October 16, 2004

   These were taken immediately after we closed on the house. Despite the dated counters and cabinets (and lack of appliances), the kitchen was the one room that revealed how much character the house really had.  The 12' beaded board ceilings were exposed, and the tongue-and-groove pine walls were another huge selling point.

  The photo below shows the wall between the kitchen and living room; the day after we closed on the house, the wall was removed.

November 2, 2004

    

   You can see the line where the wall between the two rooms used to be. We had already demolished and cleared the layers of walls, ceilings, and flooring out of the living room (the room closest to the camera). The hanging cords were the light switches and electrical outlets that were in the wall that was removed. We saved all the pine from the wall to be used as needed--there were hundreds of square nails in the wood!

   We want an open room from the kitchen to the living room, because we really live in both rooms. We don't want the socializing or entertaining from one room to the next to be separated anymore. We will have a large island with bar stools, so the attention can either be on the kitchen activity or the TV/conversation in the living room.

February 12, 2005

August 3, 2005

   My trip to Africa with my parents has been postponed till next summer because of an airline strike, so I'm using the time off to prep the walls in the kitchen and living room. The kitchen walls have latex paint over oil based paint, so it needs to be scraped so it doesn't crack and peel later. Some of it comes off in big pieces, and some of it takes some serious elbow grease. It's August, and I'm at the top of these 12' rooms with no air conditioning wearing a dust mask scraping paint on my vacation time... no wonder my friends think I'm crazy.

May 1,  2006

   We finally sold the other house at the beginning of January. Harper's wonderful parents graciously welcomed us to live in their pool house while we tried to get 507 livable. Of course, it took longer than we thought it would, but we were blessed to have a comfortable temporary residence and great neighbors! We (just us, pets, and clothes--everything else is still in storage) moved into 507 on Easter weekend (April 14).

   The plumbing in the back bathroom and the air conditioning have finally been installed, which is why we are able to move in. The kitchen obviously not finished, so we are still living on restaurant food and sandwiches. 

May 20, 2006

    We wanted solid surface countertops, but most options were going to be too pricey. We had gone over budget on our appliances, but we didn't want to put in laminates only to replace them in a few years. Concrete counters definitely appealed to us, but to have them professionally installed would be just as expensive as granite. However, if we did the concrete ourselves, we could have the look we wanted at the price we could afford--IF we did it right. It was a huge "if," but we decided it was worth the risk.

   Peewee Kalkhake, our AMAZING carpenter, agreed to help, so that was a huge factor in thinking that it would work. Peewee is capable of anything, and he never cuts corners. (Of all the work we've had done on the entire house, his carpentry is what has utterly impressed me.) He and Harper built the molds; they decided to pour the counters in place rather than built molds and flip the counters over. The advantage was that there would be no seams or chance of dropping the counters while trying to get them in place. Also, the chances of damaging our new sink were greatly diminished. The disadvantages of pouring them in place were: (1) it would be much more difficult to get a smooth surface; and (2) if anything went wrong, it would go wrong in the middle of the kitchen--not out in the yard or garage. After a lot of thinking, planning (and praying), we recruited some talented friends to take the plunge into concrete counters on a Saturday morning.

   Above: Junior, Harper, and Peewee are starting to take the forms off of the concrete counters for the first moment of truth.  Peewee's son, Nathan, helped Harper mix the concrete and haul it inside one bucket at a time while Peewee and I worked on the spreading and trowelling. Junior came a little later and showed us how to make it smoother.

   This is a detail of the counter above the under-mounted farmhouse sink. The sides of the mold were already removed, but the lower pieces of the mold were left in place until the next day

   After removing all the outer molds, we worked on smoothing the surface. I was most concerned about the edges around the apron-front sink, but with a little clean-up, it looked great. Junior Gebhardt is a concrete expert, and he really helped with the details. I can't say enough about how much we appreciate the help and hard work  from those guys!

June 15, 2006

      We really wanted the kitchen to be a masterpiece. We love to entertain, and Harper is an amazing cook, so the kitchen is where we knew the largest part of our budget would be spent.  Harper did the research for appliances, but the cabinets were my priority.  I knew exactly what we wanted, and despite the simple lines, we couldn't find the exact style in any of the custom cabinet options from box stores like Lowes and Home Depot. They had some that were the right style of cabinet door, but they were not flush with the actual cabinets. It seems like it would be a subtle difference, but it actually made a huge impact on the final look. It was really a blessing that we couldn't find the right thing, because we ended up with the best carpenter and original custom cabinetry we could have ever hoped for.

    Anyone with an old house knows that there are no square walls or perfect angles, but Peewee mastered them all. He looked at our inspiration pictures and rough sketches, and he listened to our wish-list and custom requests. Amazingly, he translated it all into something better than any of my inspiration kitchens. If there was a detail that we hadn't thought of, he would think of it for us. How rare to come see progress and be pleasantly surprised instead of being in our finished kitchen and wishing we had thought of this or that.

   We had the cabinets sprayed for a smoother look.  I stained the island and sink area with a mixture of two stain colors and a little black paint.  The copper bar top was another gamble that really paid off.  We bought the shiny new piece of copper in a 3'x10' sheet from eBay. After aging outside in the weather for a few weeks, we brought it in and got to work.  Harper glued it down, and I cut the corners and started wrapping the edges. It's a pretty thick gauge, so it took a lot of hammering to get the sides to wrap properly. We ended up liking the hammered look, so we hammered for about 9 hours (combined) on the obviously well-built island.

Queso, an "outside" cat, found a cool spot in the open appliance garage.

July, 2006

The details are really starting to come together to make a real kitchen. Below is a corner of the copper bar top. I didn't end up soldering it since I achieved a pretty tight wrap with a good hammer. My brother-in-law, Dant, promised that if I needed to solder it later, it was easy, and he could show/tell me how.

The tile is up! It looks just like I imagined, but better since it's real now. Below is a detail of the molding I ask for to go at the top of the tile between the cabinet and the window.  It echoes the crown molding at the top of the room. We didn't want the cabinets to extend to the edge of the window, because we thought it would box it in and "suffocate" it. Now it has room to breath, and I'm glad we did it this way.

Below you can see the reeded glass and hardware that finishes the cabinets. I love the look of the glass, and (for me) it adds just enough coverage to be a bit more appealing than clear class. The upper cabinets along the north wall (with the window) are the only ones with glass, because that's where dishes and glass ware will be stored.

In case you're wondering why there's a hinge on the inside and the outside of the cabinet, the outer hinge is purely decorative. I loved the look of the period hinges for the uppers, but we wanted the convenience of modern hinges. I found a great deal on the decorative hinges at Van Dykes Restorers, and Harper used a hack saw to make them usable as a decorative hinge. Below is the real hinge that Peewee chose. It's adjustable, and you can remove the door from the cabinet with ease. I like them because they close smoothly and prevent slamming shut.

September, 2006