Bringing my Kitchen out of the 80's!

I've been putting off writing this post for months, because I kept hoping I'd get "just one more" project done. I came to the realization that it would never be perfect enough or clean enough or feel done, so I may as well just go ahead and share where I'm at now.

Our entire 1988 house was outfitted with the standard of the day, honey-oak everything. I've been painting/re-staining, bit by bit, and I'm slowly making progress. I had planned to hold off on the kitchen until we could do a semi-remodel, but I couldn't handle the ugly anymore and decided (three weeks before hosting my sister-in-law's baby shower, mind you) to tackle the cabinets.

The kitchen already feels kind of closed in so I knew I didn't want to re-stain the cabinets with the General Finishes Antique Walnut Gel Stain that I've been using throughout the house. I despised the gray 12x12 tile backsplash but I felt more neutral toward the corian countertops (color: everest). I feel like it looks a little nicer than laminate and it's in good shape. So the goal was to pick a cabinet finish that made the countertop look intentional since I knew replacing it was not in the cards.

That's when my search led me to gray. Apparently it's trendy? I wanted a true grey that complimented the slate blue walls I had just repainted. This is my goldilocks of paint color selection. : ) I bought little paint samples, mixed up my chalk paint and tested them out on an end cabinet. Nothing was quite right until I mixed the too dark with the too light.

Perfection!

I took my samples back to the store and asked them to split the difference (they were very similar formulas) and voila! Just right.

Now, I've done alot of trial and error since I've started my mix-your-own-chalk-paint adventure. I think I've settled on what seems to work the best for me.

First, choose your color and have it mixed in the flat latex paint of your choosing.


In a bowl, pour 1 cup of calcium carbonate powder. You can buy it really easily on amazon.











Mix in just enough water to make a thick paste. This seems to help dissolve the powder and help with clumping.

Then pour in 1 cup of your flat latex paint and mix well. I actually used my old hand mixer and it worked nicely.

2 coats of chalk paint, followed my 2 coats of polycrylic and you're done. ; )

Ok, so it's not exactly an afternoon project, but you CAN transform your kitchen. It doesn't have to be so intimidating.

I swapped out the worn, brass pulls for simple bar pulls for the doors and cup pulls on the drawers. I borrowed both nickel and bronze pulls from around the house and settled on nickel for the cabinets. I'm told you can mix metals now?

I sold one of the kids to purchase new hinges. Not really, but those suckers are expensive...

So here's the big reveal of phase one:

I restained the desk top and found a chair on Craiglist that matches nearly perfectly. : ) I still need to paint the inside of the glass door area and put up the "tin" in the back. Phase 2 includes moving the microwave and cutting back that shelf for open shelving.

Can't say I love these lights, but it's not quite so offensive in grey. Phase 2 will include cutting back the peninsula and adding an island with a custom circular breakfast area (like this). We'll take out that light and install 2 pendant lights over the straight part of the island. 

When we cut back the peninsula we're either going to have to do some floor patching or replace the flooring. I'd love to do a wide plank in the dark walnut we've been using throughout the house.

I still need to paint this window trim. Unfortunately, this is a NEW vinyl window with fake oak grain. : / Wish they hadn't done that... not sure what I'm going to do to change it... ideas?

The plan is to knock out this wall and get rid of the picture window, so it'll be a big opening leading to the living room. I guess I didn't get the doorway to the left in the picture, but imagine about 10 ft wide and 7 ft high. I'd love to add faux beams across the ceiling about every 5 feet too. We'll move/replace the light so it's centered over the new eating area off the island. The flow of this area is so horrible. I'm really hoping this will help make the kitchen more user-friendly with easier access to the backyard.

 











Currently I'm thinking to raise the small cabinets and install an over the range microwave. I'm still waffling on that, but we definitely don't like it where it is now.

The door to the right leads to our pantry/laundry room. It originally had a bi-fold door that opened against that small base cabinet. I took it off to restain and decided I liked it better off! I think I'll put a barn door on the other side so I can still shut it to muffle the washer/dryer noise.

In this last picture, you can see how we "beefed up" the base moulding and painted the garage door with chalkboard paint. I'll share the details of how to achieve this wide baseboard look when I post on our new powder room. 

I've been letting the paint marinate for awhile and I keep coming back to it feeling a bit flat. I'll probably add a black glaze at some point to bring out the detail and give it some dimension.

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your feedback!

         

Tornadoes and Floods

Well, this isn't the post I was hoping for.

I really wanted to share the completion of our foyer and stairwell. Unfortunately, while I have made progress, it has had to move to the back-burner while we've dealt with 2 more rounds of house issues.

As you recall, just before Memorial Day our basement flooded. We worked really hard to get the carpet and pad dried and laid back out. Josh did extensive work around the foundation and with the guttering and we thought the leaks had been addressed. 

We had an awesome (and exhausting) week at Vacation Bible School and came home to a not exactly cool house on Tuesday. By Wednesday it was nearly 100 outside and 85 inside. The home warranty company came out the next day. Extensive freon leak not worth fixing. Awesome. 

Now I will say, we knew this was coming. We knew the systems were all original to our 1988 house and it was really a miracle they were all still kicking. We had the money saved and had factored the cost into the home purchase and determined we were still getting a great deal. 

It still sucked to write that check.

So we went on an incredible 10th anniversary vacation (thanks grandparents!!) and then had a completely new system installed the day after we got back. 

Furnace- check!

A/C- check!

Glad to have those large (and not remotely fun) expenses checked off the list, even if it was about a year sooner that we had hoped.

So we finish out June with a birthday party and were looking forward to the 3 day holiday weekend when...

Squish. Squish. Squish.

NO! 

Ughh! Wet again!

Well, we can't do much because it's time to go pick up the big kids from Grandma's bible school. 

It starts raining harder as we're driving and the wind is picking up. I get an alert on my phone that there is a tornado warning and the possibility of hail. I tell Josh we better pull under a gas station awning up ahead. Apparently a tornado was touching down about a mile east of us at that point.  

We get home later that evening to find even more extensive flooding, along with our gas grill thrown across the yard and 3 sections of fence knocked over. From our back yard, about 3 blocks east and 1 block south there were tree branches down everywhere. But just in that focal area. Crazy.

Just twigs all over our driveway and street compared 

to the area just south and east of us.

 Our backyard:

I'm glad we weren't home.

So, we determine there's no saving the brand new carpet the sellers installed just before we moved in. The flooded area was way too extensive to attempt to dry it out. 

No more carpet in the basement. I don't care if there's not a drop down there for 10 years, I'm not going through this mess again. 

Here are the wet basement pictures. I'm not sure how much you can tell.

 (Ughh, this man needs a proper shop. I'm sorry Hunny. If we can get a week straight without anything major happening...)

 Footprints in the sopping wet carpet

 NO! A small spot from the front of the house

 Keep pulling it back...

 Sucking up as much as possible with the wet vac

 He bought a bigger one the next day. Of course, we haven't needed it.

That pile is at least doubled now and soaking wet from the many wet days since. Our area is at nearly 21" rainfall since May 1st, which is over 12" more than average. 

My husband spent a good chunk of this past holiday weekend regrading another corner of the house. 

So exciting, right?

The really infuriating thing is that we were told there were zero water issues. What a big fat lie. 

I really want to believe that the last owners weren't trying to pull the wool over our eyes and it really hadn't been leaking through all the dryer years we had previously had.

But I have a really hard time believing that over this house's 27 year history, with all the poor grading, guttering and fill issues we discovered, we are the very first to have the basement flood. 

Well, what'd'ya do? I don't know that I have the time, energy or desire to drag someone into court to try to prove the nearly impossible: that they knew and fraudulently didn't disclose it. I feel duped, but I don't know that I'm the suing kind.

We're desperately hoping Josh dug up the root of the issue (ba dum chhh) when we discovered that the original window well had settled down so far that another one had simply been placed on top of it, neither of which were at an adequate height to grade the soil away from the house. Who knows how much water was getting around and between the stacked and severely rusted out wells. 

Number 2 

Number 1 still buried (note how it barely even reaches the bottom of the window= holy settlement!)

All the rock from inside the window well with so much clay/dirt in it that who knows if the water was even making it to the drain or, more likely, just flooding in through the window

Well #1 after much cutting and digging to finally get it out

A new 24" tall window well that exceeds the 8" minimum above the window ledge, fill gravel cleaned and replaced and soil sloping away from the foundation

I'm exhausted just typing it all out and I didn't hardly do any of the work.

We're looking into options for the basement, including acid staining the concrete. That would require getting all the glue off and skim coating first, but I think we could do it. Another project to add to the ever-growing list. 

Now back to the pretty stuff!

p.s. I'm proud to report that during a week of primarily rainy days and flash flood warnings, the basement has remained dry since Josh's fixes. I am PRAYING that we are DONE with the water!

p.p.s. Josh's nerdy geotech plans include reworking the guttering, running it into drains to the street and running a french drain through the backyard to address our swamp land. And possibly installing a 2nd sump pump in this corner too.

p.p.p.s. I love said "nerdiness."