Drawer Hardware

I haven't talked about many of the specifics yet of the kitchen, so here is my first. We finally have drawer pulls installed!! It is amazing how it changed the entire dynamic of us using the kitchen. We can actually open one drawer and access what we are looking for rather than starting at the bottom and working our way up to opening the top drawer.

These drawer pulls are gorgeous. They are from Schoolhouse Electric in Portland and we have been eyeing them for a long time. Most of the kitchen has been done on a tight budget, and the pulls were something we decided to splurge on a little. Originally, we were looking at pulls that were similar, but when we got them, the finish was a little too dull. With the dark cabinets, the brass finish needed to be a bit more polished to pop so you could actually see them.

Baby Steps

Now that we feel like we have a functioning kitchen, the rest of it will take just as long, or longer to actually finish. We have been working on installing the light fixture above the sink, and although this was supposed to be an easy task, somehow it took almost three hours. The house was built in 1925, and the majority of the electrical in the house has not been updated. Luckily, there was a fixture in the location we wanted, so we didn't need to run any new lines. The problem was the wiring was so old that it would not cooperate. The wall and ceiling construction is also lath and plaster, so the more we worked to get the connections to hold, the more plaster chipped away. Finally, we have a new light, and another  project for another day will be to fix the plaster at the ceiling.

We have also re-purposed the old ironing board cupboard and made it into a spice shelf. We have matched the countertops with cherry wood shelves and will finish with the same sealer.

Kitchen demo and reconstruction

This has been a big weekend for the kitchen. Everything was ready to be installed and we could finish ripping out the rest of the ugly kitchen!

First to go was the remainder of the kitchen. We took apart the sink and the cabinets and decided to sand the floors one more time without the cabinets in the way. We made the plunge and rented a big sander from Home Depot and it made such a difference. In two hours, the floors were looking pretty good, and surprisingly didn't create too much additional dust. They still aren't perfect, but we are leading towards leaving it a little more scratched since it is Douglas Fir and it will scratch easily always. This way, the new scratches will hopefully be somewhat concealed.

 

By the end of the day Sunday, we had the basics of the kitchen installed. The sink faucet was hooked up and we decided this was good enough for the weekend. The garbage disposal and dishwasher still need to be attached to the water line, but we didn't have those before, so we can live a few more days without them. It's far from complete, but it feels like we accomplished a lot in two days.

IKEA Cabinet Construction

So we purchased all of the cabinets and started assembling them before ripping out the rest of the kitchen. The plan is to have all of them assembled, complete demo one day, and install the cabinets, countertop and sink the next day so we are only without a kitchen for about one day!

The first IKEA box was the most difficult to assemble with all of the drawers. IKEA's pictograms are great, but they would be even better if there were just a few words to help guide you. Some of the pictograms have such small details that if you didn't know you need to pay close attention, it is easy to miss. The first box took about two hours to put together, and after we figured out the small details, they went together in about a half hour with the both of us.

Designing with IKEA

We planned from the beginning to use IKEA kitchen cabinets. Their system is easy to use, is based off of standard dimensions, and is highly customizable with the options they provide for the types of storage. We designed everything to be a drawer based system. Since we will only have a few open shelves above, we needed to maximize the storage capacity of the base cabinets as well as make them easy to use. We have lived with kitchens that only have swinging doors on the base and we either only use the first eight inches of the cabinet, or lose items to the back where we forget we ever had them.

The IKEA cabinets allowed us to get a three drawer look, with the fourth drawer hidden behind the top drawer door. This gave us two shallow drawers for utensils, knives, and cooking tools on the top with deeper drawers below for larger items and pieces that can be stacked liked plates.

The IKEA online design tool was relatively easy to use. Although I didn't figure everything out before we went to order the cabinets, the kitchen designers at IKEA quickly helped us make some tweaks we didn't even know we could do. Since we were going with a dark cabinet face, they suggested changing the cabinet box construction to brown rather than white so you don't see the joints. They also helped with items like end panels and toe kicks, which were not intuitive with the software.

Since we are not planning on getting a countertop from IKEA, it is missing, along with hardware. Appliances are modeled in the program to help with spacing, but we will purchase those separately as well.

Kitchen Design

The kitchen design is coming along and we are almost ready to start ordering appliances and cabinets! Once we get the electricians in, the kitchen should come together fairly quickly. We originally were planning on getting cabinet faces from a company in California that makes doors specifically for IKEA cabinets, but they were more expensive than we expected. We were going to paint the cabinet doors a really dark blue color, but are planning on going with a new door IKEA is releasing next month. It is a dark matte grey color, and it still works with the overall design. Paired with cherry butcher block countertops and brass hardware, the vision is starting to come together.

Kitchen Floor Progress

It has been about a month since we really started working on the floor, but the real effort has been about two solid weekends and Andrew's time off between Christmas and New Years. The linoleum was removed in one day, and Andrew decided to quit using the heat gun and just use a scraper to loosen the edges and yank it up. The heat gun did soften the linoleum, but it was taking a really long time. Right after Andrew finished a section, I was right behind him with a bucket of hot water and Dawn dish soap sopping the paper backing and glue to scrape it off the floor. We were pretty happy to finish this part of the floor in one day.

When Andrew was on break, he got busy scrubbing the floor with more Dawn and hot water with a bath tub scrubbing brush to break up the glue and leftover paper. Once it was dissolved, he scraped the glue up with a squeegee. At this point, Andrew really thought the work was done (or was trying to convince himself of it). I really felt the floor needed some sanding. After a few days back and forth about sanding, I decided the floor just didn't feel good walking on. It was too rough, especially compare to the rest of the flooring in the house.

So I taped off the room, and sanded the floor with a palm sander. It has smoothed out the floor, and now I am trying to convince myself that it's ready for staining. Before the linoleum was put down, they seem to have scraped the floor to get better adhesion but it has left scratch marks all over the floor. It doesn't quite work with the rest of the house, but it gives the floor some nice character. We are continuing to think about more sanding, this time with an industrial sander to remove the scratches. Still to be determined about the final outcome...

We also got really excited and got a small can of whitewash stain to test on the floor. I've read a few other ways to do a whitewash, combining a slightly tinted paint and diluting it with water, but this gave us a quick idea of where we are on the floor. It's a little pink, so we will try the paint option too and compare.