Pine Cottage – Kitchen Re-Do
It’s a wet and cold Martin Luther King Day, and I have spent the day making the El Granada Project books and files all neat and tidy. Time for a little fun. Back in 2004, after making Cell Block 49 have a little more curb appeal, we turned our compulsive fixer-upper energy to the kitchen. Below are some nice before-and-after shots of this effort, and the story follows just beneath.
As you can see from the "before" pictures, the kitchen was pretty dysfunctional. Actually, though, the "before" state represented significant improvment from when we first moved in. Initially, the kitchen lacked the bar area with the two stools, and there was a door blocking it off from the rest of the area. Ugh! We took off the door, added some paint on the inside of the cottage, put up the formica bar/counter, and added lots of storage with the shelves and hooks for the pots. The real pain was the sink area. The kitchen had the kind of sink that you–if you are my age–would spot in your grandma’s kitchen. It was single, very shallow, and had a drain the size of a bar sink and no trap. Between the sink and lack of counter space, cooking in the kitchen was really a pain, and since Chris and I like to cook, we thought remodeling worth the effort.
Of course, once we started, we didn’t know we’d have to eat out of the microwave and clean up all dishes in the bathroom for the duration of the project!
We got all the materials reasonably priced through Home Depot, including:
- light maple cabinets
- ceramic floor tile that we’d use for the counter tops (we thought their larger size ideal for both installation and use)
- smaller "shower" tiles that we’d use to create the decorative effects you see on the counter top
- stainless sink and faucet
- drywall, paint, texture compound
Chris also figured out that we could add an extra 2′ of interior space just by bumping out the exterior wall of the kitchen to correspond with the exterior wall of the adjacent dining area. (The before and after of the kitchen bump-out is on my "Curb Appeal" blog.) In a kitchen this size, 2′ represents an increase of 1/3!
So together and with some help from my mother-in-law, Lora, we finished the re-do in about 4 weeks while both Chris and I were working our "RJs." Chris installed the cabinets and put the plywood up for the counter tops. Lora and I cut and installed all the tile for the counter tops. We used two kinds of tile: 18" square tiles originally intended for floor tile, and 2" square tiles intended for shower floors. We decided to use the 2" square tiles for the back-splash and edging, as well as using them in the center of each big-tile join as a decorative element. The tricky part in the installation was the care needed to cut the corner edges of each big tile in order to make room for the decorative little 2" tiles in the center. It was my first exposure to: "non-standard means more time, mistakes, and cost." I also thought it interesting that the bull-nose "trim" tile pieces were more expensive than the cost of all the other tile pieces together. They get ya on the specialty pieces.
I also did the drywall for the kitchen, since I really love to do wall texturing and wanted to try my hand at an Italian plaster look. Chris showed me how to cut the drywall and tape/texture. I didn’t have to be extremely precise, since I would plaster over the whole wall anyhow. Still, I had to make sure to measure three ways to get a good fit: vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. In an old house like this, each piece of drywall is like a trapezoid puzzle piece that fits into the uneven wall spaces. The ceiling, which was smooth, took the most time and boy, is that hard! I had to sand like hell and I sure developed respect for the pros. As another "expense" lesson: I now know why "smooth" drywall is more expensive to install in a house than shot-texture.
Once the drywall was up, I plastered each section using a feather-weight spackling compound that comes in a big box. It’s a highly satisfying experience (for those of you who like clay and in general playing with mud). The look I was going for was not the obviously old-european "rough" wall look, but something more subtle, and achieving this was a snap: all I did was try really hard to make the wall smooth. I’d apply the plaster with plaster blade and carefully blend each section as I moved along. It’s possible to make the wall look pretty good, but impossible to have a flat, smooth finish by applying plaster only by hand. The result is a sort of "stone" look, or a look that has only slight depth variations. This is great to use behind a solid-color paint, because the variations in texture will create a nice effect alone. It’s also nice because I have found that more "bumpy" types of wall texture hang onto cobwebs and dust like you wouldn’t believe, while this surface is smooth enough to not be a dirt trap.
The wall color that you see in the end photos is the result of three colors of paint application. And I got all my guide from the free brochures in the paint department of OSH. First, I put on a dark color to provide a foundation that "informs" the two top colors and provides depth of tone. Then, using a split sponge roller and a split paint tray, I rolled the two top colors over the dried base layer. Depending on your taste, you can cover however much base coat you desire. My base coat was a fairly dark brown, and since dark colors make a space look smaller, I wanted the base coat fairly hidden. For the top colors, I picked tones that were much lighter than the base coat, and which had a spread of about 3 shades color difference between them. This way, there would be some visual difference once the colors were applied, since as you apply the colors and keep using the roller over and over, the colors tend to blend. Even with these two shades, I had to be careful not to over-blend the colors. However, if you want a more subtle effect, you can just keep rollering back-and-forth over the wall until the colors merge in a subtle blur of tone changes. It all just depends on your mood.
This technique is very forgiving, so you can always go back over an area if you don’t like it once it dries, but a good tip is to start in the corner where cabinets or appliances will hide the wall color. As you work, you’ll develop a rhythm and technique that improves with each section you complete, so plan to finish up in the most highly-visible places. Also, because plaster and paint techniques tend to be as unique as finger prints, I don’t recommend having someone help you with this. If you need to divide up the work, keep the division of labor to distinct parts of the room, or have one person plaster and the other paint. It can look surprisingly obvious where one person began and the other person finished if you simply start and stop in the middle of a wall. Also, I’m not sure I’d two a 3-color technique again unless I really wanted the base color to be more visible. I think you can achieve a pretty nice effect with just two colors applied over a primer coat.
Well, that about summarizes my efforts in the kitchen. Chris of course did all the. You can’t see it in the photos, but the corner base cabinet has a cool fold-out door that he created himself (doors that cheap don’t come that way standard). And, we have a pull-out base drawer on the right that holds both our trash and recycling, which really makes the space look good. He put in lots of nice little storage options in the cabinets: slide-out drawers for pots and lids, a very solid lazy-susan in the corner cabinet. Finally, he worked really hard on the beautiful old oak flooring to make the new section blend in with the old, and he added lots of finish coat to the floor so that stains and cleanup with be easy.
Some things we wished were different: the drawer beneath the counter on the left is a "single" drawer that just looks double. If any one is working there and another person needs to get in to access something in the drawer, the working person has to move out of the way. I also think it would have made more sense to put the trash drawer to the right of the sink, since accessing the trash is something that both people do frequently when using the same space, and this location is not in the way of any prep space. In a kitchen this small, you’ll have the inevitable collisions, but with careful thought, you can still keep this to a minimum.