Finished kitchen

Here's a quick before and after for the kitchen. I think you can tell which ones are before and which are after :)

Obviously it's still missing one door at the far wall. It's being painted. Pretend you don't see that.

Back to the kitchen (for doors)

Hurricane Sandy has forced me indoors for the weekend, so work has restarted in the kitchen.  The goal for today was to measure and order all the cabinet doors and drawer fronts.  I was very nervous about this next step because it's an expensive step and measuring. . . lets say it's not my strongest skill.

 We planned to order our cabinet doors from Barker Door (http://www.barkerdoor.com/).  I like this company because they have lots positive reviews online, very good prices (custom doors are super pricey), and quick turn around. Plus, enough design and materials options (I only need to find one I like, I don't need a million options). They have very few finish options, but I'm just going to paint them myself so that didn't matter to me.  It would have been $35/door for a painted white factory finish, which would have doubled the cost of the doors.

They have a lot of information on their website about how to measure and how to install. I watched all the videos and read all of their text before beginning my measuring.

I marked every door and drawer with a sticky note and a number +/- a letter.  This helped me be sure I ordered one door for every cabinet (with no duplicates). When the doors arrive, the sticky notes will make it easier to match door to cabinet.

Then it was just a matter of measure, measure, measure.  Followed by remeasure x3.  It was stressful.  One of the things that decreased my stress was knowing that the style of hinge we chose is highly adjustable.  So as long as the door is pretty close, I'm good.  Having the door overlap the cabinet face is also good, because a slightly too large door isn't going to matter.  The whole thing is just more flexible than I previously expected.  But I still kept everything in a giant spreadsheet to check/double check/triple check.

So, everything has been ordered!  I got all the hinges from Barker Doors, too, so all the doors will be predrilled and should fit the hinges perfectly.  Step two: wait on pins and needles for them to arrive. Step three: ??? Step 4: profit!

Front Yard, Retained!

Here is what we started with.  This is a very steep hill.  The slope next to the driveway is too steep to hold mulch, and the slope towards the sidewalk is very difficult to mow.  We knew something had to be done here. I think the neighbors were starting to wonder if we'd ever tackle the front yard, although they'd been patient and not made any snide remarks.

Here is our starting point: a huge hill and a whole lot of nothing. Plus, a classy railing.

This was my original plan.  My goal was to minimize the area of the front yard that required mowing, since it's really tough to mow the slope.  I also, selfishly, wanted to maximize the area of planting space because the back yard doesn't have much sun, and I want to plant lots of flowers.

Such lofty ambitions. Look at all those curvy lines.

After a lot of considering, this is what we decided on!  Finally! Please note that we cut down the bossy yew covering up the dining room window on the far left of the house, and we cut the holly bush back hard. We did this several months ago, and the holly has bounced back pretty well.  The yew also tried to bounce back, so we killed it twice. Zombie yew.

I'm all swelled with pride. Collected so many compliments on it already!

It's obviously not finished.  I still have a lot of grass to dig out where the beds will be.  But the hard part is finished!  I used DIY-friendly blocks from Home Depot, the same ones I used in the back yard for the greenhouse wall last fall.  I was really happy with how easy they were to use and how well they've held up over the last year, so I felt confident choosing to use them again.  Especially since these walls are shorter than the one in the back.

This is how it looks from above.  I took this picture so I could start planning the landscaping (the best part!!).   I really like the curves in the walls, they look gorgeous from the street, and I'm so happy with the color of the blocks. It compliments the colors in the brick on the house without matching exactly.

From the guest bedroom

Here is my plan.  It's in progress, but I've purchased some of these plants already.  I just can't be stopped. Landscaping is a challenge here because the deer (short for Deer, the Horrible) run rampant in this area. I don't want to spend all year feeling hate for the deer and wishing I could teach my dog how to use a pellet gun.  So, I'm trying to choose plants that are less palatable to deer. Plus, I'm throwing in a few poisonous ones for good measure. Take that!

The red starburst is a fancy pieris.  It blooms white, but the new growth on the plant is bright red!  The larger white starburst is a semi-dwarf viburnum.  The pink is a double-flowering quince (I'm not sure if it will fruit).  The orange dots are astilbe (that area gets a bit of shade from a mature tree near the sidewalk).  The yellow dots are daffodils, but there will be way more bulbs than that. I bought so, so many bulbs.  The green circles next to the driveway are hen and chicks and elfin thyme.  The purple is hopefully going to be a mix of daphne and something evergreen (boxwood? holly?), but I need to buy that.

Again with the lofts goals. 

I absolutely can not wait to plant!  Look at this! Look how good this looks!!  I'm going to start some candytuft (sempervirens) and lobelia from seed in the greenhouse this winter to grow along the top of the wall.  They're not exactly cascading, but they'll soften the top edge of the wall.  I'll start some datura, too, because it is poisonous. Muahaha.

SO GOOD!

Next step will be replacing the bowed timber wall next to the garage with more of the same stone.  I'll admit: it's a big next step.  Luckily, that wall looks like it already has a gravel foundation, so at least I won't have to dig that out.  I'll have another post soon with all the retaining wall steps from start to finish!


 For anyone trying to choose deer-resistant plants, this list was helpful:
http://njaes.rutgers.edu/deerresistance/

I will keep you posted on which plants are actually resistant to deer around here.  Seems like sometimes they'll eat just about anything.

Part One of Hardwood (Recap)

I know I've already shown pictures of the finished floor, but I thought I'd go back and show the process.  Installing flooring isn't technically difficult, but it's physically demanding.  It also is a little tedious around the edges, because the floor nailer is too big to get close to the walls. 

Step one was to drag huge heavy boxes of wood up the basement stairs, since the wood had been living in the garage.

Opening up the boxes of wood was pretty exciting.  It's pre-finished floor, which I would without question choose again for a DIY floor project.  The wood we chose was a natural Hickory with a clear finish.  Hickory has a lot of variation in the color of each board. I think makes the floor look homey and rustic, which suits our style perfectly.  The colors in the wood are gorgeous too, really rich and not too yellow.  We used 3 insh wide planks, 3/4" thick.  Thats pretty standard for hardwood floors these days.

Pre-finished flooring has a tiny bevel on all the edges.  It's there so that any minute variations in the thickness of the planks will be hidden, but it does mean the floor doesn't have that glassy, prefectly smooth finish that sanded-on-site floors have.  I don't mind the little micro-bevel, but I know some people don't like it. If you're choosing between the two, keep that in mind. I have not had any problem with dirt being caught in the beveled areas, because they are so shallow that the vacuum sucks everything right out.

I started laying floor in the area under the range. I figured if I was going to screw it up, I should do it in a place where it would be invisible.  It was a little scary, because the entire floor on the whole first level of the house would be set off of this area.  I measured and re-measured (and triple re-measured!) before I laid the first plank to make sure the wood was still going to be running parallel to the walls when I finally reached the other side of the house.  No going back now!

We were really happy with how the floor held up under the range, even after we had to slide the range in and out a couple of times.  No scratches on the floor!

To install the floor close to walls or cabinets, I had to predrill then hand nail every board. I put nails into the planks about every 6-8" because i wanted to make sure the planks were securely held.  Much later, I learned a better way to do this, but that's a story for another time.

Woo, looking like real floor!!  At this point I think i rolled around on the floor to properly appreciate my handiwork ;) Both of us were really excited with how great the floor looked at this point.  The hardest thing was actually choosing which board should go where.  I was aiming for that intentionally patternless look.  Plus, I was cherry-picking all the nice boards for visible areas and using boards with marks or knots for hidden areas.

The boards have to be laid pretty much all in one long row.  You can see here how I got a stepped pattern because of the way I was laying the boards.  This is how the pros often do it, but it's actually better to avoid this pattern if possible.  You will end up with a stronger floor if it doesn't have this stepped pattern.  After I realized it, I avoided doing this when possible. Some areas of the floor it just couldn't be avoided.

So that's part one!  This much work took me a whole weekend.  It's a tough job for a single person to work on because all the supplies are heavy but, once the basics are in place, it's easy to fly across the middle section of the room.

Stay tuned for part 2!

Undercabinet Lights!

My dad, being the superstar he is, came to visit and installed undercabinet lights in the kitchen! They look AMAZING! I can't believe how dramatic the kitchen looks with them in. He hooked one whole side of the kitchen to the light switch. He gave them their own switch too, so you can turn on the sink lights or the under cabinet lights individually, which looks really professional.

I'm so excited and impressed! No more delay, on to the pics!

Before:

After:

What an awesome transformation!

House Looking Pretty Good!

Well it's been a long haul and we still have miles to go before we sleep (so to speak), but here is the current update on how the house is looking.

When you come in the front door, the living room is the first room:

Then you walk down the hallway towards the kitchen:

Then you see the gorgeous, bright new kitchen! The eat-in area is so functional now (especially since the dining room is still in disarray), and it suits the kitchen perfectly.

Here's another view of the kitchen (still needs cabinet doors):

The den connects to the kitchen and makes the whole space feel really open. The new floor flows seamlessly and give really good continuity between the rooms.

So you can see, there is a lot of work left to do (plus, I didn't exactly "stage" the rooms for the pictures, as evidenced by the cat litter under the desk in the den). We still need doors for the kitchen cabinets, and a backsplash in the kitchen, and baseboard molding, and most of the walls still need to be painted. . . the list goes on. But for now, we're really excited with the progress! It's like a real house now!

Kitchen Demo

Time to start the kitchen renovation.

First, demo. Here is the kitchen before. To the left of the stove, there is a redundant closet/pantry. To the left of that pantry, there is another pantry. There is also ANOTHER pantry to the left of the refrigerator. So basically step one was to remove two of the three pantries in favor of more cabinets and counter space.

Before:


And after:
I know it looks like we've created less counter and fewer cabinets by doing this, but don't you fret. We have plans!

We scooted the fridge over into the space where pantry #3 used to be. Since it's recessed into the wall, the fridge sits back quite a bit and is very unobtrusive now. It's a counter-depth fridge anyway, so it was already not very obtrusive.


Here is how the room looks with the new layout. Ahhh, breathing room! We purchased a few cabinets on craigslist because we found some that were a match to the existing ones--lucky! I dragged one into place to show how the layout will look down the line.


Please excuse the dust. Renovation :) I have a lot of cabinets to build.