Bye Bye Tiny Sad Kitchen

In the Home Stretch

byebyetinysadkitchen — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:30:16 +0000

With only a few weeks until completion, things are coming together and starting to feel like a home rather than a construction site.

All countertops and sinks are in and tile is installed in the master bath (photo) and downstairs bath with back entry tile needing to be redone to correct the pattern in the hex tile (photo).

The issue with hextile installation and the off-center-with-the-kitchen-window sink issue have set us back about a week but the beginning of April is still essentially when we planned to move back into the house.

Floors will be sanded and finished next week so we’re trying to get three rooms painted as much as possible before then so we can worry less about drips and spills.

More Photos

It’s Draining, Men

byebyetinysadkitchen — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:02:02 +0000

We could no longer stand our long-standing standing water issues.

Many homes in the neighborhood don’t have rain gutters but we’ve always had water pooling in areas and a heavy rain will start seeping into the garage.

We considered doing a bit of the labor ourselves and dig a french drain but have opted to hire someone to do a much more thorough and professional job. Rain gutters were installed everywhere on the house and garage last week and today trenches were dug and PVC run to connect the downspouts and route all water to the street.

Not quite as pretty or interesting as other aspects of our renovation, we hope the drainage will fix the standing water problem that has plagued our garage and the north side of our house for years.

Apologies to our kitchen forum readers for boring them with pictures of Houston’s sticky wet earth. For them, we offer other news:

After cabinets were installed and our counters cut, we discovered a small hiccup in measurements caused our main kitchen sink cabinets to be 3″off center from the window above it. We ordered a drawer base to its left in a smaller size so that the cabinets can shift to get the sink base in the correct location. Inches will be cut from the left end of the Silestone, the countertop shifted and the cut inches added to the right end of the cabinet. The thin seam under the corner cabinets shouldn’t be noticable.

See other photos

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Kitch-en!

byebyetinysadkitchen — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:50:25 +0000

View into the new kitchen from the hall entrance.

Like a big puzzle, the cabinets are coming together.

It’s hard to imagine our island like this. Currently it’s just a collection of freestanding cabinets in the middle of the room with nothing to link them together (other than sticks for leveling.) Kitchen design is very complex. Luckily our good friend and kitchen designer Joey Olson helped us figure it all out. Appliances can’t support the burden of a slab, so you have to space them out between weight-bearing cabinets. On the front left, you can see the back of what will be a liquor cabinet. In the center is a drawer cabinet which will hold food prep items like cutting boards, small bowls, and big sharp knives! At the far end of the island, there is the prep sink cabinet, opposite a small bookshelf for cookbooks facing the seating side. When it all comes together, the island will serve as a primary food prep area, but a bar as well. (Icemaker and beverage refrigerator tuck underneath on either side of those prep drawers.

A dishwasher will fill the empty spot beneath the window, just to the right of a large single basin sink. The upper cabinets in the corner will mostly contain dishes and glassware. An empty spot to it’s right on the wall will be soon covered with a vent hood in front of counter-to-ceiling backsplash of white harlequin tile.

Diamond in There Rough

byebyetinysadkitchen — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:14:03 +0000

All of our Diamond cabinets from Lowe’s arrived this week and installation began today in the kitchen.

The layout (patiently designed by a close friend, Joey Olson is great and the stained solid cherry doors have a nice grain and stain.

Also, our General Contractor Lucas Craftsmanship launched their revamped website recently. Looking very nice and there are beautiful photos of their past projects. Maybe our house will someday look all fancy on their site.

Not So Secret Garden

byebyetinysadkitchen — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:08:29 +0000

The original oak floors are sanded new and the new oak floors blend seamlessly to the the old. Trim is complete, including a closet design created by the kind folks at Container Store, but executed with built-ins by our contractor. We “recycled” two of the original architectural interior doors that had been removed over the years to leave the rooms downstairs more open. Now they’re in the master bedroom, leading into the bathroom and the closet. Not sure if we’ll ever get the original antique looking mortise boxes functional. (Yes, we have the original skeleton keys and all.)

With the house three fifths of the way complete, we started thinking about the backyard. We met with a landscape designer for some ideas on gutters and drainage and he gave us some opinions. His initial reaction to the backyard was how it feels inviting, secluded and low beneath the new, taller elevation of the house…feeling like a secret garden.

After referring to decks looking cheap, he described a ground level patio. Not a bad idea and we have close friends who’d trade their deck for a patio but we’ve always enjoyed our old deck. And it wasn’t cheap either! Leaf blow it, spray it down and it’s tidy again. We’ve decided on a deck but want to retain some yard and landscaping so we’re considering smaller variations of our previous deck.

One challenge we have is how close the back door is to the garage now. If one were to walk straight out of the back door, one would soon be stopped by a rain gutter to one’s face. This seems less than ideal. We need to step down at least one step fairly quickly when exiting the house.

IDEA 1

IDEA 2

IDEA 3

We’re considering a variation of idea 2 without connecting the entire width of the deck to the back of the house, sort of the large area of idea 1 and the back door steps of 2.

Comments?