 |
| The final piece of the kitchen! |
I can't believe I haven't posted since early September! It's not that I got lazy, but we were kind of in a completion freeze for a while--work was going on, but nothing was getting finished. Since late August, the majority of the kitchen was done, all but the shelves behind the oven wall, and that last piece of the puzzle took a lot longer to finish than we had expected.
Cabinet companies do make floating shelves in the exact woods and stains as the cabinets, but they are made in one thickness, and set lengths, and I wanted my shelves to be just 1.5" thick and run from the wall to the refrigerator cabinet, which was an 8'9" stretch. Our carpenter friend told us about a great planing mill in Washington County that did custom jobs for very reasonable prices. Josh called and ordered the four shelves that we needed, and was going to order two sections of custom-sized butcher block to be used as a T-shaped desk in the office. However, the mill said they could do a glue-lam desktop (wider boards than skinny boards used for butcher block) for the same price, so we decided to go with that option. The craftsman warned us it would take about 6 weeks to source the lumber for these long pieces, but considering the great price, we were ready to accept the wait.
Meanwhile, the office cabinets were installed in September, but there was an issue: the open-shelf cabinet that was meant to sit on the desk countertop came in a little low because the room's ceiling had not been as level as we had expected. This meant that our desktop would be at 28" from the floor instead of the standard 30" for a tabletop. We could have lived with it (and frankly, in my shortness, it would have felt very comfortable for me to type at!), but it was low enough that it would have been noticeable, especially with the really dark navy blue cabinets taking up so much space at the top 1/3 of the room. So we contacted the cabinet orderer and she ordered us a different cabinet that would be 3" shorter, and we figured we would make up the difference with trim. So that was another slight delay, plus, even after the replacement cabinet came in, the installer didn't want to come back until we had the desktop ready as well.
 |
| A desktop that is below my hip height is too low. |
At the end of October, our friend helped install the backsplash tiles. Josh and I spent the night before opening all of the tile boxes and laying out the pattern on the floor. There were only about 6 tiles that had this beautiful, golden sandy hue--even though they were also marble from the same company--and we wanted to make sure they got spaced out. The tiling went great, and the light gray grout finished it off perfectly. I'm posting a picture of the backsplash and counter together, but the photo does not do it justice. I think it makes the tile look more blue than it is in person.
 |
| I know it looks like it clashes here, but it looks dreamy in person. |
In early November, the shelves and desk top were ready, so Josh rented a U-Haul and picked them up. He said the mill was incredibly cool, and I was a little sad I didn't go, but it was a homeschool day and I had duties to perform. The wood looked very different than I had expected, I guess because I was so used to seeing stained wood that having this raw wood in the house felt very different. The wood was EXTREMELY heavy, so once Josh and I got it in the house, it was sticking in the spot we set it--in the dining room corner, even though it blocked part of the path into the foyer. Thankfully, we still have a bunch of cones from Rye's "cone phase," and they sincerely did come in handy.
 |
| Rye's old cones coming in handy. Having them there for a month was not fun. |
Our carpenter friend was going to install the shelves, which would hang from brass L brackets that were spaced to go into studs behind the walls. It was not an easy job, with trying to accommodate the ever-so-slight warping in the wood (that happens), holding these incredibly heavy boards up to get them level, and spacing out four brackets per shelf--all level--and in their studs. Plus, we decided he would router out the spacing of the brackets into the wood, that way the shelves sat absolutely flat against the wall and the bottom of the bracket would be nestled into the shelf. It was a big project, and didn't happen until the first week of December.
 |
| The custom wood shelves when they were installed. |
Then, a few days later, Josh and our friend Tom, who used to be part of a table-making business in New York, installed the desktop in the office! Tom was the one who told Josh it was totally possible to (safely and securely) install the desktop themselves, and in fact, had told Josh exactly what to tell the planing mill about how to have the two pieces of the desk pre-cut with these +-shaped gaps that would allow special affixing onsite--stuff that we had no clue about. Josh's big concern was that he only wanted two legs under the desk--at the farthest point out of the T-base, thus maximizing legroom under the desktop. Tom helped Josh also figure out how to support the T with nearly-flat steel brackets to give it extra (but still invisible) support. It turned out great! In hindsight, we could have ordered a bigger piece to come out in the base of the T (it is 30" by 30"), but since that's just kind of a bonus space anyway, I'd rather have it too small than too big.
 |
| Josh and Tom admire their handiwork. |
The shelves and the desk were up, but both needed to be finished. We took the shelves down and put them in garage and I used the same stain on them as we used on the floor threshold pieces and door to the office: Rustic Beige. I lightly stained them--I was the primary stainer of wood trim in the George Street house--and then did 3 coats of water-based poly on them. Even with the cold temperatures in the garage, they turned out great (no drips!) and we got them back up shortly before Christmas! The desktop was installed in its raw state, so then I had to poly it in place. Unfortunately, the first coat did not go well--you could see too many of my brush start and stop marks. Josh sanded it down and I tried again, but we hadn't sanded far enough down, so the second coat didn't look good either. Josh borrowed an orbital sander from Tom to help him get more of the surface off with less effort. We also stopped by Baltimore Floorworks, where we had gotten the poly (and floor thresholds) from, and the owner asked more about the project before he gave advice: a 10-foot stretch is too long to be dipping a brush into a cup, it will start to dry too quickly before you get from one end to the other, which is why we didn't have time to correct brush end marks. He gave us a square foam pad that was three times as big as what I had been using, and told me to pour the poly directly on the desk and then smooth it out, almost like frosting on a cake. I tarped the floor and gave it a try, and our third "first coat" turned out great! I did three more coats (the perfect amount of overkill, as I told Josh), and the desk was finally done! Then the cabinet installer came back in January and installed the last cabinet between the desk and the high cabinets and the trim to finish it all off.
The project was not 100% complete for Christmas, which we hosted, but it looked complete, and that was more than enough!
 |
| The kitchen in use: my dad and I co-carving the Christmas meats! |
So that is the renovation--it took 7 months from start to finish, but it already feels like this is the way it always was. We had an elderly neighbor over who knew the former owners and had been inside many times, and his comment was, "this looks like the way it was always meant to be." Which really meant something coming from him, because he lives in the same exact house model as we do!
It feels great to be able to use all the spaces of the first floor--the bigger kitchen, the bigger dining room, the new office, and the better-entranced great room--and to get back to having people over for dinner--something we greatly missed during the renovation season! We're chipping away at our backlog of guests we have wanted to have over ... hope to have you over soon!
Last note: this will not be the last post about the house. We also got new dining room furniture, but that is still a work in progress, so that will be posted another time :)
Also, if anyone else is considering a kitchen remodel, I would love to discuss ideas with you! I LOVE this stuff!
