Post-Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is over and all our guests left this morning.  We had two wonderful sets of guests - could not have been nicer - and most interestingly, one of the Ganzel "girls" and her family stayed with us, the first time she'd been in the house for 7 years.

Our appliances were all hooked up and ready to go, except for the dishwasher, unfortunately, and we used them all to roast a turkey, bake a pie, and make lots of breakfasts.  We had a record 7 people for breakfast the morning after Thanksgiving, as Kate's mother and daughter joined us.  (note new lace curtains!)  We served fresh pineapple, baked French toast, and Amish sausage; everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Our kitchen designer is coming over today to work up a "punch list" with us; top of the list is choosing the backsplash tile.  Then no more projects for awhile!  At least not until after the first of the year.  Hopefully our new dining room set, which is already 1 week past the latest delivery time, will arrive soon.

Almost-After Pictures

We're not done yet by a long shot but it's starting to look like a kitchen, and what's done is beautiful!  To give you an idea:

The cooking peninsula

Almost done

We are in love with all of it:  cherry cabinets, granite counters, and the wonderfully unique parquet floor that Brian installed.  That's our antique Hoosier on the right.  Not shown:  the refinished pantry doors.

Yet to be done:  wait for the floors to  cure, reinstall appliances, hook up cooktop, add trim, (choose and) install backsplash.

I haven't even mentioned yet the little bathroom that Kim has completely redone, including building a maple and cherry vanity.  Haven't taken any pictures yet so I'll save that for another post.

Kitchen progress

Well, we made it through parents' weekend with our kitchen in complete disarray, cooking from our old stove and microwave set up in the basement and washing dishes in the utility sink.  Big thanks to Sally, Gabriela, and Carolyn for their understanding and flexibility during their respective stays.  (At least we got our kitchen out of the dining room!)


Big progress was made today as the corner cabinet was installed as well as the new floor in the pantry.  The plumbing seems to be done, or nearly so, and the back entry is painted.  What a difference!  Kim has laid the tile in the little bathroom and today is painting.  Nothing is done - and we're still cooking in the basement - but we're getting there.

Maybe the best news we got is that the granite countertop will be installed on Friday.  That means the appliances can also be installed!  Dom's and my main to-do at this point is to choose tile for the backsplash.  Of course, he's in Harrisburg this week but that will have to be the main focus on Friday.  However, we want this to be right and if the tile isn't installed for our party, so be it.

Here are a couple "work-in-progress" photo from a few days ago:

We love our new parquet floor!  Nice work, Brian.

 We uncovered this historical treasure written under the cabinets above the sink.  Too bad it's not dated.  I'm afraid it's under a layer of drywall now.

Kitchen redux

The remodel of the kitchen is finally and visibly underway.  We really started several weeks ago with planning and design with Kim Annable, and Jeff Wooster has been building our cabinets in his workshop.  Kim also scraped all the old nasty finish off the pantry; with a new, flat finish, the beautiful cherry wood is really going to glow.  And we picked out new Thermador appliances several weeks ago from Home Appliance:  gas cooktop, electric convection oven, microwave, and warming drawer.

This is how the kitchen looked up to yesterday evening.  Kind of sad that our "before" pictures were our "after" pictures less than a year ago.  We didn't think we'd need to remodel so soon...this picture of Sunny and me was taken just last January and I can see I have my construction clothes on.

But yesterday we emptied all of the cabinets and today Brian and Christopher began demolition.  It's a big mess and has entailed removing the dishwasher, range, and microwave, so no more cooking for awhile.

 Demolition will continue for another couple of days, then the new cabinets and cabinet doors will be installed on Thursday.  On Friday we should be able to get Brian from Solid Source to come out and template our granite countertops.  I think the new appliances will be installed on the 12th but we should be able to use the old ones until then once demolition is done. 

Choosing the granite was a process in and of itself.  We were sent to Mont Granite to choose from I don't know how many colors of granite; I had no idea there was such an amazing diversity.  We finally narrowed it down to four then made our final decision on Saturday.  This is what we chose:

It's called "Fire Bordeaux" - is it gorgeous or what?   I'd like to take a piece of whatever's left over and put it on a wall somewhere.

Totally gutted

The upstairs is transformed.  Most of the walls are down, all the fixtures are gone.  It would seem that there's plenty of room for 3 bathrooms!  Still more to do but it appears that most of the demolition is done.  We have discussed our thoughts for exposing some of the brick and wood structure with Kim and Josh.  Kim thinks it's feasible; Josh is mulling it over and will let us know what he thinks.  I like the idea of seeing the 130-year-old "bones" of the house, and would consider tearing out the dry wall in the larger guest room to expose the brick there as well.

Had a long discussion with Kim about the kitchen and have asked her to draw up a set of plans based on our joint ideas.  An island might be a good solution for some of the issues we have.  Plus we need to replace the long window and rearrange some of the appliances.  We noticed, for the first time, that the sliding door to the outside was put in backwards (on purpose), so that the screen is on the inside.  We'll probably want to turn that around.  So maybe we'll just stick with Kim and not have to wait a month.

I did send an inquiry to the Cleveland design firm yesterday but I haven't heard anything back from them.  Not very responsive.

Change #1 (of...?)

The guys have taken out the linen closet and removed the plaster from the interior walls, exposing some very interesting wood lath work and a bearing brick wall.  They've exposed the door between our bedroom and sitting room that Dominique has insisted all along was there.

Question is, what do we do with what we see?  The lath work is very interesting, and dates from 1880, obviously.  Ditto the brick wall, which is also load-bearing.  We've asked our architect, Kim, to come over tomorrow to have a look with us.  Thursday we'll meet with the contractor to get his views.

We didn't buy an 1880 house to cover up all the old work with dry wall; on the other hand, these walls were never meant to be exposed, but to be plastered and wall-papered.  But these structural elements are so interesting and different!

Not good news on the kitchen redesign front:  our one recommendation isn't available to come over for about a month, and the only place I've found on-line seems to do renovations in the $30k-$60k range.  More research needed, clearly.

Kitchen

Somewhat concurrently with the entry way, I started to work on the kitchen which had fallen victim to our initial wallpaper-stripping madness.  I can't even remember what the wallpaper looked like, but apparently it was something we thought we couldn't live with.  We chose a pretty sky-blue for the walls and a warm beige for the inside of the cabinets, which were lime-green.  (Must have been last painted in the 70's.)  Except for the glass cabinet, which was rust red.  Go figure.

The drill was similar to the entryway:  wash, patch, sand, prime, paint.  The hardest part was the inside of the cabinets.  Just to make things really difficult, I used the wrong primer:  it was tan instead of white, so I had to re-primer and then put down 2 coats of paint.  What a pain.  I was literally painting upside down sometimes.

Of course, once we got the walls painted, the trim - which had looked pretty good - looked dull and too beige, so I painted that white.  These pictures were taken before the trim was painted.

Patching

Red cabinet

Much better

Trim still needs paint, and let's not even get into the orange formica countertops