What [Kitchen] Dreams Are Made Of

Dad has always said: Renovating a house is like eating an elephant. The only way to stay focused and calm is to take it "one bite at a time." And he's right - but sometimes it helps when you have a village eating.

So when cabinets were scheduled to arrive the first week in October while Todd was out touring Europe, we invited my generous and fun uncle Howard up for a visit and some serious cabinet hanging.

I think I've probably told you this a million times, but despite the lure of prebuilt, fully finished kitchen cabinets, we went the route of custom breakdown cabinets in order to get a custom kitchen for a price that did eat up our entire budget. If you have not done a kitchen overhaul before, I will just tell you that our total kitchen expenses were more expensive than every car I've ever owned...combined. And that's the DIY version. Was it worth it? Well, it's pretty obvious that I cannot bake a pie and cook a fancy dinner in my car, so, yes.

Being the not-so-precise and error-prone person that I am, I was banned from helping with cabinet-building, but hey, I'm not complaining. Howard, unlike the Trom clan, has patience, and that goes a long way when you're setting inset doors and installing complicated stove hoods. In just a week, he and Dad were able to set all the cabinets and prepare for counter installation and gas hookup the following week.

The cabinets look gorgeous. And the counters? Divine. It's one hundred percent my dream kitchen, and I'd bet some money that it might be the dream kitchen of quite a few folks that have seen it.

Cabinets after delivery - 11 pallets full!

Pendants going up above the island

Microwave drawer installed into the island

All the cabinets in place and set.

Watching the granite folks bring in the marble slab our 10.5ft by 5ft island (or continent as it has also been called) was one of the more nerve-racking experiences of this whole process. There were five workers bringing in approximately 1000 pounds of marble over a muddy yard and into our house, and according to them, it took longer to bring the slab inside our house than it did to fabricate it.

But - doesn't it look fantastic?

ArabescatoVagli marble slab with a sink cutout for the island

A job well done!

After getting the cabinets and counters installed, it was back to the punch list for the rest of us. Hanging trim is a seemingly continuous process that luckily Todd took on with pride - and frustration. Mom and I followed closely behind the caulk and paint while Dad took on the more complicated finishing touches throughout. 

Someone told me recently that the punch list - the nearly endless list of the little and unrelated tasks that collect towards the tail end of a big project like this - is always deceiving, and that person was right. But  (!) we've finally passed the point of equilibrium with our personal punch lists, and finally, finally, the list of the things to do is growing at a slower rate than the list of things we have done. 

The days are getting shorter, winter is nipping at our toes again, Mom and Dad's eminent departure is just around the corner, and we've scheduled a housewarming party to celebrate the future completion. I've been waiting 17 months to say this. Bittersweet though it may be, the end is near!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

It's pretty pathetic when you have so many updates to share, it's almost unethical to put them all in one blog. Queue the second set of updates...

Here we go...one...two...three...

So I've discovered throughout this process, and I'm sure I've mentioned this before, that I work best when I'm given a wide description of a task and left to figure it out on my own. That's my forte. That's my...only...forte.

Fortunately, Todd is much, much, much better at handling the little menial tasks that often get handed to the two of us by one parent or another. I'm not sure if he's just better at taking direction, less bothered by the mindless stuff because he's so calm and relaxed in general, or just trying to keep a good face because, I mean, these are his in-laws. Regardless of reasoning, Todd just tends to handle tasks across the board with much more composure than I do. Therefore, when I get orders from the big cheese (that would be project manager Mom), I try to pass them off to Todd as much as I can. It's terrible, I know.

BUT I like projects! So when I ran out of flooring to lay and no one had mentioned started working on our "mini mud room" in the back entryway to our house, I jumped right on it despite the frustrated groans of Mom and Dad.

But let's backtrack a bit. During one of our many house clean out mornings [those times when Dad gets so frustrated by all "the shit laying around" that Mom orders an emergency purge and reorganization of tools, materials, and actual shit (packaging from lord knows what, bits of wire insulation, tiny scraps of wood, etc)], Dad noticed the old framed glass panels that lined the sides and top of the original door. A rant that included the words "disgusting," "rotten," and "trash" followed, but I wasn't surprised. He was right after all. The panels were rotten and disgusting. They had rotted away in the frame of the house until they were no longer secure then ripped out and left to decay, eaten away over the years by water, dark, and bugs. But, they were also lovely. And original. So when Dad wasn't looking, I snuck them away into a dark corner of the basement only to be pulled out when the time was right.

That time arose in the months after our wedding when it came time to build our mud "room." I knew I wanted to include the old panels, but the spacing was tight and I had to work around both the alarm panel and the electrical panel. I played around with a few basic structures, but finally settled on one where I would be able to use both remaining pieces of glass paneling.

The panel that would have stood on one side of the original front door was in fairly good shape so I knew I wanted to use that in its original form as some kind of a door. It had about a 3/4 in rotten section along one side, but with Todd's help, I was able to remove that pretty easily with the table saw. I employed Todd's help in the constructing the first tall box, and together, we built our first cabinet! Then I did a little scraping/sanding of the old paint and prepped the door for new paint with the usual caulk and patching.

Laying out the mud room with the first cabinet box built.

Cabinet door sanded and attached!

Plywood shelving in process.

Open shelving beside the tall cabinet was an easy choice to fill the space connect the mud room bench on the perpendicular wall. The bench itself was a pretty simple job - just a piece of plywood trimmed with brick molding and attached to legs.

The real fun started with the top cabinets. I wanted to use the old top door panel, but unlike its matching side, the top panel was nearly completely rotten and held together in many spots by the glass or glazing alone. I knew I would have to cut it down, and I wasn't even sure if it would be salvageable once I did so.

The original glass panel in it's totally rotten shape.

First, I built the largest box I could that could accommodate the alarm box position in the middle of the one wall. Then, I took the old panel outside and determined exactly what parts were rotten and what parts were strong (if any). As it turns out, almost the whole panel was rotten, but I measured two pieces that would work for doors with a good amount of trimming and replacing.

Top cabinet doors constructed from the old front door paneling.

No part of the mud room is perfect. The cabinet doors are all a little beaten up and missing little pieces, the top cabinet isn't quite level to the wall or floor, there are still many layers of paint tucked below the original glasswork, and the whole left side leans a little at the top.

BUT it's got character. And it gave us an excuse to keep those dirty old front door panels we were hoping to save. Not to mention, it's a great place to keep our things.

But cabinet doors aren't the only old thing we've been updating. I really wanted to save the original hardware that was left on many of the old five panel doors, and somehow Mom got behind this idea as well. Before we sent the doors for stripping, we removed the hardware. Then Mom took all the pieces home to cook in the crockpot (this helps loosen the paint) before intensely scrubbing every nook and cranny with a wire brush (her favorite tool - remember this??).

Hardware after the paint was removed.

You can see in the photo above that after scraping and sanding the metal to its base, Mom repainted the new pieces in a shiny silver.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - we're learning an unbelievable amount while we work on this house - not just about renovation or construction, but about each other and our family. Sometimes when I'm looking around the house in the evenings - wine in hand, lyle at my heels - admiring the work we've done and pondering the work we have left to do, I can't help but to feel a little overwhelmed still by the tasks ahead. The idea of reaching the ever-distant "completion date" is little like finding the end of a rainbow, but when I'm feeling overwhelmed, I try to look back and see how far we've come. If you need a reminder, check this out.

Teamwork - and hard work - are a beautiful thing.