cleaning, and most  importantly…It LOOKS cool. All stainless sleekness with a touch of industrial restaurant. And it’s WWWAYYYY cooler than what we have been cooking on/with for over 2 years.

This was the range of our dreams, if Viking had never been created…..or Smeg…….or Meile…..

Actually, this was the “In-Our-Price-Range” of our dreams.

Now for the drama….I’ll try to condense it to bullet points…

  • The delivery was set for 9 am, they showed up at 8:15 PM
  • The delivery truck clipped a power line and knocked out the power for the entire neighborhood
  • We called 911
  • The delivery guys couldn’t connect the gas line in the dark, so they were going to bring it back some time in the next week
  • We weren’t having that
  • They left it in our living room
  • We tried to connect the gas line ourselves
  • I smelled gas
  • We aborted the plan to connect it ourselves
  • The delivery company couldn’t connect the gas line for several days
  • Jamie went to the appliance store to ask the store manager for help in person
  • Jamie returned with a matching dishwasher that she sold him

Here’s the new range sitting in our living room. Almost made it to the kitchen….

Here’s the new dishwasher also sitting patiently in our garage…

Enter our friend Jimmy, who had the old dishwasher yanked out and the new one connected in about 10 minutes.

The range , after several phone calls, was finally properly connected to the gas line Monday afternoon……

Just look at “The New Hotness”!

We celebrated with chocolate chip cookies.

“And what became of the “old” black appliances?” you ask. We donated them to Habitat For Humanity….they even picked them up. That was the easiest part.

A Little Under Cabinet Lighting

Posted by James on March 28, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , , , . 6 Comments

We thought a little light under the new cabinets would be a crowning touch to our remodel.

These “puck lights” from Home Depot ( We bought white ) are meant to be plugged in, but we cut the cords and hard-wired them to a dimmer switch by the sink. Way more chic than plugging everything in like caveman.

This wasn’t easy, but very necessary. My brother Ben helped us do the wiring. Before we hung the cabinets, I ran a length of cable up each wall and into the attic. While Ben was working on connecting the lights under each cabinet, I was up in the attic….on my belly….in the insulation……twisting all three cables together. Ben made the puck light connections behind each electrical outlet, so there are no wierd mounted boxes.  I think this was just brilliant. ‘Course we did ALL this before we put up the tile.

Here’s what they look like …

Pretty Cool, Right?

Just love them, but I didn’t want to see them while we are sitting at the table. So we built trim for under each cabinet with select pine strips.

I put the chop saw to work on those 1×2’s and then gave everything a spritz with satin glaze. Remember that Ikea didn’t make trim in our birch color? This is as close to the cabinet color as I can get. I assure you, it looks way better in person than the pictures seem to reveal.

I laid everything out under each cabinet before screwing all the pieces in place. There’s nothing greater than a well-mitered corner.

When I was finished, they looked like this. Now, keep in mind that I was practically laying on the floor when I took this picture. You can hardly see the pucks from any normal angles.

Here’s a “normal” angle. I suppose this is also a pretty good shot of the new range and vent-a-hood too…More to come on those later….

Grout That Tile Backsplash

Posted by James on March 21, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , . 1 Comment

Now for grout.

We picked 3 that we thought would work, (a lite one, a medium one, and a third that I just knew was way too dark.)

I made a sample board with the 3 grouts…

Here they are dried…and whiped clean

Pretty obvious isn’t it? Yeah, we went with the dark one. “Earth”. Our new grout is called “Earth”.

So, off to the Home Depot for more grout…If you have been paying attention these past few months, you might think that we are sponsored by the Home Depot….as often as we plug them. But in reality, there is one about 1/4 mile from here. Sounds strange, but that really was a vital part of deciding on a house in this neighborhood.

About 3/4 of the way through grouting, my brother called to tell me to make sure I get UN-sanded grout.

HHHmmmmm,

Guess what kind I was using?

You guessed it. You and I both know that I was using sanded grout.

He said unsanded would be easier to push between all the teeny tiny cracks…..I had already solved that issue…….. with a pastry bag.

And my brothers think I’m a “pansy”…showed them, all right. Would a pansy think to grout tile with a pastry bag?

 I   think    not.

Jamie was out of town, so working alone I was almost finished in a day……Here’s what it looked like that night….

In the light of day, it looked more like this…

As with every other decision we have made with the kitchen so far…..WE JUST LOVE IT….

Tile Backsplash

Posted by James on March 17, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , , , , . 6 Comments

We didn’t even know what we wanted..SO we just grabbed one of everything that we thought might work…..

A couple mixed glass mosaics, subway tiles in stainless and cream ceramic, a solid khaki glass square…and some travertine modern looking slim tile, “La Crema Bamboo”  The last one was displayed on a board in the Home Depot parking lot. There were way more tiles, WAY MORE, that we played with in the stores…..these were our top choices.

We threw them all down on top of the new counters, along with a new brushed stainless switch plate cover and some “Fawn” paint chips….

Funny thing, I was leaning towards stainless subway tiles…till I saw it all together…then it was obvious. The travertine won, hands down. In a weird way, it has all the colors of our kitchen in it. The “Mink” counters, “Birch” cabinets, and even the Martha “Fawn” walls…..they’re all in there. AND it looks great with the stainless. Again, it’s way more modern than I would have ever expected our tastes to be, but still kinda Mid-Century.

Y’all may remember that the old backsplash was a little “cough” difficult to remove, and left a few nasty craters in our walls. Jamie sawed and patched drywall all week. ‘Till our walls looked like quilts……

This seemed a heck of a lot easier than replacing all the drywall completely. The jury is still out on that decision.

Did I mention the problem with the tile we picked?

NO?

Ohhh, well there was problem with the tile we picked. ‘Natch….

We were at Home Depot picking up everything we needed for under-cabinet lights and Jamie wanted to just go ahead a buy all the tile we would need. By our completely uneducated guesses, that would be about 40 square feet. ( 20% more than our estimate, which everyone suggests )  Not really that much, even taking tile all the way up the cooktop wall. I thought it was silly to buy it already, we didn’t really need it ’till after my brother and I did all the electrical, which didn’t look like it would be anytime soon.

Remember how H-Depot had piles of our tile in the parking lot only weeks before…..now there was only 2 squares left. We needed 40. This sent Jamie, once again, speeding to outlying H-Depots to collect the 38 more tiles that we needed.

He got it, of course, or this would be a really short post..

Neither of us has ever applied tile before. Everything we know about tiling back splashes we learned from streaming the DIY channel for 12-18 hours every weekend. On Kitchen Crashers it takes the trained team about 3 minutes to do an entire kitchen. When I called my brother Ben to ask how much mastic we would need, he said, “I’ll be right there”.  In about 20 minutes he was pasting up the inaugural tile, and leading the way through the rest of the room.

We managed to get this whole side done before we paused for a steak dinner at my favorite “Plastic Cow” steak restaurant in Dallas. Dunston’s, where the salad bar is nothing but iceberg lettuce, canned beets, and 30-year-old crutons fried in butter. Dunston’s

We managed to finish the other side by midnight.  We started out cutting with tile clippers, but eventually rose clippers became the easiest way to snip the tiles. I know, I know, weird but true. My brothers are both here to constantly remind me how “gay” of a handy-man I really am. But ya know what? The rose clippers worked like a dream.

All those little pieces were a curse and a blessing to cut and piece in. But it was well worth the effort…..In the light of the morning it looked like this.

That yellow cable jutting out of the wall is the power for the seXXXy new vent-a-hood….that comes later.

I know, It looks great!! We love it ……..in almost an unnatural way.

Kitchen Cabinets Are Hung

Posted by James on March 12, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , . 4 Comments

The kitchen cabinets are hung. (and it only took 4 freaking trips to IKEA.)

We agreed early on in this process that we would keep all the lover cabinets. As far as we can tell, they were installed pretty recently, and truth be told……there’s really nothing wrong with them. Neither of us is a thousand-aire, or even a hundred-aire, so every cost-saving bit will help.

We didn’t know how easily they would come down, hopefully intact because we have plans to use them in the garage. Jamie started by removing the inside shelves and the doors.

Of course, they were slightly attached to the wall with a few little dry wall screws…some of which were actually in studs. I’m amazed that they hadn’t collapsed in a heap from the weight of all the Fiesta dishes.

I have wanted to do this somewhere in the house since we moved in. We finally got the chance to write a good will message for the future. I’m pretty sure that when someone finally does bulldoze this place…no one will ever see it. But it seemed like such a great thing to do. Before we installed the first cabinets, we wrote on the wall in sharpie….

“Jamie & James

Remodeled this kitchen

exactly 2 years after buying her.

We love this house

2-26-2012

James & Jamie & Harley”

I’m so glad that we remembered to do this.

Now for the story off the Ikea cabinets. They are a very simple install, they hang on a bar, so all you need is a level and a basic knowledge of where the studs are. Here’s a hint….(whispers) “all the outlets are attached to studs.” I recommend Ikea cabinets if you are on a budget, which we are, but NOT if you have specific kitchen idea in mind.

Our lower cabinets are some unknown maker…and according to Home Depot, impossible to identify. We assumed that if we picked a similar wood tone for the uppers, that no one would even notice. Ikea base cabinets come in TWO, that’s right TWO, colors. White and Birch Effect. Doesn’t “Birch Effect sound promising? We thought so too. This Ikea “Birch” it is just a fraction lighter than our “Birch” lower cabinets. In fact, it shows much more in photos….we hardly even notice in person. Now for the funny thing about Ikea cabinets………the doors and trim come in COMPLETELY different colors. Let me say it again…….the doors and trim come in COMPLETELY different colors. (Insert huge exhale here ) What the Heck? OOOH, let me correct that. They offer WHITE base cabinets, doors, and trim…..BUT BIRCH EFFECT? Not on your life. Only base cabinets. We just had to find some other solution for trim to hide the seems at the wall and the light pucks under the cabinets. Jamie had a brilliant idea, but more on that later. We figured that the stainless doors with frosted glass panels would be fine, they actually look a little “science lab” to me …which is waaaayyy groovy. I’ve always wanted glass-front doors….and I like the way that just a little Fiesta color shows through.

So, Done Deal…except for some trim that we have planned…..

The other side was a little trickier to configure. We had planned to work the microwave somewhere over here, but the Ikea microwave cabinet doesn’t have matching stainless/glass doors. After about 10 different configurations, and one very “over us” Ikea sales woman, we finally agreed to just do standard cabinets to mirror the other side and just open shelves over the refrigerator.


Here’s where Ikea didn’t make glass front doors in this size. We opted to just leave it doorless and open. Doesn’t bother me one bit…….. Except that we need to buy a few more cookbooks.

 

The microwave will have to go somewhere else…..I think I have an idea where. Stay tuned for that.

OOOHHH, Tile is coming up as well….should be joyous

The Cavender Diary on kara paslay designs

Posted by James on March 6, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

There is a sea of bloggers out there in blog-land, but only a few that I can’t get enough of. One of my favorites has been kara paslay designs. Kara, and her equally talented husband Tim, can make brilliance shine out of the simple dust around them. Her creative “modern-bohemian” style simply blows me away. Now, most of you know that Creative is NOT a word I throw around very liberally; but in this case it’s the best adjective that I can muster. Each room in their house has more brilliantly steal-able ideas than the last. So when Kara was impressed with our humble home and wanted to feature it …we were both stunned. Her blog is a Non-Stop typhoon of creative ideas. See for yourself…….

And while you’re there, check out her post on The Cavender Diary….

And So It Begins…

Posted by James on March 1, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , , . 12 Comments

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.

A “Homies” Nomination

Posted by James on February 28, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , . 3 Comments

A funny thing happened on the way to our blog yesterday…. We were nominated for “Best Home Design Blog” on the Apartment Therapy website.

Pretty darn cool.

For sheer humility, I should add that about 250 other blogs were nominated too. And last time I checked, which is about every 45 minutes, we were somewhere in the vicinity of 4-8 votes. (We are listed twice on the ballot and the votes seem to be equally split.) No worries though….

This is NOT about wining anything, Seriously. SERIOUSLY ( I know that you don’t really believe me )

This IS about getting noticed, and getting noticed by people who wouldn’t normally know where to find us. Our traffic has been huge the past few days……pretty sure I know why.

HELLO to you, new reader…Have a look around. We just might inspire you ….or make you cringe at our lack of taste. Either Way, we’re glad that you’re here.

And too all you who have been with us for a while now…Check out the Apartment Therapy site here, you have to register your email if you want to vote,….you’re certainly welcome to vote for us.

Please check out some of the other blogs listed there. I’ve only visited about a dozen of them…….. These bloggers, much like ourselves, pour their souls into something that consumes all available free time , just for the sake of sharing and expressing….So go discover them. See what they do. Get inspired……

I’ve already found SOOOOO many new ones that inspire me, don’t know where I’ll find enough free time to follow them all.

After all, we have a kitchen that currently looks like a war-zone, (sigh)

2 Years Down

Posted by James on February 26, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , , , , . 4 Comments

2 years ago today, we got the keys to our new home.

To say that this past year has been a blur is an understatement. I honestly don’t know where it’s gone. I looked back at our project list from exactly 1 year ago, and ya know what? I don’t feel like we slacked off one bit. No Sir-E. We honestly got some crap accomplished.

Now that doesn’t mean we don’t still have a long way to go….

For the sake of patting our own proud, proud backs; and of course sharing our accomplishments with all of you kind folks: here’s some highlights from the Cavender Diary this past year…..

We painted every inch of the inside that wasn’t painted the first year. The office, the guest bedroom, the guest bath even got a coat of paint when I painted the inside of brown cabinets sparkling white and it made the rest of the room dingy…… So ceiling and walls got an unexpected coat of super-white ceiling paint.

Painted the outside of the house as well. We matched the garage to the house, and painted all the “Puke” Green a lovely, soothing chocolate brown. Never you mind that this project started in April, and was completed last week…….and by an outside contractor even……..Never you mind. It’s completed, It’s over……and we shall never speak of it again.

We also installed a few outside light fixtures. A Barn light over the garage, an industrial can under the eaves, and a second Pottery Barn light on the back patio.

We covered the porch ceiling and posts in cedar. Love, Love, Love this detail. Did I mention that we LOVE this detail? Less “puke-green” on the outside of our house is a great thing.

We built a great little shelf in the master bedroom that inspired us to finish painting all the trim white. I have a plan for crown moulding in here…something a little unusual. Stay tuned for that.

Installing the sprinkler system in August was something we wanted from the very begining . So glad we didn’t do it by ourselves, we WISELY hired someone…SSSSSSSOooo glad that we did. Not sure that was something we would have wanted to tackle by ourselves in the Hot, Hot, Texas, August Sun. (I can feel all that heat just looking at this picture)

We made the perfect wreath for our newly painted juicy orange front door…this was so simple and cheap.

I’m so proud of our plumbing pipe firewood holder. I know that it is very trendy for the hipsters to use plumbing pipe to make household things now. I even have had walls of shelves made from pipes in my last house. But this project really cooks my chili. I just think it is so “Cool” and “Modern-Industrial”. I’m working on a console for the Living Room that is also made of pipes……just don’t want to start a “Plumbing Pipe Theme” around here.

We couldn’t possibly make a list of the past years accomplishments without including decorating our place for Christmas.

Our favorite project by a LANDSLIDE..is the wood wall headboard we built in our master bedroom. We just wanted to mount our swing arm lamps on something more substantial than just the wall. This was a homerun all around. It just looks fantastic. We think it feels like we are sleeping in a posh boutique hotel, ya know the kind that used to be Y.M.C.A. or some foolishness like that.

That’s about it for the year in review.

Next year, we will add “updated the kitchen” to the list of acomplishments.

Speaking of updating our kitchen………I think I have some Ikea cabinets to exchange right about now.

Blanket Chair Revisited

Posted by James on February 19, 2012
Posted in: New Home. Tagged: , , , . 10 Comments

I know that everyone remembers a few weeks ago when I was bragging about how we were gunna reupholster an old 50’s chair with military blankets from the Army/Navy store….

Well guess what?

We freaking did it! I told you that we would, and we did. So take that! Not everything around here is a half-done project….

Have a look-see….

Pretty Awesome , right?

OK, to be honest, it took 2 tries, but they finally got the cushions right. The old ones had piping…and I definitely did not want it on the new, young ones. So what did they do? They piped them. No worries though, it only took a day to reconstruct them.

I gave him all the written and visual instructions that I could think of…I even ran the stripe down the front in blue painters tape as an example. So he understood that I wanted it on the sides of the cushions and not just the fronts…..ohhh, and slightly off centered.

We bought 2 pretty good-sized blankets. I’m glad that we did. All 4 stripes on both blankets were slightly different widths. Yeah, that sounds like government issue detail work to me. One would have been plenty of fabric, but because I wanted the stripe worked into the cushions…I knew there would be a slight degree of difficulty, at least, more difficulty than I can endure sewing. 

He hacked both blankets pretty well. But don’t fear, I saved ALL the scraps (cough”hoarder”), and I think that I can make a couple decent sized pillows if I need to.

“How much did it cost”, you say? Well that was kinda rude to ask……I can tell you that it was slightly less than the price of a new (vintage) chair, and about half of what my regular upholsterer we use for work projects would have charged.  Besides, the new brown with red cushions are way esier to live with than the green-tragedy that it was before.

Oh, and just so you know that it is still me……Here’s the new chair with a Navajo pillow.

AHHHHHHHHH, somehow that looks so much better.