Kitchen Makeover: Part III

It is easy to forget exactly how much work we have done in the kitchen until I start trying to document it all. We left off with the countertops having just been put in. After that, we had professional tile layers come in and put up the backsplash. We, also, added knobs and handles to the cabinetry and painted the walls in a tan color. With these changes, the cooking area of the kitchen was mostly complete.

Next, attention was focused on the long wall with the wayne's coat. We pulled the wayne's coat off but it had been attached with liquid nails so it tore up the drywall. After about a week of E and I both trying to fix the dry wall and match the existing texture, we finally gave up and had painters come in. They were smarter and smoothed the whole wall and then retextured instead of trying to match the existing texture.

Lastly, we put in new baseboard. Because the tile had been installed after the wayne's coat, the baseboard had to be pretty thick to cover the gap. As you can see, we just used a very simple design. We also, put it under the cabinets and just the small piece of baseboard around the back side of the island. Putting it under the cabinets meant it needed to go in front of the dishwasher base. This is a problem because the dishwasher sticks out a little and because I didn't want to have to remove the baseboard to get to the dishwasher. I solved this by attaching a piece of baseboard to the dishwasher with magnets. It stands out a little , but is hardly noticeable in person.

That pretty much wraps up the major changes to the kitchen itself. There are a lot more pictures in the house album. I've since added some shelves to the long wall that I'll write about next and I am currently building a desk to go in the breakfast nook. There will be plenty of time to write about that because there is still much left to do.

Kitchen Makeover: Part II

Elizabeth and I have done a lot of work on our kitchen. Like I said in Part I, we really didn't like the kitchen when we moved in so we started making changes immediately. However, there was some fairly significant design changes to make, so we started off slow (again, see Part I). I am now going to start talking about the major changes. Unfortunately, we did not document the work very well in pictures but at least you can see the results. As a reminder, I've put in a before pic.

The first thing E and I did was refinish all of the cabinets, doors, and drawers. We wanted them to be darker than they were so we just did a light sanding job and then put a couple of coats of a darker stain on. Next, Elizabeth's dad, Kim, helped me to tear out the old countertops, all of the old tile, and the drywall that was behind the tile. He and I then reinforced some of the joinery in the wall with some 2x4 and installed some undercounter lighting that I rewired with appropriate wire so that I could run it through the wall and connect it to the existing switch for the sink light. Lastly, we installed tile backerboard for the new tile that would be installed.

E and I then had Silestone countertops put in along with a new sink, faucet, and cooktop we had purchased. Of course, I then had to figure out how to adjust the plumbing to work with the new sink layout and I had to hook the new cooktop up to the gas line that we had run. We also had a professional do the electric conversion from a hardwired 240V to a 120V plug for the new cooktop. Here are some pictures of the work and results and there are more in the House Album.