The Crown Jewel... The Kitchen

The kitchen.  Oh the kitchen.  The kitchen was disgustingly dirty.  Like 50 years of grease dirty.  Like there was carpet in the greasy kitchen dirty.  And it was TINY.  Like 10x10 tiny.  There were two doorways and a dishwasher that was sitting in front of what used to be the back door.  They didn't actually take the door out, they just closed it permanently and installed the dishwasher, cabinet, and countertop in front of it.  It had been that way since at least 1964 (I found the paperwork on the dishwasher).  There was also a giant return vent the full height of the wall behind where the fridge used to sit.

It was adjacent to the little breakfast room that had been closed off from the dining room with a temporary wall (paneling) that went about 3/4 of the way up.  The dryer plug was also located in this room because there wasn't enough room in the laundry area for both the washer and dryer.  It was open to the back hall, so the machines sat next to each other, just in different rooms.  It also had the same greasy carpet.

In the last years that Marguerite spent in this house, she spent her time mostly in these two rooms and the back bathroom (that looked like it came out of the movie Saw).  The day we entered the house, her walker with a little basket attached was sitting in the kitchen along with a bar stool height chair in front of the stove.  She spent the majority of her time in these rooms as a disabled person, which explains the spills on the carpet and walls, and the level of dirt and grease in general.

The kitchen project was kind of an ongoing thing throughout the process of working on the house because it needed so much work.  It had to go in stages since some things had to happen in a certain order.  After the initial cleanup, I started with the demo.  I knew I wanted to remove the temporary wall between the breakfast area and the dining room, as well as most of the plaster wall between the breakfast area and the kitchen to open it up.  

There were also some pretty ancient (and not up to code) fuse boxes in the kitchen that I had converted and changed over to a brand new breaker box by an electrician while I had these walls open.  I had the dryer plug moved out of the breakfast room and into the laundry area where it belonged.  In addition, I temporarily took out the dishwasher and one cabinet in order to properly close up the back door, as well as removed part of the fur down that was over the sink (it only extended across part of the wall).

I also knew I wanted to add some storage since there was only one run of upper cabinets and the L shaped lowers.  I thought I would basically build a pantry that went floor to ceiling, and add a breakfast bar for additional storage.

Here are the pictures I took on Day 1:

Good shot of the weird fur down (R) and the back door behind the dishwasher (L)

From the breakfast room looking into the kitchen

First, I took out the temporary wall between the breakfast area and the dining room.  This was incredibly easy since it was paneling nailed to 2x4s that had been added in.  It all came out pretty cleanly, with minimal damage to the plaster (from the nails).

Of course, all of that carpet had to come out.  The actual carpet came up easily, though I felt like I needed a thousand showers after tearing it out.  The carpet pad underneath; well that was another story.  It was so compressed from the years of weight and spills that it was stuck to the hardwood floor.  We used a floor scraper (like what you use to pry up linoleum) to remove this and it took a long time to get it all up.  I think everyone in my family took a turn on scraping up the carpet pad.

These photos were taken from where the temporary wall used to be

After the carpet was out, I started the demo on the plaster wall between the kitchen and the breakfast area.  I had to get this done so that I could have the electrician work on removing the fuse panels and installing the new breaker box outside.  I think I may have mentioned this before, but when I tore out this wall, it was a layer of sheetrock, with a layer of plaster over it.  When we took all of the debris from this one wall to the dump, it was nearly 1000 pounds (that we tied up into little Kroger bags and hand loaded and unloaded).

I then took out the fur down above the kitchen sink.  I thought it was pretty pointless for it to be there, particularly since it didn't go all the way across that wall.  You can see it in the background on the left side above the sink in the photo above.  Well, after I destroyed it, I found out why it was there.  There was a vent pipe (from the sink plumbing) that stuck out into the void of the fur down.  It took some maneuvering, but my dad and I were able to shift it over into the part of the fur down that was staying (above the bank of upper cabinets).  You can see the new wiring and the missing fur down in the photo below.  It also has a better view of the stupid back door behind the dishwasher.

After my step-dad fit the sheet rock into the hole of the fur down, I sprayed expansion foam into the gaps to fill up the space before mudding it.  It was not easy to fit the sheetrock into this hole because it was sheetrock/plaster before and the thickness was hard to match up.

Once the foam dried, I was able to trim it with a blade, then start the mudding and sanding never-ending process.  This room needed a LOT of plaster repair.  The ceiling was peeling paint pretty much everywhere (like one of the bedrooms had been).  Also, there were a lot of nail holes and cracks to fill.  You can see the repaired and mudded fur down in the first photo below.  You can also see that I had removed all of the cabinet doors to redo the fronts (more about that later).  

I decided to relocate the stove (switch places with the fridge), so I took out the small cabinet and vent-a-hood that was on the wall by the door to the hallway.  You can see the vent-a-hood pipe in the photo below (R).  I ended up closing in this hole, patching it, mudding and sanding it as well.

My mom, step-dad, and cousin worked on framing in the back door and closing it up on the inside with sheetrock.  On the outside, we left the doorway opening in the brick as it was, but added siding and trim to close up the hole.  My step-dad was also instrumental in helping me to frame and install sheetrock on the portion of the plaster wall that we kept.

Even though this was not a support wall, I left a header across the top and a portion of the wall by where the back door used to be.  We also closed up part of the opening between the breakfast area and the back hall to provide more separation for the laundry.  Around the same time, I constructed a breakfast bar and a "pantry" in the breakfast area.  The diagram below shows the modified layout and the changes I made.

For the pantry, I bought three new cabinets from Surplus Warehouse that had plain doors.  I knew I was going to modify the cabinet doors in the rest of the kitchen with some trim, so my plan was to use the same trim treatment on these doors to make them match (as well as possible).  I installed these in the corner next to the remaining portion of the plaster wall.  The top section of this unit is two cabinets stacked.  I just trimmed out the gap where they joined together so it looked like one built-in.

Installing these was fairly easy since the wall was open from the electrical work I had done.  Essentially, they make giant screws that are specifically for attaching cabinetry to the wall.  You only have to make sure that you are screwing them into the studs in the wall.  Since the wall was open, finding the studs wasn't difficult.  You also have to ensure that everything is level.  And if you are installing in a corner like I was, it needs to be as squared up as possible.  Caulk goes a long way to fill *small* gaps if the corner is not exact.  I believe this corner was actually so off square that I added a trim piece to the side of the cabinets by the window to close everything properly.  I'm pretty sure when they installed the countertops, they had to cut this in an odd shape as well to accommodate the variance.  Nothing is ever perfect.

Remember these cabinets (photo below) from the laundry area?  I removed them to make room for a stackable washer and dryer because there wasn't room for them to be side by side (which is probably why the dryer used to sit in the breakfast room).  

They are identical in size, and they also had plain front doors that I could modify to look like the rest of the cabinets in the kitchen.  So I put them back-to-back, attached them to each-other, added a base (to make them tall enough), and trimmed them out to look like a breakfast bar.  Since they are back-to-back, there is storage on both sides.  You can also see in the photo below a better shot of the removed fur down (over the window), and the closed in back door (to the left of the window).

Not to toot my own horn, but I thought this was a pretty ingenious idea for both reusing these cabinets and also building something this space needed.  Building this took a little inventiveness to come up with some feet, attach everything together (and to the floor), and get it all level and squared up to the other wall.  I added a piece of birch plywood to both sides to close it up and make it look like it had always been one attached unit.

The cabinet doors (in the meantime) had all been relocated to my mom and step-dad's house for the extensive work we did on them.  We patched holes and scratches, then sanded them all down.  We added trim pieces to make them match and to cover the routed lines that were in the original kitchen cabinets (left photo).  I was very excited that we could leave the existing cabinets and just modify the doors to both make them uniform as well as more updated.  This saved a lot of money and more importantly, a lot of work.  We used a nail gun to tack on the trim, mudded all of the nail holes, primed and painted them.  The only tricky part was that there were a variety of different sized doors, and we had to make sure everything was evenly spaced from the edge of the doors for consistency.

At this point, we primed everything in both rooms (after all of the sanding and mudding and sanding and mudding until I went nuts).  I also primed all of the cabinets, and painted them with Benjamin Moore Advance paint with gel flow technology in gloss white.  I could have used the same trim paint on the cabinets that I was using everywhere else.  However, I wanted something that was demonstrably more durable.  This particular brand and type of paint was recommended the most by the blogs I found online for cabinet painting tutorials.

I nonchalantly stood in the kitchen sink to do most of the repairs on the fur down, a lot of sanding, mudding and priming.  My sister thought this was both hilarious as well as unsafe.  The sink was cast iron, I didn't figure it was going anywhere.  You will notice in the picture above that I did not prime the bottom half of the kitchen walls.  There were big plans for this part of the wall.  I love how much more open it is even though the plaster wall was only partially removed.

At this point, I was pretty much ready to have the granite countertops I had chosen installed.  So, I set the base cabinet back in place and reattached it to the wall (the one we removed to close in the hole where the back door was).  And I installed the new Bosch dishwasher I bought.

That is a tattoo... not a plumber crack...

Dishwashers come with pretty explicit installation instructions.  But they are infinitely easier to install with no countertop in the way because you can see all of your water, drain, and power lines and know confidently that you are not kinking anything up.  I also bought a new disposal to go with the dishwasher, but of course that comes later after the new countertops and sink was installed.

The next phase in preparation for the granite was to remove the plumbing, sink and current counters.  Unhooking the plumbing and removing the faucet was easy enough.  You just turn off the water (there should be shut off valves under the sink), and unscrew everything.  It's important to make sure you have a bucket under the drain pipes.  They will be full of sludge, particularly if they haven't been removed in 50 years.

The sink was a little more complex.  It was cast iron, but with this metal edge around it.  It appeared to be resting on the counter (which is why I thought it was sturdy enough to stand in).  However, the metal edge was apparently the only thing that was holding the sink in place.  When I got underneath it and removed all of the screws, it literally fell on me.  Yep, you read that right, folks.  That green, cast-iron, HEAVY as fuck sink fell on me while I was under it.  

Here's the interesting part.  When I took apart the plumbing, everything came out really easily except the last piece of pipe that was attached and sticking out of the wall (with a Y in it to go to each side of the sink).  Had I been able to get that last piece of pipe out, the sink would have had a clear path to squash my brains in.  But, the pipe wouldn't budge, so I left it and decided I would rework the new plumbing to fit it as it was.  The sink fell, and landed on the pipe.  The drain on the left side kind of hit me in the chest and left a pretty good bruise.  But it did not land on my head like it would/should have if I had removed the pipe.  

I thanked Marguerite for that one more than once.  I had this overwhelming feeling that she had something to do with the fact that I didn't die from a sink squash.  I also was pretty appreciative of the fact that my sister, mom and step-dad happened to be there when this happened.  I probably could have wiggled out, but was glad they were there to lift the sink while I escaped.  I pretty easily removed the countertops with the help of my husband.  For the most part it wasn't even attached to the base cabinets like it should have been.

I chose the darkest black granite they had available for the new counters.  I knew that I wanted white cabinets with black hardware, gray walls (the same gray - Behr Eon - as everywhere else in the house), subway tile for the backsplash, and dark countertops.  While I waited for my installers to have the granite fabricated, I worked on a little side project.  

It's called Air Stone.  It looks like stone, but it is actually made from concrete molds.  This means it isn't quite so heavy and can be applied pretty much on any vertical surface.  I have seen people (online) use it on the front of their tubs, on outdoor kitchens around the grill, on breakfast bars, on fireplaces, as an accent wall, and the list goes on.  My kitchen has a really large metal return vent that used to be directly behind where the refrigerator sat.  I switched the position of the fridge and the stove, which meant that this return was going to be much more visible (and not in a good way).  The Air Stone was a perfect solution to cover this eye sore as well as make it clear that this is not a wall where you can hang something.

I built myself a little prop out of 2x4s because it was not necessary to cover the vent at the bottom (behind the stove).  This prop was to ensure that the first row was level, as well as to keep them from sliding down the wall as I installed each row going up.  You would do something similar if you were going to install tile and not start from the bottom of a wall.  It just keeps everything in place.  Once I was finished, I covered it in grout sealer so that any cooking (with grease, for example) wouldn't stain these pieces (my sister did the sealing for me).  It installs easily with adhesive that you smear on the back (like butter on toast).  Other than making sure it is level and shimming the spacing (they aren't all uniform in size), there really isn't much more to it than that.  I cut up the cardboard box it came in to use as shims to keep everything level as I worked up the wall.

And then the granite came!  You can see in the photo below that I had finished my little Air Stone covering for the return vent (in the background).  The first photo is the breakfast bar I built.  I had them extend the granite out on the other side toward the dining room for the use of bar stools (on the right in the photo).  I also had the granite installed on the pantry I built for consistency.

Once the granite was in place, I could start on the backsplash.  Since they install 4 inch pieces of granite vertically behind the countertops, it doesn't make sense to work on the backsplash until the counters are in place.  I could have had them installed with no 4 inch pieces for a more modern look.  However, if you do it this way, the pieces have to fit exactly.  Since this is an old house with zero square corners, having the 4 inch pieces to frame the back means that the cuts do not have to be as precise and it makes it easier for everyone.  I actually like having the 4 inch surround.

I opted for subway tile for the backsplash and I also decided that I would continue it around the bottom half of the rest of the kitchen walls.  I used bright white subway tile from Floor & Decor.  It is the whitest white of the available subway tiles.  In fact, I was going to pick up some trim pieces one day from Lowe's and their "white" almost looked like a cream color in comparison.  Floor & Decor also has the cheapest subway tile.  

This is the same subway tile I used in the second bathroom, and I used the same charcoal grout I had used on the bathroom floors.  I thought this would add a great pop and accentuate the grout lines.  I also knew that scrubbing kitchen stains out of white grout is a pain in the ass and the darker color would be better for a backsplash.  These photos were taken after I installed the tile, but before the grout was in.  I am not going to rehash the tiling process (it is the same as the bathroom).

When I pulled the carpet out of these two rooms, I really wasn't sure if the floors would be salvageable.  I knew I wanted to have everything professionally refinished, but I wasn't convinced these two rooms would be doable.  I totally recommend having a pro refinish floors because you can easily gouge the wood with an industrial sander, or sand them improperly.  I wanted to have the floors stained darker, which will only accent your mistakes if you sand the floors incorrectly.

Around the time that I finished with the subway tile install, I was set to have my hysterectomy surgery.  So I arranged for the floors to be refinished while I was going to be in my down time of recovering in December.  As all of you probably know by now, I had some serious complications that kept me from working far longer than a few weeks in December. The floors made a HUGE difference in this house in general.  But the difference in the floors in this kitchen and breakfast area are a little breathtaking compared to what they were before.  The floor in the kitchen is slightly different (it is pine instead of oak).  Originally in this house, these would be under linoleum and therefore unimportant for the wood to match.  Pine has slightly more character, but the difference between the two is not really that noticeable since everything was stained the same color.  Personally, I prefer the pine, but it is a softer wood than oak (so more easily marred).

After the floors were redone, we took on the task of reinstalling all of the cabinet doors we had painstakingly modified.  There were 21 doors in a variety of sizes.  A LOT of doors considering there doesn't even seem to be that much storage in this room.  I purchased new pulls for the cabinets and drawers.  But I reused the hinges that were existing.  I didn't want to have to repair the holes and drill new ones, so I just spray painted them black to match the pulls.  The photos below also show that the tile has been grouted.

One of the last things we did in these two rooms was install matching track lighting.  It provides some focused lighting to different prep areas and I thought was a much better option than one overhead light in each room.  I also had a brand new stove, refrigerator, and microwave put in place.  I built the pantry to have a cubby exactly the size of a large microwave since I knew it wouldn't be possible to install one above the stove.  We also had Window World install brand new windows throughout the house (which happened somewhere close to this point in the time line).

And probably, the very last part of this project was installing a barn door to separate the laundry area from the breakfast room.  My mom and step-dad did this all on their own.  I am super thankful that I had their help on that one.  I was recovering from the second surgery and not getting too much accomplished at the time they did this for me.  Side note: if you buy barn door hardware on Amazon, it may or may not come with helpful instructions.  lol

This kitchen and breakfast area was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done.  There were so many components that I changed to make these rooms function better.  From switching the stove and fridge (it means both appliances stick out into the room the same depth thanks to the giant return vent), to removing the walls for a more open concept, to closing up doors, to building the pantry and the breakfast bar; this project seemed to go on forever, but it was by far the most amazing transformation in the house.  The side by side images below are of the same spaces (believe it or not) mostly taken from the same vantage point.

As an aside, since all of the windows were replaced, this one is no longer green.  lol

"I just don't think it can be stated enough the amount of work you did on this.  I don't know that pictures will ever do that justice.  I hope people can see it.  You just did such a good job on the house in general.  I am just really proud of you."
-my husband