Well, that was 2003 (seven years ago).  A few things are different now. I have since discovered (gee thanks, internet) that the set we purchased was from Indonesia, and probably not harvested in an, ahem, sustainable manner.  You can call me an “enviro” now, or naive then, but however you want to label it, that knowledge has been bugging me.  We still have the patio set (plus a smaller table set for four that came along a few years later from Cost Plus) and every single year I have refinished, refurbished and revamped it.  It wasn’t super high quality to begin with, but by golly, I’m going to make it last as long as I can!  You could call it a form of penitence, I guess. If it ever breaks down beyond repair… I’m guessing our next set is going to be iron or glass, because refinishing wood furniture every year is no picnic.

But, just in case you’d like a peek into what I do, I thought I’d show you a few images of the refinishing of one piece: our original Safeway bench.

Here it is before, after a full season of sitting outside…

…not really grey, not really freshly stained either.  And very dirty.

The steps are simple.  Once upon a time, I tried wood brightener, and stain stripper, and wood cleaner, and came to the conclusion that those are all money-pit chemical junk.  They all require scrubbing or sanding as your last step, and let me tell you from lots of experience – it works just as well if you just scrub or sand!

For my choice, I use a rough grit steel wool (02 -03) because it works the fastest and I can clean it wet.

I hose down the bench and then start scrubbing.  Here is one arm rest completed:

Looks better doesn’t it? And I just keep scrubbing until the whole bench is done, and my nails look like this…

You could wear gloves I think.   The above right is the cleaned bench when wet, and the lower right is how it looks dry (clean but no pizazz).  Lower left is the gunky steel wool. For refinishing 8 chairs, two tables and a bench, I went through two full bags of steel wool.

Now, I’ve done the nasty part, moving on to the fun stuff…

Seven years of brand testing… Super Deck is the best.  Not a paid endorsement, they just work the best!!  You could use clear, but I like to add in a bit of red. Brush it on…

…and let it dry.

Voilà! Another year out of your outdoor wood furniture!

It takes me about 45 minutes per chair to sand, and 15-30 minutes to stain.  Overall the project took me several straight days of afternoon work, so not for the faint of heart.

I’ll show you the rest of the furniture when I take some photos of our backyard set up for the blog… we’ve got umbrellas, curtains, a rug, and other fun outdoor room stuff set up… it’s a fun place to hang!

I’m back to give you a glimpse of the guest bath plans I alluded to earlier. If you recall (and you should be able to because it was, well, only two posts ago) we are attempting the impossible and biting off two bathroom renovations at the same time in order to save a bit of money.  I imagine and hope the master bathroom will be a serene retreat of honed white marble with a soothing soaking tub (a high-end feel on a decidedly low to middle-ended budget).  Now with the guest bath, I am seeking to fulfill the classic, 1920′s black-and-white itch I’ve had for a looong time.  The guest (and kids) bathroom is currently oak and tile (you know, the kind builders put in, tan with brown grout) and lacks any personality whatsoever. The shower doesn’t function normally and needs to have its “guts” replaced.  Oh, for that matter, neither does the sink (although I’m told that part has to do with the water softener).

Enough chitchat.  Shall I show you the inspiration board?  Once again, I’m no professional, these boards are made for my own personal visualization  – I’m one of those people that needs to see it to understand it well. Here it is:

Clockwise from top-left: Sussex Tube Sconce (2) on sale now, Matelasse Shower Curtain – similar to the one we’ve already bought from Cost Plus,  Kensington Tilt Mirror also currently on sale, Delta Victorian Tub & Shower fixture (we bought from Faucet Direct), Kohler Bancroft Single hole faucet, black and white hexagon tile (inspiration photo, can’t remember source), black and white subway tile (ditto), cool hexagon pattern (ditto, again – ugh. I didn’t think I’d be sharing these with the general public! I need to learn to write down my sources – our tile will be Dal Tile’s affordable Rittenhouse Square and Keystone Hex, I think) and  Manhattan 36″ console from Signature Hardware (10% off right now), Drawer pull(s) from Rejuvenation, black ceramic soap and cup holders from Rejuvenation. Whew!

I originally wanted to use a pedestal or old-fashioned console sink, like we have in our powder bath. But… practicality won out in the end, and we just need a couple drawers of storage and can’t sacrifice those.  Oh, and one of the problems we have is the door opens nearly right into the current vanity.  It’s really tight.  See:

Those are drawn to-scale in Illustrator by silly me.  Yes, I’m a little obsessive/compulsive on these things. The new console/vanity gives us about 5″ more space to work with, so maybe people other than Cameron can get through the space between the open door and the vanity to get out without having liposuction.  Every bit helps!

Not visualizing it yet?  Here’s another to-scale drawing of how I’d like the subway tile to look:

Now you know absolutely all of my remodeling techniques.  I usually do an inspiration board, to-scale measurement of the before and after of the room, and visualization of the items in place.  That’s all there is to it.  Very imperfect, but it gets the job done!

Here’s a few of the photos I found inspiring to begin with (again, sorry for no credit, if you know where these are from, let me know! >> update, left photo from William Hefner, thanks Stella!<< ):

So now I need to decide if we do a cool pattern or not with the hex tile.  Aren’t those patterns gorgeous?

I’ll be back tomorrow with either bathroom before pictures, or our latest letterpress project, or a shepherd’s pie recipe. You’ll just have to wait and see.

P.S. The sun came out just now!

Little disclaimer here:  I’ve never considered myself to be a “craft” person.  While I love being creative, and creativity in general, I often lack the ability to pull things off.  “Things” being anything involving a glue gun or Martha Stewart.  A project is just as likely to go south as it is to succeed – which is a bad ratio, I’m sure.  But this project was easy – super easy, like no-fail easy. So, if I can do it, I have no doubt anyone can, and with greater flare!

And pull out your timer, set your stop watch – it only takes 20 minutes, start to finish. That’s not even a full episode of the Office, for you TV heads out there. What are we waiting for?

EASY CRAZY CHEAP DIY WREATH

For this project you will need:

1) A grapevine wreath base.  Mine was 18″ – I bought it at Michael’s for $3.99.  If you had one of their 40% off coupons (which I always forget) it would have been even cheaper. It looks like this on my garage floor:

2) Bendable wire.  I’m sure you have some lying around.  I did.  If not, it’s easy to find for around $1:

3) Nature. You’ll need to go forage for leaves – I didn’t have to go far, I just harvested the pile that’s collecting under our maple tree in the front yard.  I didn’t pick just the perfect ones, because I wanted a very rustic wreath.  This part is up to you.  Here’s my pile:

And now, the instructions.  My leaves were pretty dry, but it never hurts to make them a bit drier.  Microwave them with paper towels for 60 seconds (longer if they are really wet).  This just ensures you are working with dry leaves.

Next, gather a couple of your leaves together and wrap the stems with wire, like this:

And keep adding stems as you go:

See the vertical garland we are creating?  Very easy!  Now, I checked it against the base as I was working, to make sure it was full enough:

You can make it as full or un-full as you would like.  In no time you will have made a complete circle:

Once you have a shape you like, fasten the two ends together with the wire and trim the wire.  Now, fasten the leaves to the grapevine base with more wire, in about, say four or five key places.  Voila!  You could be done.  But here’s an extra step I did, I sprayed the wreath with this stinky Dried Materials Preservative I had lying around…

To help preserve the color.  I think I got it at Joann’s originally, but I can’t be sure.

Then I hung it on the front door:

Fall!  No fake stuff here!  And how easy was that?  Plus, only $4!  And, you can pull the leaves off at the end of fall, and keep the grapevine base for next year – reusable and earth-friendly, right?  The leaves, RIP, were going the way of the ghost anyway!

Nature, it’s all around you, and it’s perfect for seasonal and free decor.  Got to love that.  What crafty things are you doing this fall?  I’d love to know!

P.S.  Any credit for inspiration on this post goes to my dear mother, who could always pull off the perfect Christmas table by “going out back” and rummaging in the woods for the perfect pine cones, branches, etc. It’s from her that I came to love the real, the natural and the free decor and inspiration that is in our very backyard.

This studio DIY was as easy as a wink. Just took a little patience and energy.

First, we rummaged through any and all wood type we owned (letters are used far more often then numbers in printing, so we weren’t really depleting our supplies very much):

Then, we scoured ebay and local flea/antique markets for any old wooden numbers for sale.  In the end, most of them came from ebay, although old wood type from flea markets tends to be cheaper if you can find it.  This took about six to eight months because we didn’t want to spend more than $2 per letter.  Small ones are much, much cheaper than this, but bigger  numbers can take a while to find inexpensively. Buying mixed sets of one to ten can work out great.

The great day arrived that we finally had enough wood numbers, and we arranged a layout on the counter top in the kitchen.

After experimenting with several different options, we applied foam sticky squares (from the hardware store) and placed the numbers on the wall.  The numbers themselves are stuck together with glue dots.

The clock face I bought on sale from Chiasso (not available anymore) but you could replicate something like this with any hands-only clock.

The finished result?  Fun and easy!  Here is a shot of the clock in the studio (that’s me dampening paper in the foreground):

Easy DIY Clock!  Voila!

Have a creative week.

We’ll have some new stationery to share with y’all soon, I promise! The Christmas line is coming…

But, to wrap this all up, I promised a source list.  Now, the list part is easy, but since we were going for the best deals we could find on anything (hello, overstock.com!) a lot of inventory was clearance or is not available anymore.  But there probably is something similar out there for you, if you just search hard!  Here goes…

Kitchen Source List:

Faucet: Price Pfister Ashfield Chrome Two-Handle Pull Down Bridge Faucet, Polished Nickel (Overstock.com – now sold out, available on Amazon for about $50 more than we paid for it)

Soap Dispenser: Used existing one.

Sink: Belle Foret Farmhouse Sink – Fireclay, Apron Front, Undermount, 30″ (Vintage Tub and Bath, still available, although very sadly the price has increased by about $270!! Shipping is still free.)

Disposal: Badger 9 Insinkerator (Home Depot) Matt installed this, the sink, faucet and dishwasher.

Dishwasher: Bosch 24″ Built-in, Black (bought on sale at Lowes).  The model that is one up from the most basic.  We love it – it’s very energy efficient, fast and quiet. I love the half-load feature, and fact that the dry cycle uses the steam from the water cycle, eliminating the need for a heated dry.

Microwave: Kept existing one.

Oven: Kept existing one.

Rangetop: 36″ Burner Bertazzoni Commercial Gas Range top (A M Royal – they offered free shipping and were about $50 cheaper last year) This was one of our two big splurges (the countertops being the other).  I really wanted six burners and commercial-style power, because we love to cook.  Let me tell you, it has been worth every penny and the italian-made range is awesome!  If there’s one place you would spend extra for quality on in your kitchen, let it be your stove and not lights or door pulls or something silly like that.  A kitchen is for cooking. Matt installed this.

Range Hood: Zephyr 36″ Stainless Steel Savona Wall Hood (ABT Electronics)  If you get a commercial range, a hefty hood is in order.  This one was the best deal I could find with free shipping and the correct CFM circulation.

Ducting: We had to move the duct to work with the new hood.  Sort of an unforeseen (expensive) ducting disaster. I can’t recommend the folks we used, it cost an arm and a leg for 20 minutes of work and Matt still had to install the range hood by himself.

Refrigerator: Kept existing one.

Pendant Lights: Rustic Glass Pendant (2) (Pottery Barn, bought on special – they are actually on special again right now)

Countertops: 3 cm Honed Carrara Marble Slabs (2) from Bedrosians in Sacramento.  Fabrication by Benchmark in Chico (Ogee edge, Christopher Peacock  style corners).  We also used the remnants around our fireplace, and to make two imposing stone carts for the letterpress studio. This was the other big splurge (although about the same as granite) – I love Carrara, and love these counters.  They are classic and last a lifetime.

Backsplash Tile: Daltile Rittenhouse Square subway matte arctic white with light gray grout.  Bought from Dal Tile in Chico.  This tile is a fabulous deal!

Cabinets: Painted the oak black DIY, with new doors and trim. All incredible carpentry work by Carl Lee at D’Amato & Lee in Paradise, CA. (They did our beamed ceiling as well).

Cabinet Paint: Benjamin Moore Custom Black Satin Impervo, with an undercoat of Benjamin Moore Heritage Red (also Impervo) and Killz oil based primer.  All cabinet paint was oil based. All purchased at Chico Paint Mart, our local Benjamin Moore Shop.

Cabinet Glass: Seeded Glass, from Miller Glass in Chico. It was a great deal!

Wall Paint: Benjamin Moore Stonington Gray (I love this gray, it’s in our dining room too).

Inside Cabinet Paint: We painted the bead board inside the glass cabinets Benjamin Moore Feather Gray.

Flooring: Vanier Unfinished Hand Scraped Hardwood Flooring Walnut / 9/16″x5″x Random Lengths. (Sadly, no longer sold by Build Direct) It was an amazingly cheap $3.78 a sf, and we love it. We love the walnut, it’s so warm and friendly.  This was done in tandem with the whole house, and was the reason the kitchen remodel came to be.

Hardware: Clear Glass Knob with Black Base (on glass doors – Cool Knobs and Pulls), Bin Pulls Gilmore 4 inch Polished Nickel (Restoration Hardware – on sale), Deco Rings Knob, Polished Nickel (on regular doors – Rejuvenation, great deal), Breadboard knob & backplate (mini-size, Horton Brasses).

Well, there you go.  If this even helps one small person in one small project on their home, I’ll be pretty happy.

Thanks for the ride – and I’m sure glad our Kitchen is finished!

Painting the kitchen cabinets myself was probably my most successful DIY ever.  It was also definitely the longest, most time consuming, heart-wrenching, drag-out-dirty project I’ve ever done.  And so worth it.  I would do it again (although don’t make me). Sounds entertaining, right?  Well, follow these uncomplicated steps, add blood, sweat and tears, and a brand new kitchen can be yours for pennies on the dollar.

You want the secret?  The real secret? Elbow grease.

Step 1).  Doors. Remove cabinet doors.  Remove hinges from doors.  Put them all in a container, with screws, labeled “cabinet door hinges”.  Don’t lose said container in your remodel mess. Decide now if you are planning to paint the INSIDES of your cabinets. We didn’t paint most of ours because they are white laminate inside. The ones with the glass fronts we not only painted but also installed bead board to the inside. More on this later.  We did keep food in our cabinets during the paint job – we had to, really, living there.  It will get very, very, very dusty but just remember you can clean it all later.  If your cabinets are empty, you can tarp and tape the insides to cut down on the dust somewhat.  Here’s our exposed cabinets during the sand/putty phase:

Note the nice hole in the lower left wall that shines through to the living room.  Oops.  Tile demo gone very, very bad.

Step 2). Drawers. Remove drawers and drawer tracks.  The drawer tracks don’t tape well and will make a big mess if not removed. Save the drawer tracks, labeled, in a container. I would recommend taping each set together with masking tape and writing right on the tape with a Sharpie “1″, “2″, etc. making note of which drawers you chose for those numbers.  We didn’t do this last part, but it would have saved us some hassle in the reinstall.  Remove drawer pulls, knobs, any hardware. Place in another container, if you are keeping them (we replaced ours).  NOW is the time you choose your new hardware.  Why, you ask?  If your current drawer holes are 3.5″ apart, and your new bin pulls are 4″, you’ll need to putty up the holes and sand that down so you can paint over the whole thing.  So, decide that now. Here’s all of our drawers stacked and puttied:

Step 3) Carpentry. Still with me?  Okay, at this point, get all of your carpentry work done.  If you are adding crown to the cabinet frames, do it now, with us it was both crown, bead board inside a couple of cabinets, and also pillars and bead board around the peninsula.

Note red roses (thanks, Hon). Keeping flowers or something pretty around was an important part of me staying sane during the remodel, with no kitchen sink, dishwasher, stove or oven.

Our new crown is raised a bit from the old crown, which was kind of squished up right next to the doors.  This gives a taller and more elegant profile to the cabinets.

Step 4) Appliances. At the very last minute, remove all of the appliances you can.  We took out our stove (new stove and counter were going in), our wall oven, our dishwasher and our sink (new one was going in).  The wall microwave we removed the trim kit from around, so that we could paint it cleanly. The fridge moved into the living room.

Step 5) Meet your new best friend:

This may be the best $26 dollars you spend on the entire project.  If you don’t have one, get one, a pad sander beats sanding by hand any day. Which, you’ll get plenty of hand sanding too!  Step 5 is Sand and Putty. I sanded the whole set of cabinets, and the drawer fronts.  The doors were new, and therefore unfinished, so no sanding – yay for that! The moulding you have to sand by hand.  Don’t feel like you need to get all of the polyurethane off of your cabinets, that would take forever.  Just rough it up well, and then wipe the dust off with a tack cloth. You don’t want any dust left behind when you prime.  For grit I used P180 at first but then found it to be too coarse (scratching the wood) so I switched to P220 (AKA Very Fine).  I spackled all of the nail holes and other imperfections with Elmer’s wood spackling foam – you probably could get away with regular spackling foam, however.

After sanding, but before wipe down. It goes fast with the pad sander.

Spackled, sanded, wiped down and ready to go.

Step 6) Tape. If you’re not painting your walls, You’ll want to tape around the cabinets.  We didn’t tape there because we were repainting the walls and I also wanted to be sure to cover over every inch of oak.  We did tape our unremovable shelves, at the edges where they met the cabinet frame, like this:

Note the blue painters tape on the left shelves.  This is also a sneak peak at primer, caulk, undercoat, and Matt contemplating horrible venting situation.

Step 7) Prime. Get out the brushes and the mini-roller!  We’re going to paint!  Well, paint primer anyway. I recommend high quality paint brushes.  They’re the only thing that will see you through this project.  For our primer I used Kilz Oil-based “Sealer-Primer-Stainblocker”. Try to get the odorless version if you can.  It helps somewhat with interior fumes.  The folks at Lowes tinted it for me – as dark as they could (filled the can with color).  It was supposed to be a red/brown tint in case I sanded the edges too much in distressing, I didn’t want white to show through.  It ended up being dark flesh/taupe colored, and that worked just fine, although it was depressingly ugly to apply. I rolled the primer, which dries very flat, and didn’t worry about roller marks (back-brushing) because I was going to sand again and add quite a few more coats of paint to the job.  That’s right, you heard me…

Step 8 ) Sand and Caulk. Yup, bring out the trusty pad sander again. First, have your handy husband caulk the whole kitchen (I could have done this part, but don’t like to, plus I think I was doing more that my share of kitchen labor here).  Caulking is very important, don’t skip it or your perfect paint job will look crappy. Even a crappy caulk job is better than no caulking at all. Sand, wipe down.

Step 9) Paint. In my case, I was doing a red undercoat.  This is because I wanted to sand through to the red for a lightly aged and distressed look, to warm up my black paint (nothing too drastic).  An undercoat does add a lot of extra work to a job.  If you don’t want the layered, more rubbed black look, skip it.  For all of our paint, we used Benjamin Moore Satin Impervo.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.  It’s oil based and produces the perfect soft look, the paint levels itself rather magically and it applies like butter.  And, no they don’t pay me for an endorsement, I’m far too obscure for that!  The undercoat color I chose was Heritage Red,  it’s kind of a barn color.  I love the shade and tone.

Please note: We didn’t tape that plug outlet because we were trading it out for black.  Otherwise, be sure to tape your outlets.

Note the pizza box on the counter.  This is your main form of sustenance during a remodel.

Step 10) Sand, then Paint again. I should mention here that oil base paint needs about 12 hours between coats to dry.  I always let a full 24 hours expire before I lightly sanded (now with 320 grit) and started on the next coat.  Sanding between coats is a great time to address drips, if you get any.  Sand that section smooth and it can be good as new!  I painted a SECOND coat of the red undercoat, which may have been overkill:

That red is starting to look pretty luscious.

Now, what you’ve all been waiting for…

Step 11) Sand very, very lightly, then Paint. The black.  We’re there, we’ve arrived.  For our black, we had tested Benjamin Moore Onyx (in Satin Impervo, of course) and it was just not quite a rich enough black, although I liked that it didn’t have ANY blue or red undertones to the paint.  Looking for the blackest black we went to the local Benjamin Moore store (Chico Paint Mart), and they are so helpful there!  They mixed us a custom, awesome, blackest black ever.  Dead black, really.  It does cause the paint cans to practically overflow, there’s so much color formula in there.  But it was perfect.  If you need the formula, email me and I can hunt it down from the cans in the attic.  Obviously the shade of black you use is a matter of taste.  Okay here’s the black paint:

Lots of red show through, still.  A second coat will take care of that.

Not to get too monotonous here – let’s take a brief break and see what Cameron thinks of this project, shall we?

Yeah, he didn’t really like the remodel very much.

Step 12) Sand very, very lightly (just gently brush/scuff really) and paint your final coat. A couple of things I should mention here.  In my painting technique, I generally used a “brush corners and crevices, roll on with mini-roller, then back-brush once over that” technique.  It was the fastest way for me to get the hand-applied brush look I wanted.  I hate roller marks!  One of the great things about oil based paint is that you have quite a bit of time to “work with it” before it sets up.  So I could paint crevices, rollover and then brush-back a whole panel easily without it getting tacky.  When I say brush-back, I’m not sure I’m using the right term, but what I mean is I cleanly run a straight fairly empty (not loaded with paint) brush through what I’ve already rolled, in order to remove roller marks and replace them with brush marks.  This sort of mostly levels as the paint dries anyhow, but for me it was a more pleasing look. Another thing to note about Satin Impervo:  it’s quite glossy at first, don’t be alarmed.  In about 30 days it cures to a wonderful mellow, satin, low sheen finish.  It’s like magic.  Here’s the few photos I have after the second coat, with counters and back splash plus sink finally installed:

Still a huge mess, but we’re getting there.

You’ve painted your cabinets!! But what about the doors and drawers?

PHASE 2: I did the doors and drawers as phase two.  The most important thing was to get our kitchen back in functioning order, and finishing the base cabinets allowed the countertop, sink and stove to go in so we could stop eating pizza. Plus, I was working with limited hours each day, I had Cameron, Matt was harvesting full time and installing sinks and drains and gas lines after he got home from work at 7 pm.  So the doors became their own phase.

And what a phase it was!  Matt set up the shop (before it was our studio) as a paint factory: setting out every table we owned, tarping them with plastic and the floor with drop cloths.  I set the doors up on the table and away we went.  I would paint 4.5 hours per day.  That’s the quickest I could get it done.  Here’s how it would go:  Cameron goes down for bed at 6:30 (those were the days!).  I’d start painting the rows and would listen to good music/podcasts.  at about 9, I would break for dinner with Matt.  Then off to work again, and finally in bed by 11:30 each night. Day 1: Prime one side. Day 2: Sand and prime the next side. Day 3: Paint one side. Day 4: the other side.  Day 5: Second coat. Day 6: Second coat again.  Day 7: coat of black. Day 8: other side. Day 9: Second coat of black. Day 10: other side. Whew!!!  In reality, it took two weeks, not ten days.  I had some break days thrown in there.  Don’t forget sanding between each coat!  Some days the shop was very cold so I would let them dry even longer than 24 hours.  Then, when I was done, I let them cure for a full week before installing them back in the kitchen.  I didn’t want to ruin anything that took me that long! Here’s some photos of the black coat:

Paint Studio from one angle.

And the other.

Plastic cups propped up the doors as I painted them… note the plastic-lined table.

Brushing the crevices.

The mini-roller.

What I looked like for weeks and weeks.

Rolling this much can officially make you crazy. See our two poor presses languishing in the background.

And then… one day, I was done.  Carl came and put all of the doors back on, Matt and I installed the hardware, Miller put our seeded glass in, and we were done.  Wow.

Ah, lovely.

But wait!!! Hang on a sec!! Stop right there, hold the presses! Wasn’t I going to softly distress them?

The answer to that is yes.  And to this day I’m about half-way done with that project.  Call me lazy, I guess!  After letting the paint cure for 30 days, I lightly sanded the cabinets around the stove.  Then I waxed them with paste wax for a hand-rubbed lustre – it’s a more aged look.  I just haven’t gotten to the cabinets around the rest of the room yet!

Someday, someday.  It will all be done.

So goes the tale of a girl and her cabinets.  She met them, she painted them and they lived happily ever after.  And you could too.

The End.

P.S. Stay tuned for a complete source-list tomorrow!

Originally, I thought I wanted white cabinets.  Problem:  Oak grain.  All the examples I saw of oak grain painted white or cream were, well, too grain-y.  And the interesting thing is, I don’t actually mind wood grain in painted cabinets, in fact I quite like it, only white paint plus oak grain rubbed me the wrong way. Enter black.  The other classic color.  Black is the new white, right? The other possibility was gray, an awesome Gustavian gray, maybe.  This got nixed because my entire house is painted some sort of gray, in different shades and tones.  I love gray SO much, but didn’t want too much of a good thing.  I don’t want to get sick of it!

So, black it was.  Then, I wanted to add visual interest to the existing cabinets.  If you recall, they  were kind of flat on front, except for a border.  Well, our cabinet guy (Carl Lee from D’Amato & Lee – woodworking genius who installed our beams for us) suggested new doors and crown to update the look.  Getting new unfinished oak doors with more detailing was amazingly affordable: about $500 $750 for our entire kitchen.  We did keep the original drawers which are flat.  I painted a test drawer and pulled together hardware and fabric from the living room for inspiration:

The verdict on the test:  needed a blacker black. This sample is Onyx by Benjamin Moore (we used their Satin Impervo for the cabinets).  There is a red undercoat which I lightly sanded through to around the edges.  More on that tomorrow…

I was the queen of hardware samples during this project.  Always trying to find the coolest hardware for the best deal!  We ended up using crystal for the glass doors, the art deco knob for the other doors and the bin pulls for the drawers.  Sources at the end of this week (a complete list, hopefully).A sample of the new cabinet door – see all the extra detail with the raised paneling and beveling? Much more substantial feeling and heft to them, also.

The new footprint which we created in the kitchen involved tearing down a raised ledge that separated the sink and counter from the living room area (seen in the before pictures).  I just hated fiercely this oak border:

Not to mention that the raised portion really broke the room up in an odd manner. So we wanted to flatten the counter and widen it also. Here’s a comparison of the old vs. new footprint:

Okay, so in that second drawing, you probably noticed the fancy marble counters,”Christopher Peacock” Style Corners, Ogee Edge, blah, blah, blah.  This was my dream kitchen, I never thought it would become a reality. Christopher Peacock, in fact, was my dream kitchen designer.  Take a look here at his work, and also at this very helpful post:  Elements of a Christopher Peacock Kitchen. Dreamy, right?  And how many times can I use the word “dream” in a paragraph?

Well, the dream did come true:  honed Carrara marble was much cheaper than we thought it would be, about the same per square foot as granite.  We did have to look high and low to find honed (not polished) slabs in Northern California, finally finding them at Bedrosians in Sacramento.

Here’s a brief aside: every one, and I mean every one and their brother, tried to tell us that marble was a bad idea for the kitchen.  “It stains.” “It chips easily.” “It etches.” “High maintenance.”  My thought was, they’ve been using it in Italy and Greece for thousands of years, and it still looks pretty good! Our marble, one year later, has not stained even once.  It has etched, a look we knew would occur, we’re happy with the “lived-in” look of marble.  It has a few small ding marks from me dropping the iron paper towel knob on the counter.  I like these too!  The maintenance could not be lower.  Clean your counters when they are dirty, simple as that!  Most of all, I love the feel of marble… cool on a hot day, almost soft, smooth, old, lived-in, and begging for a pie crust or pizza dough to be rolled out on it.

Ahem, back to the slabs – we found them:

Yay!  Now, could we construct the beautiful Peacock-esque corner?  With Carl’s help and the computerized fabrication of our marble by Benchmark (here in Chico) we could!  Based on my lowly drawings, Carl produced this:

And Benchmark computer-templated this:

Which then became this, finally:

Aren’t they just soft and velvety and elegant?

So, we went from tired oak/tile to detailed black painted moulding and white marble.  Other changes to the kitchen included the floors (to handscraped walnut like the rest of the house was getting), two pendant lights replacing recessed cans, soft gray paint on the walls, a (six burner! – splurge) range with proper vent hood, new dishwasher, new pull-down faucet and a farmhouse sink.  I’ve always wanted one.  The most famous farmhouse sink is by Shaw, it’s very beautiful, but cost over $1000 bucks, which was a lot more than we wanted to spend.  After searching online, we took a risk and bought one made by Belle Foret, which cost less than half of the Shaw price.  It’s been perfect in every way, aside from having no Shaw’s logo I’m not sure you could tell the difference.  I love the deep simple roominess of it:

Bet you didn’t know there are actually dirty dishes in the sink in that picture! Yup.  Two coffee cups and the remains of Cameron’s breakfast.

Things we did not change or replace: the wall oven and microwave.  They were both working fine and we just couldn’t see changing them out because we didn’t like their color (white).  Now, a year later, I proclaim the oven’s days to be numbered because it won’t hold a temperature for me any more!  Chocolate chip cookies have been ruined en masse… the temp. swings by about 40 degrees over or under.  We also didn’t replace the fridge, it’s fine, great, awesome too. Didn’t need a fancy-schmancy stainless or built-in model.

Come back tomorrow for the painting fun!

P.S. – If you have any questions about the remodel you’d like to ask, fire away!  I’ll try to be as helpful as I can!

Overall though, the remodel was a BUDGET endeavor.  We only wanted to spend on things that really mattered.  The kitchen had dated oak cabinets and white tile counters.  The cabinets were in good shape, however, and so entered the fateful idea of painting them.  I thought, “I can do this, I can” and scoured the internet for resources on how to produce a quality cabinet paint job DIY.  My goal this week is to create what I could not find:  a comprehensive run-down on painting oak cabinets, with pictures and step-by-steps. Today: before and after!!  Tomorrow: the kitchen choices/breakdown. Wednesday: how to paint oak cabinets. Thursday: tile. Friday: Bubby’s birthday.  Sound good?

Before I begin, let me say that my biggest inspirations were Garden Web (their kitchen forum) and the blog One Woman’s Cottage Life (now called Twice Remembered).  Garden Web’s forums were a wealth of knowledge and reviews on everything, and the cottage blog was the most successful cabinet-painting-adding-moulding-DIY job I’d found on the web (she painted them a soft red).  It wasn’t until after I was done with the whole project that I found Layla’s black cabinet paint transformation, which is most similar to mine.

Enough chit-chat.  Y’all ready?  Fasten your seatbelts, this is a doozy!

Here’s the oakalicious before:

And the same exact spots after:Fun, right?  So much work, but so worth it!

More tomorrow!

I was going to show you a small glimpse of the after (which I’ll bring out tomorrow, I promise!! with lots of cool durings!! ) but I had this waiting for me in his crib…

How can you argue with that look?  Tomorrow it is!  Wish me luck – I’m working on a four course italian meal for the dinner party tonight!!

See you then.

Very promising, right? But kinda Beige-y Mcbeige.  Plus, that roll-up door was blocking a ton of wonderful natural light. Here’s the after:

We painted it the same color as the main house and replaced the garage door.  Originally we thought we were going to have to shell out big bucks for an all glass pane door (like the cool modern ones here) but then we called a local garage door shop (Sharp’s) and found they could install a standard door but just order regular glass panels all the way down.  The fellow who installed it said he had seen two panels of glass before, but never four full panels.  He thought it was definitely cool, and so did we!  Plus, it cost under a quarter of what a fancy glass door would have cost. Score!  Sharp’s (Chico and Oroville) is an excellent shop by the way, very friendly, well-priced and they supplied and installed both this door and our carriage house garage doors in front.

But let’s go inside, shall we? First, the before:

Okay, positives: nice, big space.  Tall ceilings. Smooth walls.  Relatively unscathed cement floor.  Negatives: box fluorescent lighting.  Boring gray walls (I know, normally I love gray). O yeah, and filled with our junk. Seriously, six months after we moved in this thing was twice as full as you see it above, filled with unpacked boxes and painting projects from our main house remodel. You doubt?  Observe:

And lastly:

Wowsers.  Just looking at that photo makes me so glad I am done painting the kitchen cabinets.  And gives you a full view of how much we like Benjamin Moore Paint, and what a cluttered mess the studio was.  An M-E-S-S – mess.

And here’s the after:

Now, I may be biased because I love letterpress so much, but isn’t that just the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen?  There’s our two presses and our paper cutter, and their combined ages are more than 300 years old, about a hundred each.  Sweet, huh?  This shot was taken by the gloriously talented Eikon Photography right before our grand opening.  Our two white parson’s tables (from West Elm) don’t usually have flowers and displayed stationery on them, rather they usually have stacks and stacks of printed and unprinted work, plus makeready, etc.  But it sure looks pretty this way, right?

Looks a lot better without the cabinet paint job all over the place, huh?  This is our sitting area, and you can see the new garage door lets in tons of wonderful natural light. Yet it’s also shaded by two big trees so it doesn’t increase the heat of the shop at all. The love seat (a jewel from Urban Outfitters) and coffee table (industrial from Wisteria) comprise the studio sitting area for meeting with clients and/or friends. We’ve since added two beautiful Louis the-whatever-number-can’t-remember-XVI-maybe? chairs from the lovely Nantucket Home here in Chico.  We picked them up at the Slice of Chico sidewalk sale for a bargain! You can see a tiny corner of them peeking in the photo below:

We tore out the white pegboard built-ins, which were a little automotive and industrial for our taste, salvaged them and reinstalled some of them in our garage – which worked out great.  The new cherry desk and cupboards you see were actually a built-in set from the office/study in the main house.  (You’ll see the original later when I get around to a home tour.) We pulled them out from the office, removed some of the top cabinets and all of the molding from the set to keep it from looking too top heavy, and changed the dark green marble-looking formica that used to be the counter top, replacing it with a clean, thick white counter top from Ikea. It was cheap and looks awesome. The biggest change of all, however, was replacing the dated shiny brass handles with antique bin pulls and cool door pulls with ornate backing.  It made the cherry look older and warmer and was just what we wanted. Oh, and the icky fluorescent box lighting?  Gone. Matt did all the electrical for that and did an awesome job.

We used warehouse/farm lighting (it’s cheap!) but dressed it up with ceiling medallions.  Over the desk are we used chandeliers, from Pottery Barn Kids, actually, because it was the best deal. And we installed the whole system on a dimmer so we can have lighting control in the studio.

Here’s the real eye candy, though:

Our Chandler and Price Old Style, Golding Jobber No. 7 and Chandler and Price Paper Cutter.  They are beautiful, old and sometimes cantankerous, but they all still function like they were created 100 years ago! Our C & P just got new rollers yesterday, so exciting. Here’s a few vignettes from wandering around the studio…

A few of our prized Goines prints…

Our old Tubbs type cabinet, furniture and reglets…

And to round it all out… Mr. Cam goofing around the shop.  He loves the mirror and sofa!Hope you enjoyed our mini massive tour of the studio!  Come and visit us soon!

09/19 update: A complete tour is available on facebook (99 photos). Probably more than you need to see!