The Kitchen Reveal
Unlike the bathroom we don't have any "the house made us do it" story for the kitchen. Well perhaps that is not true. We started cleaning and it became clear that 40 years of grease was only going to come off if we sanded and painted the cabinets.
The first thing we did was try to remove the wallpaper..which we should note was on the walls AND the ceiling. It came off in tiny little pieces. This wallpaper has been on there for 30+ years and there are no seams, anywhere....you may know that is the key to removing wallpaper. UGH! So I look at Vince and say "what do we do?". He says simply "Cover it!" And cover it we did. The walls were covered with beadboard and we are doing a tin ceiling.
Then we went to Sears to get the appliances. All were custom order because they are so small. Apparently kitchens today are designed for much large appliances. This is when it became very clear we were going to need to do a second kitchen. You see we have an extra room in the back on the first floor. This use to be the kitchen..not sure why they moved it to a smaller room?? We plan to do a restaurant kitchen, all stainless steel with a 6 burner double oven large fridge....I feel like the guy in Home Improvement, "arr More Power"...I just dated myself didn't I. OK that won't come for a while so lets continue with this kitchen reveal.
Next we needed to pick out a counter top. I really wanted a marble look but found out marble is not durable enough in the kitchen : ( Apparently granite comes in the reverse marble with gray and streams of white. Not the look we were going for but we started to compromise. Then we found out there is a 40 sq ft min, we needed less then 30 for the counter top so we decided to do a back splash. The counter top came to about $4.3K, ouch, considering most of it was cut outs for sink and stove top. Then we found out our sink, which is a corner double sink, for under-mount is over $1000, double ouch. At this point we are over $5K and we have a very small counter. So we went to Chester County Kitchen and Bath, who did the counter in the Condo, and we looked at laminates. We were in luck, they just started making a marble laminate. So now we could get the look we wanted at 1/3 of the price. Deal! When people see it they have to get up close, feel it and still can't tell it is laminate. Bonus. It looks great and Chester County did a great job...totally recommend them if you are doing a kitchen or bath.
Well you are probably sick of hearing about the kitchen and want to see it.....
BEFORE..................
What a difference a couple of months makes.....
On a personal note, I channeled Marta on this project. We chose Bedford Gray as the cabinet color, this is named after Martha's house in upstate New York. She was with me every step of the way. The cabinets came out great, they look professionally done (if I don't say so myself). But here is my true Martha coming out....the knobs in the kitchen were a gold sunburst which would not match the new color scheme. So I used a scouring pad and took off the gold, leaving the perfect shade of grey behind to match the new kitchen...is that so Martha or what!
The first thing we did was try to remove the wallpaper..which we should note was on the walls AND the ceiling. It came off in tiny little pieces. This wallpaper has been on there for 30+ years and there are no seams, anywhere....you may know that is the key to removing wallpaper. UGH! So I look at Vince and say "what do we do?". He says simply "Cover it!" And cover it we did. The walls were covered with beadboard and we are doing a tin ceiling.
Then we went to Sears to get the appliances. All were custom order because they are so small. Apparently kitchens today are designed for much large appliances. This is when it became very clear we were going to need to do a second kitchen. You see we have an extra room in the back on the first floor. This use to be the kitchen..not sure why they moved it to a smaller room?? We plan to do a restaurant kitchen, all stainless steel with a 6 burner double oven large fridge....I feel like the guy in Home Improvement, "arr More Power"...I just dated myself didn't I. OK that won't come for a while so lets continue with this kitchen reveal.
Next we needed to pick out a counter top. I really wanted a marble look but found out marble is not durable enough in the kitchen : ( Apparently granite comes in the reverse marble with gray and streams of white. Not the look we were going for but we started to compromise. Then we found out there is a 40 sq ft min, we needed less then 30 for the counter top so we decided to do a back splash. The counter top came to about $4.3K, ouch, considering most of it was cut outs for sink and stove top. Then we found out our sink, which is a corner double sink, for under-mount is over $1000, double ouch. At this point we are over $5K and we have a very small counter. So we went to Chester County Kitchen and Bath, who did the counter in the Condo, and we looked at laminates. We were in luck, they just started making a marble laminate. So now we could get the look we wanted at 1/3 of the price. Deal! When people see it they have to get up close, feel it and still can't tell it is laminate. Bonus. It looks great and Chester County did a great job...totally recommend them if you are doing a kitchen or bath.
Well you are probably sick of hearing about the kitchen and want to see it.....
BEFORE..................
On a personal note, I channeled Marta on this project. We chose Bedford Gray as the cabinet color, this is named after Martha's house in upstate New York. She was with me every step of the way. The cabinets came out great, they look professionally done (if I don't say so myself). But here is my true Martha coming out....the knobs in the kitchen were a gold sunburst which would not match the new color scheme. So I used a scouring pad and took off the gold, leaving the perfect shade of grey behind to match the new kitchen...is that so Martha or what!
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