Now with more countertop

 
We had our countertops installed right before Christmas (not without a few screw-up's, one of the pieces that fit around the sink was cut wrong). It was quite a treat to have a level surface to work on after 2 weeks of balancing everything on the cabinet tops.

We went with soapstone because we wanted something a little different -- so different that all of the installers mentioned 'oh you'reeeee the soapstone people'.  Caesarstone was on the list of finalists, but we couldn't get past the super shiny bling finish of it. (It does come in a honed finish, but with that it only comes with a 2 year warranty, and has horror stories of permanent staining.) Soapstone seemed to fit the bill as it won't stain, but it will scratch and chip here and there. You can buff out the scratches with mineral oil (also used for constipation, as we found it in the pharmacy section!) and it looks good as new. We won't talk about the pair of pliers that Trevor dropped onto the counter at ceiling height working on a light overhead...that one was a bit more than a scratch.  But we'll all chalk it up to character, right?

Speaking of overhead, here are the Harmon pendants that we bought on sale at Restoration Hardware. They took forever to arrive, but well worth the wait.

I'm not posting any super-styled up photos yet...we're still in the middle of things, and it might give the impression that we have nothing else to do but decorate around here (far from it). Eventually the kitchen will be getting a tiled backsplash and trim moulding, but we're attempting to do things in some sort of order (mudroom, then onto finishing ceilings, then finishing wood floors, then trim).

More progress in the kitchen

Helloooo lovely kitchen! You can see the progress, and a bit more of the grand plan with these photos after the second day of installing the cabinets.

For the past 16 months we've been using a combination of a small bar fridge that you have to get down on all fours to see what you have in it, and our old fridge which is housed outside on the porch (tucked away on one of the sides to keep it looking classy here, ha!). This might explain why I love this fridge so much; it's indoors for one, and it sure is purdy. Oh, and it has an ICE MAKER. This is big news for me, I've never had one. Living the life now...

And here's where the island sits, and it will house the cooktop, pop-up fan, microwave, and compactor.

Cabinets in the kitchen

We've been planning the kitchen since August, and it's been relatively smooth getting to this point (a lot of decisions, haggling and a smidge of stress). One thing I should note is that I'm horrible at making decisions -- I want things that I love to the point that I'm jumping up and down excited about them, every time I see them. Not high expectations at all, right? You'd wonder why on earth I'd want to renovate a house when I know I'm like that. 

But I digress.

With this kitchen, we wanted drawers galore, because in our last house, we had horrible corner cupboards that were so deep your hand crossed into another dimension searching for something inside of them. Another winner was the cupboard above the microwave that held all of the plastic wrap boxes that liked to tumble out at you when you opened the doors.

We've had to work with a bit of an odd shape, with the original layout just being a small galley-style kitchen (if you'd even call it that, I prefer festering rat nest that they used as a kitchen), adjoined to a family room that was long and narrow. It made no sense to us to cram a small kitchen in where it was originally, so we scooped up the family room space to make an 'L'-shaped area for cabinets and the island.

So, here's the start of the good (and pretty) stuff, hurrah!

Where the island will live.

Appliances huddling up in the future kitchen table area.

The Kitchen Floor: Part 2

With the orange waffles and wires in place, we moved on to mortar, lots of mortar -- 18 bags to be exact.  Each bag required 5 minutes of mixing, 10 minutes of rest, then another 3 minutes of mixing. I know this by heart now because I was on timer duty for each bag. I'd like to say I never want to see another bag of mortar, but we need another 8 bags for the mudroom and main bathroom. I guess we'll be pro mixers by then.

After mixing, it was on to laying down the tile. We used 12" x 24" Takla tile, in a brickwork pattern. Originally I had considered a herringbone pattern, but I think that would have been way more labour-intensive and difficult to align. 

We mortared over three days, and after that we were set for grouting. That was tackled in the evenings and took three nights -- much easier than the mortar, it was only 4 bags of charcoal grout.

Now we're all set for the appliances to be delivered, and the kitchen to be installed!

 

The Kitchen Floor: Part 1

There were a two options with our kitchen floor: mix up a ton of levelling compound and pour it on the floor, then wait for it for it to cure; or try out this Flextherm product -- the orange waffle squares -- that would cut down on mess and time. The waffle squares were a big win because the wire for heating the floor clicks right into the little grooves, and holds them in place for tile over top.

There were over 1100 screws put into the floor to hold the waffles in place, and two rolls of wire were artfully applied (it was also a big puzzle getting it to fit). 30 days from now we'll be able to turn on the wires on and have warm floors.

Kitchen issue

While measuring for tile and heated floor wiring placement we used our kitchen plans to work around where cabinets would be installed -- and that's where we discovered a small 'blip' in the measurements and size of the base cabinet on the wall where the fridge will live.  Luckily we caught it (and it wasn't our fault!),  but it meant either having those cabinets that were built scrapped to fit the actual wall space and move our installation date, or bumping the wall out an additional six inches.  We weren't willing to move our install date, so out the wall went.  Fingers crossed this is the only major thing that goes wrong.

Starting on the ceiling

 It's deadline time around here at the moment because our kitchen is slated to be installed November 24th.  After living almost a year and three months without a kitchen (and a sink) it feels like Christmas will be coming early for me.

We decided long ago that we wanted to have a v-groove ceiling throughout the house, and after a lot of searching we found primed MDF planks that would work nicely.  The installation wasn't too bad -- Trevor had to add supports in the joists that ran in a horizontal direction, and then it was a lot of time with arms above our heads tapping and nailing the planks into each other.

There will be an island and sink here soon!

Drywall in the kitchen

This is one of my favourite spaces at the moment, because it's one area that's going to be semi-finished soon (semi as in no moulding, but floors, ceilings and cabinets!).  You'll notice there's no drywall on the ceiling -- that's being finished with v-groove MDF planks, which goes with our whole 'modern farmhouse' look.

Looking towards the front of the house, where a table will eventually be.

That wall will house cabinets and the fridge.

Kitchen of horrors

Remember the last shot of the kitchen? Yes, lets hope you haven't eaten anything within 30 minutes of seeing this picture again:

You're lucky this photo isn't scratch-n-sniff. Take it from me, I've been there, and it's bad -- in a dry heave-y way.

Onwards and upwards, right?

Another beauty shot of the kitchen showing off it's fly tape and impeccable organization. Everything a modern family could possibly want. HA.

We decided to put on our big boy and big girl pants and bring the kitchen down (note to self: buy bigger big pants):

There was a noticeable decrease in the number of winged friends buzzing in drunken dirty kitchen swarms once we started to take the cupboards down.

(Small pause here: The two older guys who were frolicking through our yard-o-crap took these cupboards. I hope they took them far, far away. Crazy old guys nonetheless.)

Once the cast iron sink was taken out (and our spines readjusted) we discovered the mouse hotel under the lower cabinets and up into the wall.

EVICTION NOTICE! Well, not quite as dramatic as that, but we were glad to see that no one was home at the time. The mouse hotel was engineered using insulation and plastic bread bags.

Excuse me for a moment while I get a little sidetracked:

THESE PEOPLE CLEARLY WERE NEVER ON THE ATKINS DIET. The sheer volume of bread, tortillas, wraps, pitas, buns, flatbread that we're discovering must have cost a small fortune. We have 3 FULL SIZE freezers left behind, and every single one of them is full of bread. Two of them are outside, and one is down in the basement. When you wander around the yard you stumble across plastic bread bags and those plastic ties used to close them. I mowed the lawn (whole other story there, if I go off on another tangent this post will never end) and mowed up 3 bread bags hidden in tall grass and weeds. It makes the mower sound like a category 3 hurricane.

Sidetracking over (for now, you're lucky).

To add to the mouse hotel, we noticed an ant inn (trying to make a theme work here):

And I now know where the inspiration for Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' came from. The resemblance is uncanny:

I think my face did the exact same thing at that moment.

Then we noticed the shoddy electrical work:

Yup, that's duck tape. Doubt THAT meets code. Good thing we had already decided to bring down all of the drywall in the house anyways.

So that leaves us with a parting shot of the scene we're uncovering. Another ant party was found in the far corner, but we couldn't find any ant inns around there. That might mean there's another problem on the second level. Hopefully not, but if there is, we'll deal with it -- and I'm going to buy a 36-ton pack of caulk and cover the exterior of the house in it.

White kitchens

I'm drawn more and more to a white kitchen, with panelling and detailed tile work.

via House Beautiful