Grand Kitchen Remodel. I Love It!

    We are all set for our family Christmas dinner this evening. There are still a few small things to do. Some drawers to build for inside the cabinets in the island and paint the bay window, and some new rugs and window treatments. Also a little more organizing. It turned out fantastic tho. Take a look....

here is a follow up on my kitchen. Someone asked about my countertop corners etc....

Almost Done!!

    We are finally nearing the end of this huge remodel. What I initially thought would only take a couple weeks to complete has morphed into a couple months. We still have to put the crown molding along the ceiling , mantle above the fireplace, white subway tile back splash, and shelves between the two glass front cabinets on the wall with the pantry. I think we  may also paint the bottom of the old wood table and the chairs white.

                                    This is a little peak into the kitchen from the living room.

                                 We still haven't found counter height stools that we like yet.

I still haven't gotten things put back in order from Thanksgiving dinner. Hence the two extra chairs and baby stroller. We dont have any babies right now but the grandchildren like using the stroller for their "babies", lo. When my husband gets the molding back up on my large bay then we will get it painted white.

                      The wood stove will get a nice heavy white mantle. Plus get cleared off lol.

The old pantry cabinet is located to the far left. The two glass front cabinets were original to the old kitchen as well but hubby built the base cabinets. We were going to just simply put white shelves between them then crown molding across the top making it look like one big hutch. Like HERE

                        Then we saw  Chip and Joanna do this kitchen on fixer upper HERE:

We love the rustic looking shelves with the black metal supports. I thought the black pipe might pull the black from the stove on the other end of the kitchen. So now we arent sure. We are kind of leaning to the simple white shelves tho to creat the country looking hutch.

            Above, we were testing out the look using my black sweeper hose and an old board,lol

My husband and I designed this wonderful range hood and he built it. We work together well like that. I know he can do anything I dream up,lol. We still have to do the pretty tile pattern we have planned for here and add some stamped tin to the inside upper part around the fan/light.

    I love these pretty crystal knobs. Real glass bought from ebay for .95 each. Cant beat that deal!

This is the end of the island. There is one thing I would have done different had we thought of it before it was built. I would have used wider boards for the top and bottom of the frames making up the corner legs so more showed once the moulding was in place. My wonderful guy also put me in a couple electric outlets in the ends of the island. These are so handy.

This is the front of the island cabinets that he built.They are not as difficult as they look when you have the right tools. Cheaper to build than buy the cheap particle board ones in stores even adding in the price of a Kreg jig for joining and a new router and router table. Just need some basic skills, a little internet research, and a little "Go For It..ness".  I love my new island!

Its Finally All Coming Together!

     Things are finally getting put back together. Its taking a lot longer than I expected. I figured....take down a wall....paint a few cabinets....nothing to it. WRONG!

This setion of cabinets still has to have a board across the top joining the two upright cabinets with glass doors and three open shelves between. Then wide crown molding will go across all along the ceiling. These were all some of my original oak cabinets except the base cabinets below the glass front ones. This 7 ft section was built by my husband. He is still working on the drawers for it. This is my favorite section of the new kitchen. I love the lights hitting on the glass fronts.

This is just one of my old bar stools I set in place behind the island until I can find the ones I want. As you can see my husband still needs to finish the doors and drawers in it. This monster is about 4 ft x 8 ft. if you look back through behind the fridge you can get a glimpse of the living room.

He still needs to build the range hood with a shelf on the front and corbels that will go over the stove and hand the 12" cabinet between it and the right window.. Plus wide molding along the base of the island. I havent decided about curtains yet. I think I am leaning to something in grays and yellows. or I might just leave them open. who knows.

Just figured I would give you a sneak peek into how things are looking.

My Kitchen Is Destroyed!!

   It's true. It's almost completely demolished. My dining room too. Several months ago we had renovated our living room and refinished the solid oak hardwood floors. All of them were needing refinished, but one step at a time. We have wood floors throughout except the bathrooms. We have been putting off the ones in the kitchen and dining room simply because we wanted to update them but just wasnt sure how far we wanted to take it. We had thought about just removing wallpaper in both and just painting for now, but the words of our 33 yr old son kept ringing in my ears since thr last time we renovated the kitchen many years ago. We had a seperate kitchen and dining when we renovated before. And I had always missed my island that we had before. So now we decided to go for it and break down walls.
      We knocked down the two walls dividing these rooms. Removed my kitchen booth, removed wallpaper, and we now have one large room about 20ft x 28ft.

This was our kitchen and dining room before. Nice. I liked the booth. But it needed updated. We are more traditional than country.

This is my handy husband removing the walls. Where the old air conditioner is will soon be a new window to help bring in more natural light.

This is most of the debris.

We are also going to paint our old cabinets a fresh white. And the new cabinets needed will also be painted. After much research, we decided to use Sherwin Williams ProClassic Alkyd paint, and their shellac primer. We are very impressed so far with both. He started out trying to spray the shellac. NOT a good idea. This stuff dries fast and HARD! It started plugging the guns knozzle and the shellac was a bear to get off the gun. As for the paint, I tried it on a small area of a hidden part of my pantry cabinet. When dried for few days  I smeared on some ketchup,grape jelly, and kool-aid to test out its cleanability. I let it dry on for several hours then tried to scrub it. I figured, new paint, I need to be delicate. I soon found out that was false. Now this cabinet had no prep work. No cleaning, sanding or priming yet. This was just a test of your emergency broadcast system. Ooops, sorry. I got sidetracked. Any, I scrubbed with a wet rag and Dawn. It needed some scrubbing to get the dried stuff off, but off it came. It did not damage the paint but I was left with some staining. Now remember this was only one coat smeared on with my finger. So then I took a rag wet it, and added some bleach. The stains wiped right off. More importantly the paint was still not damaged. So it looks like all is a go.

This is how it looks after two coats of primer, sanded,then two coats of paint.

This is how the oak wood grain shows through after two coats of primer.  Its a big difference when you start adding the nice thick paint.

We started out spraying the shelac primer. It worked for a little while then quickly started plugging the gun.

After scrubbing with TSP and a sponge with scotch brite pad on the other side, sanding with power sander, rubbing on a deglosser,and rinsing off, the painting began. After the fiasco with spraying the shellac, we decided to paint everything on with a good roller and foam applicator to get into crevices. So far,so good. Most if the marks from the roller are flowing out as it dries. I am impressed.

   As I started trying to prep the pantry after playing with it, I tried sanding the previous area. It will be hidden, but hubs wanted it all painted anywhere. I tried sanding with a worn piece of 120 sandpaper. And then switched to the scotch brite pad. Nothing happened. No paint came off even tho no prep work was done and it was literally finger painted. Great! I let it go and worked on the rest of the cabinet. This is a 7 ft tall x 22" wide cabinet. The frame is now all primed and we are awaiting lining up more doors to get them started. 

      He also had to patch the wood floor and sheetrock walls and ceilings after removing the old walls. The ceiling got its new coat of paint last night.

Here is our projected floor plan. Notice a nice large island in the center. However, we have decided to turn it parallel with the stove. It will be 40" x 8ft. Also hubby is going to construct a large wood range hood for over the stove. One of these days we will replace the white stove with a stainless steel one. Now we need to decide on a white enameled cast iron sink or a stainless steel one.

More to come on this major renovation so stay tuned.