Kitchen

Right now, June 2006, the kitchen is ALMOST done. It needs appliances and countertops, plus the finish painting...which SOUNDS like a lot but is only a couple of weeks of work

When we started the remodel job, the kitchen was just a bedroom. I personally knocked the doorway in the wall in with a sledgehammer. ME! (Then that was it as far as physical labor. Mike wants the stuff to work, LOL.)

Then, in an attempt to salvage to salvage the original plaster, we screwed in about about a million plaster washers. These light weight screws attached the old plaster to the original lathe. Then we had real plaster guys who troweled on real plaster to replicate the look, texture...even the temperature of the origianal wall treatment. Mike knows this guy, Dave, in Fresno who is just an artist with plaster. He loves his work and you can tell. When he works, I usually try to fix a good lunch (like tamales) and take it over. You know how real artists make their work look effortless? That's Dave. And just in case you've never run inot real craftsmen...they laugh and sing and ENJOY their work.




Here is a tear sheet of sort of what I wanted:


except of course, we wanted to use stuff we had collected from tear down. Mike works for a LOT of people who. unlike us, have enought money to change thengs just because they don;t like the way they look anymore. We're able to rip out the old but perfectly usable pieces and rework them. So this is sort of the feel I wanted.


Here's how I got it.
Because we had so much room and drag stuff all over the house, we'll find something and stick it in the kitchen for a while and it might stay or it might move somewhere completely different. That beadboard cupboard there is from my Grandma Martha's summer porch, where she kept all of her canning.

I wanted a window over the sink, (no sink in sight).

So we taped off the floor and walked around until I found a spot I thought the sink should go and Mike put in a window.

Remember,the outside walls are all brick, AND I'm short, so the had to knock out a chunk of wall and fix it so it would be the right hight for me and the counter...not exactly a piece of cake! This window is the size of a patio door slider but he fixed it so it would fit above the counter.

There's not much of a view, but on the top part, you can see the sky. That color is the cornmeal yellow color that I finally chose. I love yellow kitchens and this color just ...fits. It's not the crayon yellow that I would pick from the get go, but a softer, mellower color that takes it;s shade from the hand made brick.

In all, the inside colors are all old French farmhouse colors..and even though we'll have a lot of new stuff inside, it won;t be jumping out and a hollerin' "Look what was at Sears! See what they had at Hallmark? Have you been to the new Walmart?"

Now, this stained glass is just sort of an idea...I found one over in Morrow Bay that is more the brooding colors I'm thinking of (plus it is already DONE), that I really like better--mellower colors but I have no idea how much it costs (big factor), so I may just end up waiting until it is wintertime and Mike makes it for me. (Yes, he does stain glass,too. Sort makes you think that the artistic talen bucket was tipped on his head one to manty times, huh?
This is the dining room, with all of the molding stacked up like so many logs in Oregon. I was lucky that there was so much room so we could move things around and I could decide where I really did like details to be; what worked to gether and what colors looked good together.

I've built brand new places and most of the planning gets done on paper. This is messier and slower but there is a cohensiveness that I really enjoy. (I don't enjoy it enough to do it all the TIME though).

Now the cupboards...what we did was get with Pyramid Cabinets here in town and I gave my sketches to Laurie and she came up with two or three designs, utilizing some of the odd original pieces we had. Then she and I masking taped off the bare floor and walked around, opening up pretend freezers and putting stuff in pretend mircowaves until we had an entire kitchen designed around the way I store my things. The lower doors will all acutally be slide out drawers and the drawers were all designed to hold drawer organizers. I even have an appliace garage for the coffee maker and toaster.


The sink is the huge heavy cast iron Kohler sink from the '70's. It was originally supposed to be that '70's avocado green, but when it was poured, was an off color...perfect for me, but it sat on the junk heap for`THIRTY SIX YEARS. It is sort of a sage green, weighs a ton and is just perfect. $10.

I have a farmyard painting that goes here and then on the bottom, I have the top part of an antique stove that I use for bread. On top, I'll put on of those old general store scales with (probably) some kind of green plant. I think that there will be a decorative shelf connecting those two towers for cookbooks I never use.
We already found an old gate for my potrack and the plan is to put in stained glass on the bottom of the window, (since all I can see the rooftop of the cleaners next door) and leaving to top of the window that pretty green antique bubble glass, so I can still see the sky.

We still have no idea about the counters or backsplash. We have some 150 tin ceiling that we took out of a tear down that I like for maybe a copper or verdigris backspalash and maybe just plain black corian or granite for the counters. I't thinking simple, clan and sanitary looking (not a lot of grout to mess with!!)

The cabintets will be all painted a simple Navaho White/Ivory with red/brown antiquing. Plain bronze oild pulls...palin and simple. I want just a simple tall faucet with a spry deal, all in dark bronze oil finsh. The faucets I have my eye on look like dove wings.

The at the island, I'll have two pull up stools, upholstered in a weathered leather , piped in that tapestry fabric I used for all of the colors AND a brass footrail. Behind the kichen door, will be a piece of old school house slate and chalk rail for notes and as far as decorations, I think I'll have just a couple of larger ceramic chickens and a rooster. Probably a really large turned wooden bowl for fruit. My favorite "trick" is to fill the bowl up with realistic fruits and just top it off with real apples and bananas.

I'll start haunting the art fairs for just the right wooden bowl...I want one that looks sort of like a honey colored chunk of birds-eye maple.