The Kitchen: Planning and Progress
After we figured out how we wanted the kitchen to look, we started the planning phase. Given that this was our first renovation project, my uncle Jeff (owner of Finegrain Woodworking) agreed to help us out with the cabinet construction and give us guidance along the way. We decided on high gloss white cabinet doors which he ordered through one of his suppliers. Since they were custom and needed exact measurements, we had to decide on the final layout!
Initially we planned on leaving the appliances in their original locations to save money, however the layout wasn't ideal. There was a redundant staircase that we decided to remove and put the fridge in the newly reclaimed space. The rest of the appliances we shuffled around as shown in the floor plan diagrams and photos below. We planned to drop the wall dividing the dining room and kitchen and wanted to remove the doors separating the living room for a more open feel.
The original kitchen had a single light in the center of the room which made for a very poorly lit area. We planned to add recessed lighting for general illumination, under cabinet task lighting, and above cabinet lighting for mood. We wanted to be able to dynamically change the lighting scheme to match the use whether it be bright light for cooking, dramatic light for entertaining or just low levels of mood lighting for when watching a movie in the adjacent living room. Once we had the exact floor plan worked out, we were able to determine lighting placement and where we needed to run new electrical. As for recessed lighting placement, we kept in mind that there shouldn't be any shadows cast on the counter surface (they should be placed just about flush with the counter edge). We also planned for two lights directly above the island on their own dimmer and two above the sink.
July 2011
We started the kitchen renovation by removing the cabinets. Next came demolition which started with the wall that separated the dining room and the kitchen. The removal of this wall alone made a huge difference. We also took down all the drywall on the ceiling since we had to put in new lights and were ditching the sucko stucco.
August 2011
Four weeks after moving in and the initial mess from the wall demolition finally got cleaned up.
September 2011
As mentioned above, we decided to remove the doors between the kitchen and living room and make pass throughs. We removed the trim and door casings, drywalled, added corner bead, plastered and primed. By this point, most all the new electrical was run so all the walls needed to be patched back up.
We debated long and hard on what to do for flooring. We ended up taking out the hardwood that was in the dining room and tiling over the whole area. Shown below is a sample of the tile (middle swatch) next to a high gloss cabinet door with the stainless hardware.
October 2011
We started tiling in October. This was our first time tiling anything, and we were terrified we'd ruin the expensive tiles! Luckily we had my dad and my uncle to get us started on the first night. It took us four evenings to tile the full room, and two more nights to grout it. Note that night two was required because we decided we didn't like the first grout color and busted it out and started again. Oscillating tool with grout attachment to the rescue!
November 2011
At this point we had a lot of work left to do if we wanted a functional kitchen for Christmas. With the help of our amazing friends and family (thank you!!), we went from open walls and plastering to cabinet boxes and appliances in about a month. Things started to transform pretty quickly. As seen in the picture below, we bumped the wall out to make a recess for a built in flush cabinet, but also we needed the wall deeper to accommodate the fireplace we wanted in the living room.
