Additional Kitchen Detailing

I completed a variety of simple painting projects in the kitchen over a few months, finishing the most recent ones just a few weeks ago after the cabinets were finished. Here is the best shot I could find of the original kitchen window area:

This would be a good place to point out the old faucet in the above photo as well, which Nick changed out on our first weekend at the house back in April (2013).

Old faucet removed

New faucet installed. Planning under-mount sink with new counter

Back to the kitchen window area. After removing the cabinet base paint and completing the stain and varnish, I painted the wall above the sink and around the window using the same 'Soft Suede' color as the rest of the kitchen and house. Then I painted the kitchen window trim with the same brown we used on the large living and dining room windows:

We also permanently removed the blinds shown in the original photo at the top of this post

Then after the doors were complete I used the same brown as the window and floor trim to paint the underside of the upper cabinets. We chose not to strip the paint and stain this area because 1) it was an awkward area to reach and 2) you can't really see it so why spend all that time (it would have taken several days of paint stripping). The original white paint on the underside really stood out compared to the finished dark uppers:

Preparing to paint

After painting

You can tell it's paint if you look closely, but at a glance or while seated at the dining table it looks similar enough to the stain to pass. Either way it's much better than the original white. It's a little sloppy along the wall, but that will eventually be covered by a new backsplash, one which will go all the way up to the cabinets instead of stop a few inches below.

We also had to decide what to do with the trim around the cabinets. It was white, which might have been okay to leave as is since it matched the ceiling, except that the paint remover used on the cabinets leached over in some areas, which created some discoloration and crackling. After discussing a few options we simply decided to paint that trim the same brown as the window and floor trim, so I sanded along the whole thing to even out the areas with the crackling texture issues and painted over it.

Also painted the edge trim where it meets the wall

Due to the lights, the trim above stands out much more in the photo than it does in reality.

These are all pretty small details individually but overall they add much-needed finishing touches to the kitchen and provide cohesiveness by using the same brown for all the trim throughout the rest of the open living space. In fact, a few months back I similarly painted the trim above the fireplace because it looked funny as a bright white, but we opted to paint the trim to each side to blend with the wall color.

One final simple kitchen improvement was replacing the lighting. The original was this small, three directional halogen light. The same light was the dining room as well.

We looked around for track lighting we liked and settled on this Ikea light with five adjustable directional lamps. This helps spread light everywhere from the 'peninsula' on the left, the sink in the center, and right to the stove. Eventually we'd like to have recessed lighting, but this was a cheap way to improve lighting in the kitchen for the time being.

Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing, Part 3: Cabinet Doors and the Big Reveal

At the same time I was working on all of the drawer boxes and new drawer fronts featured in the previous kitchen post, I was going through the same motions (staining, drying, staining again, drying, polyurethane, more drying, etc.) with the 10 cabinet doors, many of which are very large. As I finished pairs of those I helped Nick hold them in the door openings to measure for hinge placement, then he attached the hardware.

Attaching door side hinge

Below is a stock photo of the type of hinge we used for the cabinet doors. This kind was required for the inset door look we were going for because it attaches entirely inside of the cabinet, remaining completely hidden. The previous cabinet doors were overly with hinges on the exterior.

These hinges are actually two separate pieces: the part that attaches to the door itself then clips to the part screwed into the interior wall of the cabinet base. To remove the doors you can simply unclip instead of unscrewing either. The hinges are even adjustable: after installation you can use two adjustment screws to move the cabinet doors slightly up or down and left or right, to easily center them within the door frames.

Only three of the doors were able to be installed right away because this inset hinge type needed to be flush to the cabinet door opening. For the remaining seven we had to build out the interior space in order to attach the hinges correctly, and there were a variety of differences in the space and how best to go about attaching the cabinets so the process wasn't always the same. We know about this going in, so we allotted for it in our installation time. This was one of Nick's contributions and he did a great job. Two of the seven built-in hinge bases shown below.

The wood will be painted the same green as cabinet interior. 

Once all the measurements were taken and each hinge piece installed, we clipped the doors into place to see how they looked. Below is Nick clipping one of the two largest doors into the cabinet base. We did this part after the stain was finished but before the polyurethane was applied, just to see how it all looked. Then I varnished the doors two at a time, taking them down and moving them to my workstation in the garage. After two coats on the front and one on the back I'd return them, re-attaching the door-side hinge pieces and clipping them back into place. Each pair took about a day because of drying time.

We added hardware as we went along. After I finished varnishing a pair of doors during the day and returned them to the kitchen, Nick would attach the cabinet door handles in the evening. We used Ikea Lansa stainless steel cabinet door handles. Nick did a fantastic job at this as well.

It looks crooked in the photo, but it's straight!

And now the first internet look at how the cabinets turned out and what the kitchen looks like now: 

And the 'before' photo again

Notice that the lower cabinet to the left of the range still doesn't have a door. The drawer above it hasn't been replaced either. This is the next step in the remodel: putting in a dishwasher. That's an update we're really looking forward to having. It's been about 4 years for me but much longer for Nick, as not many apartments in New York City have them. After the holidays we're going to have an electrician look at the space because we need to have the range outlet moved a foot or two to the right and a new outlet and breaker installed for the dishwasher. We've decided on a smaller 18" wide size, which should still be more than enough room for us and also save space.

After the dishwasher installation we can continue the renovation with ordering a countertop, removing the existing white tile backsplash, and after the countertop is installed, putting in a new backsplash. We were waiting to decide on a countertop color until seeing the cabinets entirely finished, to be able to get a better feel for the space and what would look best. All along I've been saying black would look best and after seeing how it turned out, Nick now agrees. As of right now the backsplash plan is stainless steel, but that could change if we find something we like better.

By the way, the photo below is nearly all of the garbage we generated during the remodel so far. Keeping all of the original cabinet bases made a huge difference. Instead of those going to the landfill, the only waste generated in order to reuse them were two small cans of paint stripper and newspapers used for collecting the paint/stripper remnants. I gave away all of the original cabinet doors and hardware by listing them on Craigslist's Free section, so those were reused by someone else. Add a few more sanding disks to the pile of wood below and that's about all of the trash created so far. Of course removing the countertop and backsplash will add to that considerably, because those can't really be re-used, but it's still not bad for such a significant kitchen makeover.

The Cat Post Post

In between the long and laborious kitchen cabinet project posts, I've taken to writing shorter, fun submissions. This one involves cats. Meet Pierre. He loves hanging out on top of the large Ikea Expedit bookshelf we've had for awhile:

Cuddling with his catnip-filled fashion 'body pillow'

In the past we just picked him up and put him up there any time it seemed like that was what he wanted, though it was hard to tell sometimes. So what better than a way for him to get up there all by himself? 

I've had this idea for awhile and finally got around to trying it. We originally put their traditional scratching post next to the bookshelf to get him in the habit of scratching in that area. Then I bought a thin piece of berber carpeting in a house-coordinated color from the "cut your own length" section at Home Depot. I attached the strip to the side and up over the top with nails. It took putting him on the carpet side a few times before he figured out how to get started himself, but soon he was climbing up the bookshelf incredibly quickly. He's a very happy guy up there:

Seriously. He rolls around up there all the time

Originally we were thinking this would be Pierre's space only. Our other cat, Murray, never showed any interest in being up high like Pierre had. Just for fun I put his claws on the carpet and showed him how to climb it one time. Much to our surprise, he did it all by himself right away. He even beat Pierre to doing it entirely independent of us. 

Unfortunately Murray can't get himself down, so he sits on the end when he wants off. Pierre has never had a problem jumping down using the couch:

About to make the leap

We are really lucky that our little dream house with the amazing yard happened to be on a quiet dead end street, because that means these guys are finally able to safely go outside and explore. They stick to our yard and the yards of the houses immediately adjacent to ours, and the exercise has been really good for losing a little weight. They haven't been going out as much now that it's colder and sometimes rainy, so this climbing wall gives them the opportunity for indoor exercise until spring.

Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing, Part 2: Cabinet Interiors & Drawers

I didn't take photos of the cabinet staining process because it was pretty boring photo-wise: I brushed several coats of Minwax 'Jacobean' stain over all of the areas that I had stripped the paint from the previous week, then after both coats were dry I brushed a layer of polyurethane over it. Once done I started painting the rest of the cabinet interiors with a Benjamin Moore color called 'Spanish Olive.' 

I painted an entire section of cabinet at a time, shelf by shelf. It took about a day to do each whole section, including the drying time of two coats. Also each day I had to re-shelve the stuff I'd taken down the previous day in order to paint that area and then remove everything from the next section. 

You can see below the new stain finish and the new green interior compared to the old white interior:

Taking a break from my second section of interior cabinet painting

Lower cabinet interior drying

We are incredibly happy with how the green and the dark stain look together and how both look with the newly tiled floor! Now to replace those old doors and drawer fronts. You've seen some photos of the kitchen cabinets before, so here's a shot of the old drawers from before. Even before I stained the frame around the drawers shown. The tiles weren't even set yet either, just laid out along the cabinets to get a look at what they'd be like: 

Photo doesn't accurately represent how ugly these were

We researched cabinet doors for a while before finding the right ones. Both of us dislike the look of raised-panel, so we were looking exclusively for slab style. One evening while browsing manufacturers we found exactly what we wanted at a place called Barker Door. When we saw that it was a local place in Tualatin, Oregon, Nick went to the showroom to check out the quality and what the slab doors looked like in person. That they were available unfinished sealed the deal, since we could then stain them with the exact stain as the bases instead of trying to match it to the options available by companies that only offer a pre-stained door selection.

Unfortunately they don't allow product pick up from their facility, so we had to wait for them to be delivered. But that only took one day since we are so close. We ordered the doors on November 7th and they arrived on the doorstep on November 21st. Not bad at all.

Photo below shows a couple doors with a first coat and the rest of the drawer fronts unfinished as they arrived via Fed Ex Ground, ready for staining right out of the boxes. I got to work right away.

Unfinished doors

And first coat complete.

First coat of stain drying

The drawers were basically a project all by themselves, which is why the rest of this post is about them.

Between applying coats of stain on both the front and back of the new drawer faces and the seemingly endless hours of each coat drying, I got to do some 'demolition,' by which I mean remove the rest of the ugly old drawer fronts and get the entire box to their final, finished state. I positioned the chisel and hammered along the drawer front edges both inside and out, rotating the entire thing as I went. I knew this would work and we'd end up with a clean removal and solid box because I'd removed the front of one of the three large drawers before we ordered the replacements.

My tools for this: chisel and mallet

After pulling out the nails used to attach the old front, I ended up with this below. I filled any nail holes with spackle, sanded after that hardened, and made sure those edges were level so the new front could sit upon on the base with no gaps.

Early green on what was the 'test' drawer front

All that was left for this drawer was two coats of the Spanish Olive paint. Between coats I would work on the other 4 drawers, which were in various stages of demolition and reconstruction. For example, while this final coat below was drying, I had spackle drying to fill the nail holes of another drawer, and would start removing the front of the next. The kitchen was a mess during this project because everything in these drawers were in bags on the floor or scattered around the counter top.

One done, four to go

I did all of this on the weekdays leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday break, when Nick was able to join in with the fun over his four day weekend. The drawer boxes were done, and it took the two of us to hold the newly-stained replacement fronts up to see how they'd fit best on those bases. Nick measured and marked and measured again and carefully attached the drawer faces to the boxes using thin finishing nails:

After the nail was in so far that the hammer was nearly hitting the wood, he switched to hammering using a screw in between. This also allowed him to continue pushing the nail into the wood enough that I would be able to cover it with wood filler. 

Finishing the drawers took another two days. Once the wood filler was dry I lightly sanded it smooth and dabbed stain over the area after wiping it down. After another full coat of stain dried on top of that, I applied the polyurethane: two coats on the outside and one on the inside face of the drawer. All coats needed to dry and then they were ready to come back inside, since I did all of this in the garage to prevent the smell in the house. 

Nick still needed to re-attach the drawers to the runners, which took some straightening of slanted runners and choosing more secure attachment points on the bottom. 

We're incredibly happy with how the drawers turned out once installed, as seen below before their pulls have been attached, though you can see what hardware we've selected on the cabinet doors to the right. You'll see the finished drawers inside and out on the Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing Finale I'll post later this week. 

The Holy Grail: Mid-Century Dining Set

Since we now had a dining room but didn't have a nice dining set, I started looking immediately after we closed on the house. Even though we wouldn't be moving in until fall, I knew it would take at least a few months to find 'the one.' For some reason the Portland area has an abundance of mid-century furniture, so we figured it was only a matter of time. I refreshed my Craigslist search a dozen times a day, because not only are these hard to find, when available they go incredibly fast. Of the few sets we saw and agreed upon, we were simply beat to it.

Four months went by and no luck, but not a big deal because we weren't living there anyway. But then we moved and had been in the house for over a month and still nothing, so I was getting discouraged. There hadn't been any good sets listed for quite some time. The dining tables and chairs in the local mid-century stores were really expensive, and we didn't really like any of the ones we saw anyway. 

We had incredibly specific requirements: medium to dark wood finish; small enough to fit comfortably in our space but includes at least one expansion leaf for when we have guests; at least six chairs, ideally padded and -- in case we didn't like the fabric -- relatively easy to re-upholster. Not to mention there were certain styles we just didn't like. 

So one Saturday afternoon near the end of October I happened to refresh my Craigslist search on a break from house projects and see a set just listed. I loved it, Nick loved it. So I emailed the seller immediately. Within the hour we pulled up in a friend's truck and were loading to take home. It literally happened that fast. Thanks to a couple downsizing, for under $600 we were the new owners of this beauty:

I'm happy we found this with some time to spare before our visit from Nick's parents and brother, which is happening tonight through this weekend. Though we will be eating out at some of Portland's best restaurants and a food cart or two, there will definitely be a few home-cooked meals and probably a game night or two around our new dining set. 

This one fit all of our criteria and more. For instance, I thought a rectangular table would fit best in the space, but Nick prefers oval. This hybrid shape was the perfect compromise: the ends are flat but the long sides are slightly rounded. Not shown above are the TWO leaves that were included, which expands the table to something like 8 feet. 

It also came with our ideal minimum number of chairs: six. The four we use most of the time are of this style:

And the final two are Captain's chairs, which we store in the garage unless needed for guests:

We also have two gorgeous Gunlock chairs in the living room that we can use to seat eight at the table. More than that and we'd just plan an outdoor dinner, since the set on the patio easily seats ten.

A detail we loved but hadn't seen before were the table legs: they start out square at the top then turn cylindrical and taper toward the floor. So cool.

Most accurate representation of the wood & color

Even the chairs have really great curves:

The seller was unsure if the fabric is original or not. It's pretty unlikely, since they are over forty years old.* I'd like to reupholster them, but that's not a priority project since the current bluish-gray fabric isn't awful. I could see having either black leather-like material for easy cleaning or an upholstery fabric in some cool modern geometric pattern or something. If it's easy enough, we could change the look entirely every few years.

*The manufacturing stamp on the underside of every piece is 1972, made by a company called Dillingham Manufacturing Co in Leland, Mississippi.

Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing, Part 1: The Preparation

The kitchen renovation plan is by far the most ambitious of all of our early DIY projects for the house. We're pretty picky, and didn't like any of the updated kitchens we saw in the other mid-century houses we looked at buying. We were actually quite happy to find a house with a kitchen that was basically a blank slate: we had the opportunity to do whatever we want with the space. Our vision is a very sexy, modern kitchen, with keeping much of the original layout.

Original kitchen at purchase

We learned from a neighbor who has lived on the street for decades that the original owners raised their family in this house and lived here for about 40 years. Then there was a couple who lived here for about 5 years, putting in all the garden boxes and newer fruit trees. Then a single person for a couple years before it was foreclosed and vacant, which is when we scooped it up.

As you can see below, at some point someone decided to paint the lower cabinets brown, while leaving the upper cabinets white with yellow doors, the same yellow also found throughout the living room and hallway. They were terrible.

Nick putting in a new brushed nickel faucet here

We began by removing all of the cabinet doors. While the cabinet bases were solid wood and our plan was to strip the paint and stain them, the doors were not worth keeping. I gave them away for free through Craigslist. The cabinet bases were made for inset doors but the current ones were overlay, leaving a gap. We prefer the look of inset doors, with hinges hidden inside, so that was what we started looking at for replacements.

Removing the yellow doors and leaving just the white cabinets open made it look a lot better already, especially with the new paint throughout the space, but the real work was yet to come.

July 2013. New paint in kitchen, throughout hall and in master bedroom

Soon after moving in September, I started my work in the kitchen during the day while Nick was at his new job. Below you can see we actually have things in the cabinets! Not kidding when I said we were living within the mess of a renovation project. And the smells of a renovation project, as I was using a chemical gel paint stripper to remove what turned out to be approximately 6 coats of paint from the cabinets, most of which were pastel colors. It was so thick that most areas needed a second layer of chemical to strip the remaining paint, and I could only do small sections at a time. Not only that, but the gel had to sit on the paint for at least a half an hour before scraping it off. This was a very slow process.

This area was done in three sections, each needing two applications of paint stripper

This was by far my least favorite house project because progress was so hard to see. I can't remember exactly, but it took about two weeks to get the cabinets to the point shown below. The fan in the window was pulling the chemical smell and pushing it OUT. Not great to breathe, but most days it was nice enough outside that between coats I could go work on stuff in the yard and get fresh air. You can see from the photo below also that the wood of the cabinet boxes goes all the way to the ceiling, and there's a large section running over the sink between the two upper cabinet sections. Yes, I stripped the paint off of ALL of this. 

After the top cabinets were done I started on the lower area, which had that extra layer of brown. Fortunately the lower cabinets went much more quickly because the only areas needing work were thin strips of wood between doors and drawers. The drawer fronts -- like the cabinet doors -- are going to be replaced, which meant we lived with them like that until the new fronts arrived.

Paint crackling on that corner piece, nearly ready for scraping

Nearly done!

You can see above that this was done before we put down the tile. I don't think the gel would have done any damage had it come in contact with the tile or grout, but better to finish the messiest project first, just in case. 

There were a few areas I had to go over with a third coat of gel and scrape with a tiny tool. I also used the hand-held random orbital sander to sand all of the cabinets. Below is a closeup of the large end of one of the upper cabinets after sanding. Notice the small greenish marks near the top of the photo? Those are where the person who originally painted these used spackle to fill the small finishing nail holes before painting.

Not sure of the wood type...

I wasn't optimistic, but I tried testing an area with old spackle to see if it would take the stain. It did not, so that added a few more days to the project. I used a small dental-like tool to scrape all of the old nail hole filling out of the wood, all over the cabinets, and fill them with new stainable wood filler. There were a LOT of these holes. Not to mention there were some areas where the wood needed some slight rebuilding to fill in areas that were uneven. After letting all of the areas dry, they needed sanding and wiping down before I could start staining. Oh and the picture below shows an area that for some reason was just really loaded with holes. The rest wasn't too bad.

Upper nail holes scraped empty and ready for wood filler.
Lower holes are what they looked like before.

The photo above and below also gives a peek at what we're doing with the cabinet interiors. They definitely needed a new coat of paint and we wanted to give the kitchen a pop of color when opening the cabinets since they are going to be on the darker side. So we decided on this great avocado-like green. I held off on painting the rest until the cabinet base wood was stained. To be continued soon...