As if my dismal rate of update weren’t bad enough…apparently my update about the fridge was deleted, making it look like it’s been even longer than it really has since I updated. I might try to muster the energy to re-create this post…I seem to have the first couple paragraphs saved…
Or, I could go actually work on the kitchen.
fucking wordpress…
First of all, thanks for all of the encouragement and help everyone has been. Second…bugger off if you don’t like how frequently I update this damned thing.
So, we’ve been busy as bees lately between final projects for school, bailing friends out of jail, and camping in our house…busy indeed. We’re several weeks into not having a stove at this point and I have to say…I don’t miss it too much. We’ve procured a fancy new crock pot and the weather’s been nice enough to do a little grilling. Mostly I’ve been cooking on our camp stove out on the back porch. I live in South St. Louis…this behavior isn’t as unusual as you might think…
There have been several small things we’ve done, like stripping at least a hundred layers of paint off of the inside AND outside of the transom window in the kitchen and driving the remaining screws into the new drywall (it’s just been tacked up with 5 or 6 screws per sheet so far. Mostly, the electrical work and utter lack of a ceiling has been the big deal, but that’s going to be its own post, and frankly, I might still have too much post-traumatic stress to finish writing about it today. For now, here are some during and after pictures of the transom window. Enjoy.
Once, I broke off a little piece of my food processor which was cylindrical and about twice the diameter of a pencil. Naturally, it broke off inside the shaft where it fit, so just grabbing it and pulling it out was not an option. I spent the better part of an hour devising a plan for retrieval and gathering the necessary equipment (that being a pencil and some super glue). Every time I would think that I had the glue dry enough to attach the pencil to the broken piece and pull it out, I’d somehow botch it. This was immensely frustrating. Eventually, one of my roommates wandered into the kitchen and stood by to see what I was up to. After a few minutes of watching my feeble attempts at retrieving this stubborn little piece of plastic, Steve gently pushed me aside, picked up the food processor and turned it upside down, whereupon the little piece of plastic fell to the floor.
This story bears an alarming similarity to my experience of planning our drywall usage.
For some reason, I got it squarely into my head that drywall is only available in 4′ x 8′ sheets. Period. Being that our ceiling is 9ish feet, I had figured out the cleverest way to stagger all of the seams that would be necessary and calculated the number of sheets, amount of tape and volume of mud that we would need. I am nothing if not prepared…
When we arrived at the drywall aisle of the Home Despot, I sat down to verify my calculations, like any sensible girl would do. I reflected aloud, to no one in particular, that it would certainly make life easier if they would just make 10 ft. sheets of drywall, and that perhaps I should invent such a thing. Just then a magic prince in Dickies overalls appeared from the mist and pointed out, just as graciously as any gentleman could, that I was, in fact, sitting on a considerable stack of 10 ft. drywall.
Six sheets of which now clad my East, Southeast, and South kitchen walls.
We still need to drive the majority of the screws and apply mud and tape…but this is the baby steps project, remember? Full time jobs, school, bands, and other creative efforts (not to mention binge drinking…) take lots of time…
When we started on this weird road I had some vague, cloudy visions pulsing with bright oranges and yellows, not unlike certain very-early mornings at the End Up. I set about molding my sense of this room in that direction and gathered the requisite 3-inch stack of paint chips. I spent weeks blathering endlessly to my long-suffering mate about my feeling for the karma of this space, and the paramount importance of the vibrations of my color choices.
He might have mentioned at some point that he’d sooner gouge out his own eyes than have an orange kitchen.
So, we agreed, perhaps, that I would back off of the orange and away from the bong (Just kidding, dad!), and that we’d proceed with demolition and keep palette in the backs of our minds.
Then the magical happened, just like in a dream. I was prying the GODAWFUL plastic tiles off of the East wall and I was visited by the ghost of kitchens past. This was just the thing…here was our palette! Here’s a picture of the east wall immediately after de-tiling, followed by a detail of the colorifficness from which we drew our color choices. Funny how things work out.
One might think that at my advanced age, the word “stud” would have lost some it’s hilarity. Luckily, it turns out that’s not the case at all. Throughout the course of the evening that we built the STUD wall over the erstwhile built-in, I cracked myself up no less than 50 times. Seriously, it’s funny. Just say it with me “I’m going to screw this stud (into the track)”. “This stud needs some drilling”. “I NEED ANOTHER STUD!”. “I think I can handle 3 studs here!”
You’re imagining to yourself, no doubt, how fucking fun construction projects with me must be. Just wait until I tackle the electrical…Stay tuned for madcap slapstick. Anyhow, here are some pictures of ALL MY STUDS!
So, you might be thinking, “it’s all fine and well to have a beer or 5 and start swinging a crowbar around the kitchen…but where the hell are you heading with this?” This began, much like my vote for Kerry in ‘04, as a movement against one thing rather than toward a specific other thing. Only after clearing the amalgamated detritus of the last hundred years of occupancy have we been able to really get a sense of potential.
That potential has taken the form of Marmoleum flooring in the Verdi Green and Silver Shadow colors, of a yet-to-be-determined configuration. It has also taken the shape of these RIDICULOUSLY neato wall flats from Inhabit Living, which are going on the ceiling.
On the walls, we’re going to have varying shades of pale, clean, minty greens. The very few remaining cabinets, as yet to be found, along with the shelves, will be stained in a honey maple color. Shelf brackets are the Ikea Bjarnum series. For counter tops we’re really hoping to hit pay dirt at a granite remnant sale this weekend. If that doesn’t work out - we’re going to have a no-holds-barred cage match over butcher-block versus ceramic tile. Two spouses (spice?) enter, one material leaves.
Instead of the kitchen table and chairs we have now, we’re going to have an eat-at island, which is going to be fabricated from some re-purposed industrial shelving, retractable casters and marble slabs. Um, you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.
The lighting is going to be bright. See, I am capable of understatement when pushed. What I mean by bright is this: The primary lighting will come from two 8ft. double bulb full-spectrum fluorescent fixtures. Additional task lighting will be supplied by a single 4ft. full-spectrum bulb under the lowest shelf over the sink/workspace. Finally, we’ll shed some light on the island with a single pendant light (or three…) I am frankly nervous this this is not going to provide enough light for my taste. If they would just let me cook my goddamned dinner in the Apple store, I probably would never have picked up that crowbar in the first place.
Here’s something like a palette that I was able to create with my super-mad MS Paint skillz0rzez. Don’t you wish your girlfriend was clever like me?
The floor is up and the built in out. For some reason, there doesn’t seem to be any pictures of the fun, but you can see the results here:
Something tells me that the rest of this is going to go a bit slower…
Here it is…we’ve finally jumped in with both feet and started remodeling the kitchen.
Here you can get a sense of just how bad things really were:
These cabinets are fine, really. That is to say, they are structurally sound, solid oak, and so reprehensibly ugly that I want to weep real tears every morning when I see them.
The built in was one of the things we loved very most about the place when we bought it. Swear to god…I’m a total sucker for that kind of thing. However, after a couple of years of living with a built-in cabinet tucked away in the corner, ruining otherwise usable space…I came to despise it with great vigor. I’m trying to dig up a picture when it still had doors and drawers…Surely there’s one in there somewhere…
This floor? Um. Yeah.
