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.

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.

Introduction

I'm the Buckeye - Ohio-raised girl heading back home after living virtually all her adult life in California with stints in Paris, Atlanta, and other odd corners of the world.  Dominique is the Frog - born and bred in Paris, France, now a dual French-American citizen.

We've just bought an 1880, 3-story brick house in Oberlin, Ohio, home of Oberlin College, about 30 miles northwest of Cleveland.  It's a real beauty, and we want to turn it into a bed & breakfast one day.  In the meantime, it needs a lot of work.

This blog, then, is the story of our attempt to restore this Victorian lady to her former glory.  Happily, much work was done before we arrived, and the woodwork, the fireplaces, the hardware are just glorious.  But there's a fair amount of water damage to the floors, it badly needs paint, and it has a fascinating but challenging 50's-era kitchen that's going to take some thought.  Among other things.