It happened….and we are overjoyed!!!!!
The wise editors of Apartment Therapy found our kitchen update worthy of sharing with the A.T. community.
Our remodel was born of necessity, we couldn’t get past the cheap counter tops, black sink, way too short upper cabinets, institutional lighting, and that exposed microwave.
By working hard and efficiently we created a space that we aren’t only proud to show off…but also works perfectly for us.
Go check it out …..
Remember that A-Ma-Zing Spice drawer that we built when we did our kitchen remodel a few months ago?
Let me refresh your memory,
Oh Yeah! There it is…….Pretty remarkable, We know.
Wanna know how we did it?
Check out Stagetecture.com
Since 2009, the Stagetecture design blog has helped homeowners find decor, organization, do it yourself and family lifestyle solutions. What started as a resource to share ideas, has today become a well sought after destination for helping homeowners find all the needed inspiration to beautify and enjoy their homes.
In my first DIY post for Stagetecture, I explain step-by-step how to recreate this masterpiece for your own kitchen. It’s much easier than you may think. So go ahead and have a look; and while you are there, dig through the rest of Ronique’s site.
You will find inspiration there by the barrel full.
Well, It certainly took long enough….
After all, we started shopping for granite counters on February 11…..the workmen started tearing up the old kitchen on February 18.
For the past couple months, we have done some major project in the kitchen every weekend. I have actually been pretty diligent in documenting all the changes, and I’m so relieved to reveal our finished kitchen to all of you fine folks.
Just to refresh everyone’s memory, here is what we started with.
Yepp, I agree, pretty uneventful…..
And here’s what she looks like today ….
Yes, “The Bomb-Diggity” is the exact phrase we were thinking too.
When we bought the place, there was actually a fluorescent tube light fixture on the ceiling, just like in a middle-school classroom. Now there is a row of halogen cans and a glass dome pendant from West Elm.
Our Ikea Saarinan-esque table is surrounded by vintage Mercel Brewer Cesce chairs. At one time they had cane seats too ( cane seats don’t last very long ) and someone changed them to vinyl. A friend brought them over to sell in a garage sale, when they didn’t sell he offered them to me instead of dragging them back to his house. At the time, I didn’t really want them. But now, I absolutely LOVE them…each one has a numbered plaque that identifies them as property of the University of Texas. How cool is that? The cane seat-backs are definitely showing some wear and I plan to have them replaced in the near future anyway.
I’ll keep y’all posted on that process.
As y’all can tell, we kept the original base cabinets and terra-cotta floor. Then we added our own bit of jazz to make this place a little more contemporary.
Taking the upper cabinets to the ceiling made the whole room appear taller. It also increased our storage space by about 40%. Although we lost the tiny cabinet with the attached microwave, we added an entire new cabinet over the refrigerator, and built out the top of the pantry to look finished.
That springy industrial looking Hjuvik faucet from Ikea is just amazing. Unpronounceable name, great faucet. I can bend it any-which-way, or push the whole thing out-of-the-way altogether.
LOVE it!
Yes, we had wanted a farm-house sink, but reconfiguring the lower cabinet was just too much of a hassle. So we settled on one really big 28 inch undermount stainless sink….and don’t regret that decision one bit.
A vintage plate is the perfect size to wrangle dish and hand soaps, hand lotion, and sponges. If you have never tried Mrs. Meyers cleaning products, let me lead you to them right now. Lavender is by far my favorite, but other flavors include; Basil, Geranium, Rhubarb, Blue Bell, Rosemary and even a scent free. Thelma Meyer believes that cleaning products can be Earth friendly and still clean well……so do we.
Check them out.
About 15 years ago I started collecting Fiesta Ware.
I’ve always loved old California pottery, the colors are bright, but not too bright. They remind me of the painted desert. It’s hard to believe that Homer Laughlin stopped making Fiesta for about 13 years, before reviving the line in the mid-80’s because of the Baby-Boomers demand for the things that they had a children. I have tons…and when I say “tons”, I have packed and moved this stuff several times, trust me, I have “TONS”.
I pick up vintage Fiestaware, Bauer, Yellowware, and Russell Wright whenever I find them. I have an affection for chipped pieces that were obviously used and loved.
The frosted glass doors of our new upper cabinets show just a hint of the vibrant colors lurking behind each.
The Jonathan Adler whale was an anniversary gift from Jamie, he holds bottle caps because I can’t possibly throw away a bottle cap. Duhhh, I might have a project for them some day.
The travertine backsplash that we installed ourselves was just the perfect complement to the new “mink’ granite counters.
We replaced the previous owners strange taste/placement of handles with some that fit the contemporary style of the new kitchen better.
The upper cabinets, with brushed stainless doors, we left unadorned.
Everything looks better in a jar…..especially dog treats. She can hear the Milkbone jar opening from the other side of the house.
The was nothing above the old pantry but 14 inches of air.
Now there is a perfect place to keep cook books.
I’ve been collecting oil jars for a few years too.
They functionally hold plastic grocery bags, tennis balls ( if she can’t see them, so won’t want us to throw them for her), and arrows.
The Luftig vent-a-hood came from Ikea too.
You could probably tell that from the name. There was an electrical outlet where the old microwave was plugged in up there before, so installation was a snap. I just removed the outlet, and hardwired the sum-bitch to the cable that used to power the outlet.
Done Deal.
The new range is a dream. (The delivery – NOT so much)
We are just going to live with that sore-thumb of a black refrigerator until we pay off the other new appliances.
The upper cabinet, just to the right of the new range, holds salt, pepper, garlic, and oils and vinegars I’ve put in upcycled hinged cork-topped bottles.
The bottles were originally sold with lemonade in them. Never do this with balsamic vinegar because it needs a dark bottle to protect it from sunlight and loosing its flavor.
Because the new upper cabinets have glass doors, we couldn’t mount the spice rack we had planned.
The next best thing was a drawer full of dried herbs and spices. Sunlight can drain the flavors from these as well, so a dark drawer is much better than a glass cabinet anyway. We rarely cook with dried herbs, fresh ones are 100 times better, but look how awesome they are all lined up like toy soldiers.
Don’t hate us because of our organizational skills. I’m working on a future post now where I show how I used wood trim pieces to keep them all in place.
The drawer on the other side of the range has a pretty clever idea as well. I always line my kitchen and bathroom drawers with self-adhesive cork shelf liners to keep things from shifting arround. But here I took it a step further and also mounted a knife magnet inside the drawer. Keeps them in place, and from dulling too quickly.
You can steal those two ideas too.
And now for the “Adults Only” part of the kitchen tour.
We finally have a real liquor cabinet. Just like big boys. No more digging to the back of the pantry for triple sec. We have it all lined up where we can see everything that we have in a glance.
This is gunna work great for parties……glasses above, ice-maker to the right, and plenty of counter space below to slice lemons etc.
LOVE IT!
Remember when we sliced PVC plumbing pipe to make our wine storage? It wasn’t that long ago. Now we have a perfect place to put our wine, where there was nothing before.
Everyone wanted to know what our solution for the microwave was.
I’ve never been a fan of the microwave hanging over the cooktop. It’s not a Bad place to put it…just not very esthetically pleasing; especially when the previous owner installed it with the side exposed and facing the rest of the house. We do use the microwave, but mostly just for steaming veggies and reheating left-overs. Rather than just put it on the counter, or even worse, a cart with wheels ( I have Never liked that look ) we hid it the best that we could in a cabinet next to the fridge.
It’s perfect for us.
I drilled a hole in the side of the cabinet to run the power cord through, and we just plugged it in with the fridge. Plenty of room in there so it has air to vent and not overheat.
Here’s a reminder of what we started with….from this…
To this….
And from this……
To this…
And that is the Grand Tour of our new kitchen. I consider it to be about 95% finished. We still have to caulk around the counter top, and I’m not sure what to do with the BIG White Door to the garage. We are tinkering with the idea of chalk-board paint…maybe in khaki…it doesn’t always have to be black, ya know.
This was, by a LANDSLIDE, the best change that we have made to the Cavender house to date……
and we’re just getting started ….
We didn’t like the hardware in our kitchen.
We didn’t like the size, we didn’t like the placement, we didn’t like the scale.
NO-Sir-E, not one bit. BIG doors on the pantry…little bitty handles..
That just wasn’t cutting it for us.
We wanted something with straight modern lines, that mimicked the stainless upper cabinet doors, something like this…..
I took this picture with my phone of the hardware display at Lowe’s…..See them there in the middle of the collage? Under STUDIO.
Just what we were looking for.
In true Lowe’s fashion, not a single employee knew where to locate, or even if Lowe’s sells, those particular drawer pulls. In fact, most of the hardware pictured was NOT in the store or available for special order. How is that company even in business?? A-Ma-Zing
After several store visits, we settled on Elliot’s. The slogan at Elliot’s is “We Have Hardware”….and HAVE hardware they did. We should have started our search there. They had just what we wanted. They came in several sizes: 5 1/2 inches for the drawers, 7 1/2 inches for the cabinet doors…and for the pantry handles? They had 11 1/2 inches. Much more substantial than the little nubs currently on them.
Perfect, right? Well almost perfect. The handles had these weird little squares at the bases. More deco than modern. Fortunately, we just left them off.
Way, More, Much, Better.
I used the same top holes for the door handles….and the drawer handles we positioned up slightly from where they were.
The tiny screw holes we filled in with Elmer’s Natural Wood Filler. We hardly even see them now.
What about those way-too-small handles on the pantry doors? They look like this now.
OOHHH Yeah, That’s much better.
Neither of us are wine drinkers. The Good Lord knows that I prefer the occasional beer, and I push Jamie towards Rum and Coke for his “Peace and Quiet Juice”.
Sometimes, I will buy a bottle of wine if the label is cool.
You know, if there is something awesome on it, like a cowboy or a red truck. ( I’m not joking here….those 2 images will Always get me to purchase )
Somehow we have ended up a with a pretty good assortment of wine….must be from hostess gifts.
I had a plan to create some sort of “wine storage” over our pantry…..where there was nothing before. I don’t quite understand why the previous owner didn’t take the pantry all the way to the ceiling? Something had to be done in this wasted space.
When I saw this picture in a magazine, I was fascinated by the concrete tubes he used for wine. Look at how cool those graphic circles look in this kitchen. A little modern, a little rustic…..just like our style.
Aren’t they just groovy as all Hell? I know! We had to find a way to do this in our own kitchen; and that empty space over the pantry seemed like just the right spot.
I Googled concrete tubes…and nada came up. But ya know what did? PVC…HHmmm That could actually work.
Just one slight problem with our plan….the space over the pantry is was only 12 inches tall. That’s hardly enough space to do more that 14 PVC pipes, and I would have to fill in a lot of empty space with trim pieces to make it all fit tight.
But ya know where they would fit? Over the fridge…. in this weird space
Remember the Ikea cabinet that didn’t have any corresponding doors? It’s 24 inches tall. I know! It’s almost as if it were “meant” to be.
We cut 10 Foot PVC pipes down to 10 inch sections. ..They only come in 10 foot pipes. 10 foot poles are a bitch to transport, but we live pretty close to H-Depot. I wish the cut pipes fit more perfectly linear, like my inspiration kitchen, but the staggered pipe is still kinda modern to me. Just slightly more “honey comb” looking.
Now we have space for 21 bottles or wine.
I had to move the shelf up just slightly. The pegs holes are staggered about every inch, and my pipes pushed the shelf up about 1/2 inch. No worries, all I had to do was drill 4 more holes directly in between where Ikea thought they should be. I could have ditched the shelf altogether and filled the whole cabinet with PVC tubes, but I didn’t want to over do it with the wine.
Then the extra peg holes started to bother me. It just didn’t look finished.
That’s Elmer’s Wood Filler in Natural. We had already used it to fill the holes where the old drawer handles used to be.
It’s not a perfect match with birch, but it works for us.
We ended up with something that looks more like this…
Pretty Cool, I know!
“And whatever became of that wasted 12 inches of space over the pantry?” you ask.
We used an extra Ikea shelf, some 1X2 trim, and the disassembled pieces from the old cabinet over the microwave…..and came up with this to store cookbooks.
Tons Way, More, Better….Right?
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…
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.
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….
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….
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.
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 