Like so many houses from the post-war era, our place has a huge hole in the hallway floor where an old oil furnace vent used to be. The furnace has long been drained and filled with sand, but the grate was never removed or replaced.
The old vent was depressed to the point that it seemed unsound, but we eventually learned to walk around it without even noticing it was there. It wasn’t until our first winter in the house when I realized how much cold air was seeping through the porous opening.
I ended my last kitchen remodel update by saying, “we still have some little things to do in the room (build an island on wheels to rest beneath the matching pot rack, add shelves to the rear of the washer/dryer cabinet door to hold various sundries, and put a flat screen TV above the fridge), but that’s all cosmetic work.” Well, now the cosmetic work is done:
I gave myself the arbitrary deadline of before football season to finish the work. It seems I barely beat the bell, considering that the college football season kicks off tonight.
As you know from the last update, we encountered some unexpected grief from the kitchen sink. Once we got all of that sorted out, my wife and I were able to turn our focus back to finishing the room. We’ve been very busy with work and family lately, so we haven’t had more than a day or two where we could devote our attention to the house. I managed to get a little carpentry done after work, including building these 18″ deep shelves for the pantry:
The pantry space is over three feet deep. We figured there was no reason to install such deep shelves, as we wouldn’t be able to reach anything in the back. And we couldn’t treat it like a walk-in pantry with shallow shelves, because the space is only two feet wide. My wife balked at the idea of putting in a false backing, since we’d essentially be throwing away good storage space in an otherwise small room. She recommended that we put shelves in the back for things we seldom use (specialty appliances and seasonal china), and build a movable pantry to maximize the volume of the space. This solution is actually closer to her original design, except that the pantry moves on wheels instead of on expensive, heavy-duty slide rails.
We don’t have a lot to report. We’ve been hosting people in and out of the house a lot lately, and that trend will continue throughout the summer. After work last week, my wife and I found some time to cut and install the baseboards. Some of the cuts were difficult, especially where the cabinets meet the walls next to the stove. They still need a couple of coats of glossy white paint, but getting this trim work on the walls covered up the last traces of the old room:
Like I said a few days ago, “The dishwasher is the only appliance that’s not stainless-looking. We can’t justify buying a new one until this one starts to break down, and we couldn’t order a stainless front panel for this model, so I bought some faux-stainless laminate. It self-adhesive and it really looks like steel paneling.” The product is called SoftMetal faux stainless steel film:
I promised to blog the results and give my opinion on the laminate.
Last week was very busy for us. As you know, the cabinet people came on Tuesday. We worked like crazy on Wednesday to finish the ceiling and the baseboards, but we didn’t manage to get enough paint on the wood on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday morning, the new refrigerator and range hood were delivered:
It fits pretty well into the custom cabinet space. The delivery guys had to take the doors off the fridge to get it into the house, and the right door sags a little since they reinstalled it. I’ll raise it up when I have some spare time.
The cabinets were installed yesterday. We think they look pretty good:
That light fixture ended up looking great in that space.
We’ve been really busy since last weekend. After work on Monday, we filled the gaps in the floor with a cream-colored grout. After almost two years with a black and white floor that advertised every speck of dirt, we wanted to go with something a little more low maintenance. I had never done this before, so I was a little intimidated. It wasn’t so much the work that worried me as the time sensitivity. Thanks to a few YouTube tutorials, we managed to do an okay job:
Getting the grout haze up is a pain, but it goes away quickly if you wipe it with a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water.
After last weekend, we needed to take a couple of days off. We didn’t do much to the kitchen after work, but the electrician completed most of the wiring. He’ll finish up this week. I did manage to get a little mud work done on the ceiling and we were able to further repair the walls (and the new damage done by the electrician) before the weekend. Most importantly, we got the ceiling painted on Friday night:
We sanded prior to painting, hence the dust.
